Meghna Pant
Meghna Pant is a multiple award-winning author, screenwriter, journalist and speaker. Her books – Boys Don't Cry (2022, Penguin), The Terrible, Horrible, Very Bad Good News (2021, Penguin), How To Get Published In India(2019, Bloomsbury), Feminist Rani (2018, Penguin), The Trouble With Women (2016, Juggernaut), Happy Birthday! (2013, Random House) and One & A Half Wife (2012, Westland) – have been published to commercial and critical acclaim. Pant has been named one of India's best writers by various publications.
She has been felicitated with various honours and shortlists for distinguished contribution to literature, gender issues and journalism, including the Frank O'Connor International Award, Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Laadli Media Award, Bharat Nirman Award, FICCI Young Achiever Award, Muse India Young Writer Award, FON South Asia Short Story Award and Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni has described Pant’s writing as ‘surprising and moving’, Ashwin Sanghi as 'provocative and inspirational', Jeet Thayil as ‘deft, merciless, expertly-tuned’ and Namita Gokhale as possessing 'intense human sensibility'.
Pant's short stories have been published in over a dozen global literary magazines, including Avatar Review, Wasafari, Eclectica, The Indian Quarterly and QLRS, along with anthologies like The Himalayan Arc.
Meghna has lived in Delhi, Singapore, Zurich, Dubai and New York City. She is currently based in Mumbai with her husband and two daughters.
“I festered with this duality of love and ego, where ego scorns the very love its seeking and then despairs in its absence.”
“Death did this to people: making cowards, scapegoats, preachers and mourners of the living; while the dead – ignoble or not – became objects of respect for achieving something before the rest of us.”
“Yet, despite their many surgeries and jobs, most of them looked like old girls – girls who had suffered some wasting disease. These same things, breasts and botox, like independence and immodesty, had been powerful and shameful a few short years back, put in the same category as an extra toe or a stutter; they were quaint now.”