Jahnavi Barua is an Indian writer based in Bangalore. Next Door (Penguin India, 2008), her debut collection of short stories was longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Her next, a novel called Rebirth (Penguin India, 2010), was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. The third, Undertow, a novel, was published by Penguin Random House India (Viking Books) in February 2020 and was longlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature 2020. Her short fiction has been widely anthologized and her work is part of several university syllabi. Jahnavi studied medicine but is not a practising doctor.

She was born in Guwahati and raised between Assam, Meghalaya, Delhi and Manchester.