Novelist and short story writer, Shashi Deshpande has eleven novels, two crime novellas, a number of short story collections, a book of essays, her memoirs and four children’s books to her credit. Three of her novels have received awards, including the Sahitya Akademi award for That Long Silence. She has done translations from Kannada and Marathi into English and her own work has been translated into various Indian and European languages. Her latest work is a collection of essays: Subversions. She was awarded the Padma Shri in 2008.

Shinie Antony has written short-story books Barefoot and Pregnant, The Orphanage For Words, and novels The Girl Who Couldn't Love and When Mira Went Forth and Multiplied. She has compiled the anthologies Why We Don’t Talk, An Unsuitable Woman and Boo. Co-founder of the Bangalore Literature Festival and director of the Bengaluru Poetry Festival, her story A Dog’s Death won the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association Short Story Asia prize in 2002.

She is a gamechanger in Indian journalism, having brought women's issues to the forefront like none other and creating a path-breaking platform like SheThePeople. She started the Women Writers Festival which has gone to become the world's largest traveling festival of female writing. The Women Writer's Prize is the first such initiative from the Indian sub-continent.