People have been telling their love stories for thousands of years. It is the greatest common human experience. And yet, love stories coach us to believe that love is selective, somehow, that it can be boxed in and easily defined. This is a collection of eleven remarkable essays that widen the frame of reference: transgender romance; body image issues; race relations; disability; polyamory; class differences; queer love; long distance; caste; loneliness; the single life; the bad boy syndrome . . . and so much more. Pieced together with a dash of poetry and a whole lot of love, featuring a multiplicity of voices and a cast of unlikely heroes and heroines, this is a book of essays that show us, with empathy, humour and wisdom, that there is no such thing as the love that dare not speak its name.
Sangeeta is the fey creature the Mallus Maleficarum warned you about. Daytime lawyer and teacher, night-time sleep enthusiast. Believes words have the power to set us free.
Nadika Nadja is a writer and researcher with interests in history and archaeology, city and urban spaces, gender, and the Internet. She is currently based in Bangalore.
Dhrubo Jyoti is a journalist waiting to leave New Delhi to untangle the mess of their caste, gender, body and sexuality. A patchwork of love, care and anger from friends keeps their broken heart taped together. Bengali on alternate days, queer on weekends.
Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan decided she wanted to become an author at sixteen, and didn't change her mind even when she turned 33 and was faced with the bleak financial reality of it. Her first book deal came out of her popular blog Compulsive Confessions (www.compulsiveconfessions.com), which she's been running as a passion project for the last eleven years. She is also the author of three previous books: You Are Here, The Life & Times of Layla the Ordinary and Cold Feet, as well as a short story collection called Before and Then After. She lives in New Delhi with her partner and their three cats. She hopes to move to Goa soon.
Preeti Vangani is a poet and writer with work appearing in BOAAT, Juked, The Bombay Review and Buzzfeed India among other publications. She has been a featured spoken word performer across several cities and is currently an MFA candidate (poetry) at University of San Francisco.
Shrayana Bhattacharya is trained in development economics at Delhi University and Harvard University. Since 2014, she has worked as an economist researching social policy and labour. Her writing has appeared in the Indian Express, EPW and the Caravan. Her first book, from which the current piece is extracted, Desperately Seeking Shahrukh, is forthcoming in 2018.
Nidhi Goyal is an activist working on disability rights and gender justice. She is the founder and director of Rising Flame, a Mumbai-based non-profit organization working on rights of persons with disabilities with a focus on women and youth. She is India's first female disabled comedian and uses humour to challenge the prevalent notions on disability, gender and sexuality. You can tweet her at @saysnidhigoyal.
Anushree Majumdar is a journalist with the Indian Express.
Sharanya Manivannan is an award-winning writer based in India. Her fiction, poetry and essays have been widely published internationally, and she was specially commissioned to write and perform a poem at the 2015 Commonwealth Day Observance in London in front of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The Ammuchi Puchi is Sharanya's first picture book. Her recent books for adults include The High Priestess Never Marries and The Altar of the Only World. You can find out more about Sharanya on her website: www.sharanyamanivannan.wordpress.com.
Nerina Canzi is an award-winning Argentinian illustrator with a degree from National School of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires. Nerina has illustrated for publishing houses around the world and lived and worked in Italy, Spain and Argentina. In 2015, she won the prestigious Premio Nacional y Latinoamericano de Literatura Infantil y Juvenil award (The National and Latin American Prize for Children's and Young People's Literature) and was selected for the VI Salón de Ilustración IMAGENPALABRA (The Sixth Illustration Exhibition by IMAGENPALABRA) in Colombia. You can find out more about Nerina on her website: www.nerinacanzi.com.
Maroosha Muzaffar is a journalist with VICE India and is investigating contemporary love and longing.
