Aloud / Out Loud: Voices from India

This month’s featured authors:

• Acharya Shunya
• Anoop Judge
• Shobha Rao
• Alka Joshi

Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature presents writers, poets, and other artists, while giving back to the creative community and to our neighbors. (telhilit.org)

Acharya Shunya is an award-winning author and internationally respected teacher of Indian wisdom traditions. She is the author of Roar Like a Goddess, Sovereign Self, and Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom, widely praised for bringing ancient Indian philosophy, storytelling, and lived spiritual insight into a contemporary literary voice. Her books explore themes of feminine power, self-realization, cultural identity, and inner freedom, blending memoir, myth, and practical wisdom in an accessible and compelling way.

As the first female head of a 2,000-year-old Vedic lineage, Acharya Shunya brings a rare depth of lived experience to her writing. Her work has been featured by major publications and she has been invited to speak and read at universities, literary festivals, and cultural institutions across the U.S. Acharya Shunya’s writing invites readers into a deeply reflective, story-rich journey that bridges ancestral wisdom with modern life.

Anoop Judge is the award-winning author of five books, including Law: What It’s All About and How to Get In; The Rummy Club, winner of the 2015 Beverly Hills Book Award; The Awakening of Meena Rawat, excerpted in the Pushcart Prize nominations; No Ordinary Thursday, a First Reads Book selection; and her latest novel, Mercy and Grace.

A recovering litigator turned novelist, Anoop left years of state and federal courtroom work to pursue storytelling with unapologetic passion. Her screenplay adaptation of The Rummy Club won first place at the 2016 Hollywood International Moving Pictures Film Festival, and her fiction has been recognized by VONA voices, and featured in journals such as Green Hills Literary Lantern, Lumiere Review, DoubleBack Review, and Ornament Anthology.

Anoop holds an MFA from St. Mary’s College of California, where she received the Advisory Board Award and Alumni Scholarship. She has taught fiction writing at Stanford Continuing Studies and The Writers’ Grotto and appeared on the 2023 reality series The Gems of Ruby Hill.

Shobha Rao moved to the United States from India at the age of seven. She is the author of An Unrestored Woman, a short story collection, and the novels Indian Country and Girls Burn Brighter. Rao is the winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction and was a Grace Paley Teaching Fellow at The New School. Her story “Kavitha and Mustafa” was chosen by T.C. Boyle for inclusion in Best American Short Stories. Girls Burn Brighter was long listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and was a finalist for the California Book Award and the Goodreads Choice Awards.

Alka Joshi is the internationally bestselling author of The Henna Artist, The Secret Keeper of Jaipur and The Perfumist of Paris. Her first novel, The Henna Artist, a NYT Bestseller and a Reese Witherspoon Bookclub Pick, was Longlisted for the “Center for Fiction First Novel Prize” and translated into 30 languages. A debut author at 62, Alka was named on the Forbes 50 Over 50 List as a women defying gender and age expectations. Born in India, Alka came to the U.S. at nine and earned a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from California College of the Arts. Her 4th novel, Six Days in Bombay, will be followed by a 5th in March, 2027