Namita Gokhale

Namita Gokhale (born 1956) is an Indian writer, editor, festival director, and publisher. Her debut novel, Paro: Dreams of Passion was released in 1984, and she has since written fiction and nonfiction, and edited nonfiction collections. She conceptualized and hosted the Doordarshan show Kitaabnama: Books and Beyond and is a founder and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival. She won the 2021 Sahitya Akademi Award. Early life and education Gokhale was born in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh in 1956. She was raised in Nainital by her aunts and her grandmother Shakuntala Pande. She studied English literature Jesus and Mary College at Delhi University, and at age 18 married Rajiv Gokhale and had two daughters while she was a student. She refused to attend a course about the writings of Geoffrey Chaucer, and was dismissed from university by age 26. By age forty, she had survived cancer and her husband had died. Career While a student, at age 17, Gokhale began editing and managing the 1970s-era film magazine Super, and continued publishing the magazine for seven years, until it closed in the early 1980s. After Super closed, she began writing the story that became her debut novel. In addition to her writing career, Gokhale hosted a hundred episodes of Kitaabnama: Books and Beyond, a multilingual book-show she conceptualized for Doordarshan. According to Raksha Kumar, writing for The Hindu in 2013, "Kitaabnama tries to showcase the multilingual diversity of Indian literature by inviting laureates from different languages to talk about their work. It reminds one of the times when book stores were not overwhelmed by technical writing and self-help books; when literature and quality writing were not considered a waste of time; when the pleasure of reading was experienced by many."