Shruti Ganapatye

Shruti Ganapatye is a Mumbai-based journalist writing extensively on political and social issues for the past 18 years. She has worked with leading English and Marathi newspapers, agency and websites including Mumbai Mirror, Asian Age, Press Trust of India, Loksatta, Maharashtra Times, Outlook India, MoneyControl, Zenger covering stories across Maharashtra. Shruti’s core strength remains an innate understanding of politics, governance, human rights and social issues. She has travelled across Maharashtra’s hinterland highlighting rural issues in mainstream media. She is a thinking journalist who believes in going beyond headlines, and he-said, she-said journalism. Her reporting, over the years, has not only led to social change but pushed lethargic government machinery into action. Her extensive coverage of Bhima Koregaon violence, Sanatan Sanstha’s ideology on Hindu Rashtra, a beef ban in Maharashtra, farmers’ suicide, urban poverty and marginalised communities in Mumbai were well received. She is now an independent journalist focussing on long-form writings and research.

Sneha Acharekar

Sneha Acharekar is a passionate logophile, an avid reader, a complete movie buff and a singer in places that reverberate. In that order. She is a writer by passion and profession; and has been writing fiction since her school days – stories and poems for her school magazine. An active blogger and poetess on various online sites, her articles have made it to the featured lists on various online platforms as WriteFluence, Momspresso, Women’s Web and YourQuote. She is an avid Chetan Bhagat fan for the love of the simplicity in his writings – Five Point Someone and Two States being her favorite works of the author. The Harry Potter series follows as her next favorite book and she loves reading Dean Koontz and Shobha De. A voracious reader since school days, with the constant thought about having just a few years in hand to complete school and too many books to go from the library… she would gulp down every Enid Blyton book in The Famous Five series during zero periods in school. She wrote her first story of about ten thousand plus odd words during her ninth grade which she still treasures as her motivation to write. As of today, Acharekar has five published books to her name. Based on the genre of dark romance, her first fiction novel Faith, Fate and a Fairytale (2017) is the closest to her heart. Her first book in the non-fiction genre – Let Go, Yet Glow – was published in January 2014 under a pseudonym KaTHaa. Purple Winters (2020) is the third of her books which is a collection of 150 free verses. Her fourth book ‘Bookish Becky’ (2021) is a children’s book with illustrations, while her fifth ‘Aboveground’ is a collection of nine short stories in the horror genre. Acharekar loves to write on different genres. Her poetry and short stories have also been published in most international compilations curated by WriteFluence in 2021. Acharekar is also the creator of Stories by Sneha in 2020 – a podcast that plays on all podcasting channels viz. AnchorFM, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Hubhopper, KukuFM, RadioPublic, Castbox, Breaker, PocketCasts, Overcast, to name a few. The podcast features short-stories written and narrated by Acharekar; with the entire audio experience and ambience conceptualized and created by her individually; and has successfully crossed over 55k listens. Acharekar calls herself resilient, and her faith remains strong in the doctrine of Agathism – all things tend towards ultimate good. Acharekar considers herself lucky to have supportive parents, a loveable spouse and an adorable daughter; and further blessed to have been born and brought up in Mumbai. When she is not writing, Acharekar loves to create digital illustrations, listen to music, explore digital apps or sing karaoke.

Hywel Richard Pinto

Born in Bombay and brought up in Mumbai, Hywel has always been a big fan of mystery / suspense books which keep you enthralled right up to the end hooking you to the characters and storyline. He works full time in a Media agency and reading and now writing books has been a break for him from the daily stress of life. He is predominately a weekend writer, crafting the storyline over the week and putting it down in words over the weekend. A couple of story ideas and the encouragement of his wife, Christina and family led him to write his first story – The Monday Murder. His second book – ICE BOUND was the first book to be self-published and is available in both paperback and digital versions. After that, Hywel published Europa with Story Mirror and two self-published e-books called The Venus World and Monsters of Mithi, which have amongst rave reviews and awards, have also been in the top three in previous seasons of WriteFluencer Awards.