Agni Sreedhar is an ex-gangster and writer. He has written the book Daadagiriya Dinagalu, out in English as My Days in the Underworld. He directed the film Thamassu, judged second best film by Karnataka State Film Awards in 2010–11. He also won the Best Screenplay writer award for this.

Amit Lodha is a 1998-batch IPS officer and IIT Delhi alumnus currently serving as ADGP SCRB Bihar. Renowned for his tenure as SP in challenging districts like Gaya and Muzaffarpur, he also served as IG of the Rajasthan Frontier (BSF). A decorated officer, he has received the Police Medal for Gallantry and the President’s Medal for Meritorious Service. Beyond policing, he co-founded the Bharat Ke Veer portal with Akshay Kumar and is the bestselling author of Bihar Diaries, Life in the Uniform, and Police Affairs.

Anita Nair is one of India’s most acclaimed authors. Her body of work comprises 25 books ranging from literary fiction to noir to poetry to children’s literature to translation. Her books have been translated into thirty-three languages around the world.

Anita Nair has also written two plays and the screenplay for the movie adaptation of her novel Lessons in Forgetting which was part of the Indian Panorama at IFFI 2012 and won the National Film Award in 2013. She is the recipient of several prizes and honours including the Central Sahitya Akademi award and the Crossword Prize.

A High-Profile Supporter of the UNHCR, Anita Nair is the founder of the creative writing mentorship program Anita’s Attic which has mentored over 150 writers.

Anuja Chauhan is a bestselling Indian author who spent seventeen years in advertising before turning to fiction. Known for witty, Hinglish-laced romantic novels, she made a successful leap into crime writing with Club You to Death (2021). The book introduced ACP Bhavani Singh, a lovably old-school Delhi detective, to great acclaim. She followed it with a second Bhavani Singh mystery, The Fast and the Dead (2023), set in Bangalore’s Shivajinagar bazaar. Club You to Death has been acquired by Maddock Films for adaptation.

Aroon Raman is a former serial entrepreneur who now divides his time between other interests and business. He is the author of three national bestselling thrillers — The Shadow Throne, The Treasure of Kafur and Skyfire, all published by Pan Macmillan — leading the Hindustan Times to declare that he could well become the Robert Ludlum of the Indian thriller genre. He is currently working on a thriller set in New York City. Apart from writing, he advises and supports a number of non-profit initiatives. His other interests include tennis and trekking.

When Bijal Vachharajani is not reading a children’s book, she’s writing or editing one. She’s an award-winning author of multiple planet-friendly books including A Cloud Called Bhura, Savi and the Memory Keeper and When Fairyland Lost Its Magic.

Biman Nath is an astrophysicist, science writer, and novelist. Born in Assam, his career has spanned India, the USA, Israel, and Germany. His writings span hard science, history, and fiction, and he has authored three novels, along with several acclaimed nonfiction books on science history and popularisation.

Deepthi Talwar is Executive Editor at Penguin Random House India. She has been a part of the publishing industry for two decades and has published fiction and non-fiction writers across genres. She also spearheads Penguin Eight, an imprint dedicated to writings from the Northeast of India.

Dipti Nair is an award winning journalist-turned-content strategist, and Founder of All Things Catz. She is the 2026 Fellow of the HWR Khozem Merchant Non-fiction Fellowship.

Hussain Zaidi is a bestselling Indian author and investigative journalist known for his gripping true crime narratives. His works, including Dongri to Dubai and Mafia Queens of Mumbai, have inspired major films and series, establishing him as a leading voice on India’s underworld and crime history

Jerry Pinto is the author of Murder in Mahim (Speaking Tiger) which won the Valley of Words Award for Fiction and was turned into an eponymous limited series.

Kalpana Swaminathan’s detective Lalli has appeared in nine novels and is still the jaunty 65 she was in 1997, when she ambushed her writer with unexpected derring-do. Kalpana’s other books include the noir novel, Bougainvillea House, Ambrosia for Afters, and Venus Crossing which won the Crossword Fiction Prize in 2009. She has also written books for children.

Ishrat Syed and Kalpana write together as Kalpish Ratna. Their most recent nonfiction is Bahadur: Shah of Gujarat. Their new novel Twice in Nalanda is about the aftershocks of murder.

Kanishka Gupta runs Writer’s Side Literary Agency, the leading South Asian agency he founded in India. Among his notable authors are Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi (International Booker winners for Heart Lamp, 2025), Daisy Rockwell (International Booker winner for Tomb of Sand, 2022), Avni Doshi (Burnt Sugar, shortlisted for Booker prize 2020), and Jerry Pinto (Windham-Campbell prize, 2016). He has worked closely with the 2022 Booker winner, Shehan Karunatilaka on multiple projects.

In addition to his publishing endeavors, Kanishka curated a critically acclaimed series for Scroll.in titled “Publishing and the Pandemic.” This series features comprehensive reports, commentaries, and first-person accounts detailing the impact of the pandemic on publishing in the Indian subcontinent and beyond. If you are interested, you can access the series through this link: Publishing and the Pandemic.

Karthik Venkatesh is Executive Editor with Penguin Random House India where he commissions and edits non-fiction and fiction. He is the author of two books for young adults: 10 Indian Languages and How They Came to Be and 10 Makers of the Indian Constitution and the editor of Where The Gods Dwell.

Leodora Darlington is a writer from London with Ghanaian heritage. She received a distinction for her Masters in Creative Writing from Brunel University, where she studied under authors like Benjamin Zepheniah and Will Self. A Bookseller Rising Star in 2021, Leodora is also an editor and has published a range of bestselling fiction. The Exes is her debut novel.

Madhavi Mahadevan has published three novels that are feminist retellings based on the Mahabharata. The Kaunteyas: Queen Kunti’s Mahabharata; Bride of the Forest: The Untold Story Of Yayati’s Daughter; The Forgotten Wife: The Story of Hidimbi and Bheem. She has also written two collections of short fiction, contributed to several anthologies and published award-winning books and short stories for children.

Madhulika Liddle is a writer of novels and short stories. She is best known as the creator of the Muzaffar Jang series, about a Mughal detective who solves crimes in 17th century Delhi. Muzaffar Jang has appeared in three novels and one collection of short stories.

Mani Rao is the author of thirteen poetry books including So That You Know (HarperCollins 2025), and four books in translation including Kalidasa- Selected Poetry and Drama (HarperCollins 2025), Bhagavad Gita – God’s Song, Saundarya Lahari- Wave of Beauty. She was a writing resident at the Iowa International Writing Program, Omi Ledig House and International Poetry Studies Institute, Canberra, and has an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in religious studies; her research on mantras is in Living Mantra: Mantra, Deities and Visionary Experience Today (Palgrave Macmillan 2019).

With a successful policing career behind him, the highly decorated Delhi’s super-cop Maxwell Pereira enjoys the reputation of being a ‘thinking cop’. He began his career in Delhi—proving to be fearless and forthright in disciplining traffic offenders or those with criminal behaviour. His tenure brought him many laurels for bravery, for meritorious and distinguished services. His books include The Other Side of Policing and Tandoor Murder as also Magadi Acres and Sukh Sagar.

Nandita Bose is a Bangalore-based writer of true-to-life relationship tales. In her free time, she is also a poet. Nandita’s past career avatars are in academics and as a performance management consultant. She reviews books for newspapers and is passionate about Hindustani classical music, art and good food.

Neeraj Kumar, a 1976 batch IPS officer, retired as the Delhi Police Commissioner in 2013. During the 9 years he spent in the CBI on deputation, he investigated several high-profile cases bringing dreaded criminals and underworld elements to justice. He has authored two books ‘Dial D for Don’ and ‘Khaki Files’, both published by Penguin Random House, where he recounts twenty of his sensational investigations. Season 1 and Season 2 of ‘Delhi Crime’ on Netflix are based on stories from his second book. His third book ‘A Cop in Cricket’, published by Juggernaut, is based on his experiences as Head of the Anti-Corruption Unit of the BCCI between 2015 and 2018 where he recounts his campaigns against corrupt practices in Indian cricket.

Reena Puri is the Executive Editor of Amar Chitra Katha. She has spent a lifetime inside India’s mythological imagination — as author of an expansive body of work spanning the Shiva Purana, tales of the Devas, the story of Tanhaji, and much more, reaching hundreds of thousands of readers across generations. At Dead Write, she brings her extraordinary command of India’s ancient narratives to bear on the question that the best crime fiction always asks — not just who did it, but why, and what justice means in a world where gods themselves are suspects.

Rudraneil Sengupta is a journalist and author. Between 2016 and 2018, he embedded with the Delhi Police for a series of investigative reports for a national broadsheet. Drawing on this experience, he wrote his debut novel, The Beast Within which has been longlisted for the Kalinga Literary Award. He is also the author of Enter the Dangal: Travels through India’s Wrestling Landscape, a work of narrative nonfiction exploring India’s wrestling culture.

Dr. S. Vijay Kumar is a published author, researcher, and international columnist specialising in Indian art history, provenance research, and the illicit trafficking of cultural property. He is the co-founder of the India Pride Project, a global volunteer initiative that uses OSINT, archival photography, and field verification to identify and recover stolen Indian antiquities. His work has directly contributed to the restitution of numerous artefacts from institutions in Australia, the UK, Germany, Singapore, and the United States, and he has collaborated with agencies including Interpol, Europol, and U.S. Homeland Security Investigations. He is the author of The Idol Thief and enjoys engaging audiences on art, history, law, and public participation in safeguarding cultural heritage.

Samyukta Bhowmick is a lifelong devotee of the Golden Age of crime fiction, written between the 1920s and the 1940s and its uniquely unsettling combination of outward respectability and inner turmoil. Her debut novel, A Fatal Distraction, is in part an homage to that childhood fascination with violence in otherwise cosy settings.

Born in Kolkata, raised in Kuwait and educated largely in the United States, Samyukta has had an outwardly conventional, respectable life and corporate career. Now, in her writing, it’s time to explore the inner turmoil!

She lives in Delhi with her two children, her husband and her cat.

Shailendra is a novelist, filmmaker, screenwriter, and former journalist. His series Grahan won the Screenwriters Association Award. His short film Tumhare Bina screened at the Bengaluru International Short Film Festival, and his novel Press 9 for a Crime featured in Sahitya Tak’s Top 10 books of 2025. He was Executive Editor at Aaj Tak, led India’s only speed news channel Tez, and helmed major shows and events at Life OK and Star Bharat. He also directed the iconic BBC talk show HardTalk India.

Shampa Roy has taught in Delhi University for over three decades. Her academic articles, chapters, translations have appeared in international journals and edited anthologies. Roy has authored two books related to gender and criminality in early Bangla crime Narratives. Stroke of Death, her first novel (Hachette, 2024) is a historical mystery.

Sharda Ugra has been a sports journalist for over three decades, reporting sport for tabloid MidDay, broadsheet The Hindu, newsmagazine India and the ESPNcricinfo/ ESPN India websites. In between, worked with India coach John Wright and cricketer Yuvraj Singh on their memoirs and on research projects focussing on ethnic minorities in cricket in the UK and Australia. She now lives in Bangalore and writes to suit herself.

Shrabonti Bagchi is an independent journalist based in Bengaluru.

Shubhra Krishan writes about food, well-being, and murder. She edits Amore for Puravankara Builders, runs Travel Secrets for globetrotters, and hosts the YouTube channel Filmi Muniya for Bollywood obsessives. She also curates gift hampers—because some stories are better told in tissue paper and twine.

Shweta Taneja is an award-winning Indian author and a leading voice in feminist speculative fiction. She is best known for the Anantya Tantrist Mysteries — a critically acclaimed series blending dark fantasy, tantric lore, and gripping crime fiction — and The Ghost Hunters of Kurseong, a mystery adventure for young readers. Her novel How to Steal a Ghost @ Manipal is also under option by an international film producer. A Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire finalist and Charles Wallace Writing Fellow, her work has been translated into multiple languages.

Sudeshna Shome Ghosh is an editor, writer and librarian of children’s books. She is Executive Publisher at Speaking Tiger Books, and co-founder, Cosy Nook Library.

A Mumbaikar-turned-Bengalurian, Sunil Nair is a copy editor by profession, having worked for over two decades at the Indian Express, Business Standard, Economic Times, Sunday Observer, and Reuters. An inveterate curio-junkie, he collects rare books, comics, military medals, badges, and railwayana, among other things. His interests include colonial history, heritage conservation, international affairs and defence.