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{{Short description|Indian writer}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2018}}
{{Use Indian English|date=October 2018}}
{{Infobox writer
| name = Gayathri Prabhu
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| image = Prabhu's Ted Talk on 24 February 2019 at TedX Manipal.jpg
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| caption = Prabhu's talk at TedX Manipal on 24 Feb, 2019
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| birth_date = {{birth year and age|1974}}
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| nationality = Indian
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| genre = Novel, Memoir
| subject = Fiction
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| years_active = 2003 – present
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'''Gayathri Prabhu''' (born 1974) is an Indian novelist and scholar who currently lives in [[Manipal]], Karnataka. Her recent fictional work consists of the novella ''Love in Seven Easy Steps'' (2021), preceded by ''Vetaal and Vikram: Riddles of the Undead'', published by HarperCollins in 2019. Prabhu's recent academic work is a monograph titled ''A Genre of Her Own'' (2025).<ref>https://gayathriprabhu.com/books/</ref>

==Education and academic career==
Prabhu holds an MA degree in Mass Communication from Mass Communication Research Centre, [[Jamia Millia Islamia]], [[New Delhi]], an MPhil in Creative Writing from [[Swansea University]] in the United Kingdom and a PhD in English from the [[University of Nebraska–Lincoln]] in the United States.<ref>url=https://www.unl.edu/english/alumni/gayathri-prabhu</ref> She has published on literary studies and presently teaches at the Manipal Centre for Humanities, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE).<ref>{{cite journal|url=https://manipal.edu/mit/programs/program-list/btech.html|title=B Tech - Engineering - B Tech Admissions 2019 - BTech Entrance Exam- MIT, MAHE (formerly Manipal University)|via=manipal.edu}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.unl.edu/english/awards|title=Awards & Honors, Department of English, University of Nebraska–Lincoln|website=www.unl.edu|access-date=8 October 2017|archive-date=14 April 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240414105557/https://www.unl.edu/english/awards|url-status=dead}}</ref>

Prabhu was the Dr TMA Pai Chair in Indian Literature at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education for 2017–2019.
<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://litchairmanipal.wordpress.com/|title=Dr TMA Pai Chair in Indian Literature|website=Dr TMA Pai Chair in Indian Literature}}</ref>

Prabhu is engaged in mental health advocacy work at her university and is the Coordinator of the Student Support Centre (SSC),<ref>{{cite web|url=http://ssc.manipal.edu/team.aspx|title=SSC, MU|website=ssc.manipal.edu|access-date=8 October 2017|archive-date=13 December 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231213112143/https://ssc.manipal.edu/team.aspx|url-status=dead}}</ref> a pioneering psychotherapy venture designed exclusively for students. The SSC, featured in The Hindu,<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.thehindu.com/society/mahesh-rao-writes-about-an-indian-university-showing-the-way-forward-in-tackling-mental-illness/article23453277.ece|title=How an Indian university shows the way forward in tackling mental illness|first=Mahesh|last=Rao|newspaper=The Hindu|date=7 April 2018|via=www.thehindu.com}}</ref> is the first-of-its kind in India for university students at MAHE, aimed at creating a safe space with confidentiality and free psychotherapeutic supports.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://themitpost.com/the-student-support-centre/|title=Quarter No. 125: Sitting Down With the Student Support Centre Team|date=19 February 2018|access-date=21 January 2021|archive-date=18 February 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240218075638/https://themitpost.com/the-student-support-centre/|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/blogs/what-do-student-mental-health-services-look-around-world|title=What do student mental health services look like around the world?|date=10 October 2017|website=Student}}</ref>

==Fiction==
Gayathri Prabhu is the author of four novels ''Vetaal and Vikram: Riddles of the Undead'' (HarperCollins, 2019), ''The Untitled'' (Fourth Estate, HarperCollins, 2016), ''Birdswim Fishfly'' ([[Rupa Publications]], 2006), and ''Maya'' (Indialog Publications, 2003). Her latest novella titled ''Love in Seven Easy Steps'' was released on February 18, 2021. It is a promising work of prose poetry "that celebrates the ways in which love charms, defies and lingers in us."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://magicmongrelpublishers.com/love-in-seven-easy-steps/|title=Love in Seven Easy Steps|website=Magic Mongrel Publishers}}</ref> ''Love in Seven Easy Steps'' is the first book to be released by an independent publishing house, Magic Mongrel Publishers, which specializes in unconventional narratives in literary fiction.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://magicmongrelpublishers.com/about-us/|title=About us|website=Magic Mongrel Publishers}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://gayathriprabhu.com/love-in-seven-easy-steps/|title=Love in Seven Easy Steps|date=16 January 2021}}</ref> Prabhu's articles in Scroll magazine reflect on how typing out ideas on her phone changed the form of this novella,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://scroll.in/article/986641/the-true-story-of-how-my-mobile-phone-turned-my-novel-into-a-love-story-in-prose-poetry|title=The true story of how my mobile phone turned my novel into a love story in prose poetry|first=Gayathri|last=Prabhu|website=Scroll.in|date=13 February 2021 }}</ref> thinking about the process of writing, and on what it means to write of love in a time of global and national turbulence.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://scroll.in/article/949557/why-write-of-love-in-a-time-of-strife-such-as-this-asks-a-writer-and-answers-her-question|title=Why write of love in a time of strife such as this, asks a writer, and answers her question|first=Gayathri|last=Prabhu|website=Scroll.in|date=12 January 2020 }}</ref>

A playful retelling of India's most celebrated cycle of stories, ''Vetaal and Vikram'' was published by HarperCollins India in October 2019.<ref name="harpercollins.com">{{Cite web|url=https://www.harpercollins.com/products/vetaal-and-vikram-riddles-of-the-undead-gayathri-prabhu|title=Vetaal and Vikram: Riddles of the Undead|website=HarperCollins}}</ref> The narrative of King Vikram and the Vetaal is originally found in the [[Kathasaritsagara]], an eleventh-century Sanskrit text.<ref name="harpercollins.com"/> The Vetaal is neither alive nor dead, but a consummate storyteller who enthralls his listener, King Vikram. King Vikram can neither speak nor remain silent, according to the conditions set by Vetaal in this narrative cycle.
In 1870, eleven of the Vetaal's stories were adapted to English by the famed scholar-explorer [[Richard Francis Burton]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2400/2400-h/2400-h.htm|title=Vikram and the Vampire, by Sir Richard F. Burton|website=www.gutenberg.org}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://archive.org/details/cu31924024159760|title=Vikram and the vampire, or, Tales of Hindu devilry|first1=Richard Francis|last1=Burton|first2=Isabel|last2=Burton|date=9 March 1893|publisher=London : Tylston and Edwards|via=Internet Archive}}</ref><ref name="harpercollins.com"/> Prabhu's ''Vetaal and Vikram'' is a contemporary, inventive work that plays with form while including Burton within its storytelling folds. It challenges the narrative possibilities of a retelling, implicating the reader within the text. Widely read and reviewed, ''Vetaal and Vikram'' balances the nostalgic with the present, promising something new and challenging for every reader.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.shethepeople.tv/news/author-gayathri-prabhu-vetaal-vikram-book/|title=To Write Means To Be Vulnerable: Author Gayathri Prabhu - SheThePeople TV}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://scroll.in/article/942807/what-might-the-vetaal-and-vikram-stories-look-like-in-the-21st-century|title=What might the Vetaal and Vikram stories look like in the 21st century?|first=Gayathri|last=Prabhu|website=Scroll.in}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://gayathriprabhu.com/vetaal-and-vikram-riddles-of-the-undead/|title=Vetaal and Vikram: Riddles of the Undead|date=3 October 2019}}</ref>

''The Untitled'', published in 2016 by Fourth Estate, HarperCollins India, was researched and written over a decade and across three continents.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://gayathriprabhu.com/the-untitled/|title=the untitled|date=6 October 2017}}</ref> It is a novel about the coming together of Indian and Western painting traditions, against the background of the dramatic war of 1799, when the British defeated [[Tipu Sultan]], and finally established unchallenged supremacy in the Indian sub-continent. The Wire described ''The Untitled'' as an imaginative break from the themes that have animated historical fiction in India for over a century now, namely "the temptation to be intimate with the monumental."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://thewire.in/110346/gayathri-prabhu-tipu-historical-fiction/|title=In The Untitled, Gayathri Prabhu Magnifies the Miniature|first=Prashant|last=Keshavmurthy|website=thewire.in}}</ref> [[HuffPost|The Huffington Post]] review called the prose "supple and sublime"<ref name="huffingtonpost.in">{{cite web|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.in/yash-raj-goswami/gayathri-prabhus-the-untitled-is-an-artful-take-on-tipu-sulta_a_21720820/|title=Gayathri Prabhu's 'The Untitled' Is An Artful Take On Tipu Sultan's Reign|date=24 February 2017}}</ref> and termed the novel as "an allegory of how art and politics cannot remain insulated from one another."<ref name="huffingtonpost.in"/> The Times Lit Fest in December, 2016 had a session devoted to the novel.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/litfest_delhi_2016.cms|title=Delhi Literature Festival 2016 Schedule, Speakers & Directors, News, Videos & Photogallery - The Times of India|website=The Times of India}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.facebook.com/events/170383103428849/?acontext=%7B%22ref%22:%223%22,%22ref_newsfeed_story_type%22:%22regular%22,%22action_history%22:%22null%22%7D|title=The Untitled in the Delhi Literature Festival 2016|website=www.facebook.com}}</ref> ''The Untitled'' has also been featured in [[The Times of India]], The Hindu, The Telegraph, The Tribune, Sakal Times, and the [[Deccan Herald]].
<ref>{{cite web|url=http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/Article.aspx?eid=31806&articlexml=SHELF-ESTEEM-I-need-to-read-more-books-08102016010014&Mode=1|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190330070334/http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/Article.aspx?eid=31806&articlexml=SHELF-ESTEEM-I-need-to-read-more-books-08102016010014&Mode=1|url-status=dead|archive-date=30 March 2019|title=The Times Group|website=epaperbeta.timesofindia.com}}</ref>
<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.facebook.com/GayathriPrabhuu/photos/a.760552164047333.1073741827.760539764048573/803424283093454/?type=3&theater|title=Gayathri Prabhu|website=www.facebook.com}}</ref>
<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.thehindu.com/books/literary-review/Unlearnt-history-lessons/article16072232.ece|title=Unlearnt history lessons|newspaper=The Hindu|date=15 October 2016|via=www.thehindu.com}}</ref>
<ref>[https://www.telegraphindia.com/1170127/jsp/opinion/story_132503.jsp&grqid=fJNe-xtJ&hl=en-IN]{{dead link|date=February 2023|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}</ref>
<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.facebook.com/GayathriPrabhuu/photos/a.760552164047333.1073741827.760539764048573/803423906426825/?type=3&theater|title=Gayathri Prabhu|website=www.facebook.com}}</ref>

The whimsical and inventive novel ''Birdswim Fishfly'' (published in 2006) was an exploration of adolescence, family secrets, and the quickening of the artistic temperament.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://gayathriprabhu.com/birdswim-fishfly/|title=birdswim fishfly|date=6 October 2017}}</ref> Prabhu's first novel, ''Maya'', published in 2003, was set in the Konkan region and drew from local and family lore as they emerged in the consciousness of a young, questioning girl.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://gayathriprabhu.com/maya/|title=maya|date=6 October 2017}}</ref> The novel was described by the Deccan Herald as “a grippingly haunting tale.”<ref>{{cite web|url=http://archive.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/oct26/book3.asp|title=News|website=archive.deccanherald.com|access-date=8 October 2017|archive-date=23 October 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171023011103/http://archive.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/oct26/book3.asp|url-status=dead}}</ref>

==Memoir==
Prabhu's lyrical memoir ''If I Had to Tell It Again'', published by HarperCollins, was released in November 2017. It is written in the aftermath of a father's death, and published in the WHO's international year-long campaign on depression. The book opens the silence in Indian families around chronic sadness and addiction, and seeks to move the discourse beyond blame, guilt, and the rhetoric of family honour.
<ref name="gayathriprabhu1">{{cite web|url=https://gayathriprabhu.com/if-i-had-to-tell-it-again-2/|title=if i had to tell it again: a memoir|date=6 October 2017}}</ref>

''If I Had to Tell It Again'' received several positive reviews in the months following its publication. Writer, editor, and columnist, Krupa Ge writes in First Post: “Gayathri’s sparkling prose is light, as it meanders artfully conveying memories heavy, laden with emotions”.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.firstpost.com/living/gayathri-prabhus-if-i-had-to-tell-it-again-narrates-a-story-of-extraordinary-suffering-and-love-4288753.html|title=Gayathri Prabhu's If I Had To Tell It Again narrates a story of extraordinary suffering and love|last=January 7, 2018|website=Firstpost|date=5 January 2018}}</ref> Poet Arundhathi Subramaniam praises ''If I Had to Tell it Again'' “for its mix of candour, poise and urgency in a fiercely loving portrait of a parent” while choosing it among her best reads of the year.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://scroll.in/article/863196/expect-the-unexpected-a-reading-list-from-the-year-gone-by-from-poets|title=Expect the unexpected: Indian poets list their best reads from the year gone by|first=Urvashi|last=Bahuguna|website=Scroll.in|date=30 December 2017 }}</ref> Professor of English at Ashoka University, Madhavi Menon describes the memoir as a “daring and brave challenge to our preconceptions both about writing and about depression” in her review titled “Real Fathers in All Their Frailty”, featured in The Wire.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://thewire.in/books/if-i-had-to-tell-it-again-gayathri-prabhu|title=Real Fathers in All Their Frailty|website=The Wire}}</ref> [[Urvashi Bahuguna]] in ''The Scroll'' calls it “a book unlike any other we have seen in India.”<ref name="scroll.in">{{cite web|url=https://scroll.in/article/865658/when-you-write-about-a-dead-person-you-loved-you-must-tell-their-version-too|title='When you write about a dead person you loved, you must tell their version too'|first=Urvashi|last=Bahuguna|website=Scroll.in|date=20 January 2018 }}</ref> The memoir has also been reviewed in The Shrinking Couch,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://theshrinkingcouch.com/if-i-had-to-tell-it-again-re-viewing-a-life/|title="If I had to tell it again": Re-viewing a life [A Book Review] - The Shrinking Couch|website=theshrinkingcouch.com}}</ref> the ''Indian Journal of Medical Ethics'',<ref>{{cite web|url=https://ijme.in/articles/love-remember-and-write-against-all-odds/?galley=html |title=Love, remember, and write against all odds | Indian Journal of Medical Ethics |publisher=Ijme.in |access-date=2019-03-01}}</ref> [[The Indian Express]],<ref>{{cite web|url=https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/books/shelf-life-dark-days-5057895/|title=Shelf life: Dark Days|date=10 February 2018}}</ref> [[The News Minute]],<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/if-i-had-tell-it-again-review-memoir-difficult-relationships-and-depression-83106 |title='If I Had to Tell It Again' review: A memoir of difficult relationships and depression |publisher=The News Minute |date=2018-06-15 |access-date=2019-03-01}}</ref> Research and Humanities in Medical Education,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.rhime.in/ojs/index.php/rhime|title=Research & Humanities in Medical Education|website=www.rhime.in}}</ref> apart from reviews by independent bloggers,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://thebookishbulletin.wordpress.com/2017/12/25/in-if-i-had-to-tell-it-again-author-gayathri-prabhu-takes-language-where-it-hesitates-to-go/|title=In "If I had to Tell it Again," author Gayathri Prabhu takes Language where it Hesitates to go|date=25 December 2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://calamur.org/gargi/2017/12/25/book-review-if-i-had-to-tell-it-again/|title=Book Review : If I had to tell it again|date=25 December 2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.stutiashokgupta.com/2018/01/18/book-review-gayathri-prabhu-if-i-had-to-tell-it-again/|title=Review - Gayathri Prabhu: If I Had To Tell It Again|date=18 January 2018}}{{Dead link|date=May 2025 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://monicakamath.blogspot.com/2017/12/memorabilia-this-winter-season.html|title=Blank verse: Memorabilia, this winter season|first=Monica Murali|last=Kamath|date=10 December 2017}}</ref><ref>http://theinkspiller.com/tell-gayathri-prabhu/<https://duskymoonlight.wordpress.com/2017/12/11/is-empathy-too-much-to-ask-for-my-thoughts-on-if-i-had-to-tell-it-again-by-gayathri-prabhu/hri-prabhu/{{Dead link|date=May 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> and responses from artists in the form of illustrations.<ref name="gayathriprabhu1"/> Interviews with Gayathri Prabhu about her memoir, the motivations and the journey of writing, were featured in The Scroll, as well as in the [[Deccan Chronicle]] and Asian Age in January 2018.<ref name="scroll.in"/><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.deccanchronicle.com/lifestyle/books-and-art/190118/a-grieving-space.html|title=A grieving space|last=cris|date=19 January 2018|website=Deccan Chronicle}}</ref>

Prabhu, who has regularly taught a course in Medical Humanities in the Manipal Centre for Humanities, has moved the conversation about mental health, stigma, and silence beyond the classroom, in a piece co-written as a dialogue with a student, Michael Varghese. Published in Scroll in July 2018, the collaborative conversational writing project is about the evening that Michael attempted to end his life, and revisits the transforming experience that followed through conversations with his teacher, Gayathri.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://scroll.in/article/886391/he-tried-to-kill-himself-she-found-out-they-talked-a-dialogue-between-an-artist-and-a-writer|title=He tried to kill himself. She found out. They talked: A dialogue between an artist and a writer|first=Michael Varghese & Gayathri|last=Prabhu|website=Scroll.in|date=14 July 2018 }}</ref>
Prabhu's recent piece in the ''[[Indian Journal of Medical Ethics]]'' reflects on “the power of narratives to simultaneously navigate advocacy, teaching, learning, writing and scholarship”, in an article that draws from Prabhu's experience of designing and teaching a medical humanities course in an Indian classroom of literature students.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://ijme.in/articles/medical-themes-in-a-literature-classroom-an-alternate-perspective-on-medical-humanities-pedagogy-in-india/?galley=html|title=Medical themes in a literature classroom: An alternate perspective on Medical Humanities pedagogy in India}}</ref>
A reflective piece about the reception of the memoir was written by Prabhu and published in ''The Economic and Political Weekly'' in Sep 2018,<ref>{{cite journal|url=https://www.epw.in/journal/2018/35/postscript/why-remember-why-tell.html|title=Why Remember, Why Tell?|date=5 June 2015|journal=Economic and Political Weekly|volume=53|issue=35|pages=7–8|via=www.epw.in}}</ref> about the challenges of the memoir genre in India, the experience of disclosing sexual abuse in/ to the family, and the author's take on why a public telling matters.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://gayathriprabhudotcom.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/postscript-epw.pdf |title=Info |website=gayathriprabhudotcom.files.wordpress.com }}</ref>
In November 2025, Prabhu became a member of the editorial board of BMJ's journal ''Medical Humanities''<ref>https://mh.bmj.com/pages/editorial-board</ref>.

==Scholarly works==

In 2025, Gayathri Prabhu published ''A Genre of Her Own: Life Narratives and Feminist Literary Beginnings in Modern India'', a pivotal work that explores the forms and aesthetics of early instances of women's writing, revealing a constellation of writings that are central to understanding modern India's early literary landscape. Prabhu examines the intentional and introspective elements of a variety of genres in which women writers were experimenting with the first-person voice, such as pamphlets, letters, travelogues, essays, autobiographies, and novels.<ref name="bloomsbury.com">https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/genre-of-her-own-9789356409248/</ref> The title pays homage to Virginia Woolf's essay, ''A Room of One's Own'' (1929), as a way of honouring the many intonations of narrative form that Prabhu explores in her work. The texts examined in ''A Genre'' include: "Savitribai Phule's ''Kavya Phule'' (1854), Tarabai Shinde's ''Stri-Purush Tulana'' (1882), Anandibai Joshee's letters (1883 - 1884), Rukhmabai's "Reply" (1887), Krupabai Satthianadhan's ''Saguna'' (1888), Rashsundari Debi's ''Amar Jiban'' (1897), Swarnakumari Debi Ghosal's ''Kahake'' (1898), Dosebai Cowasjee Jessawalla's ''The Story of My Life'' (1911), Binodini Dasi's ''Amar Katha'' (1912), and Atiya Fyzee's ''Zamana-i-Tahsil'' (1921)."<ref>https://www.amazon.in/Genre-Her-Own-Narratives-Beginnings/dp/935640822X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2TFT3FS30TNRZ&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.N9YC2TDB-8jfPPt9s-PQU1X7Gr7_REqczkuAiFpkicyGhMFlnzcXWe5b07pnRTaL8ZPyUGTiCDt2EKk2TdBa1-zMfRM_-R3qGpvN72gEsmvnkoeCvQbzdkwKCd-MIMjqBjUxnrlRmDTGw8vJfluJnpihKsUOOgU1gLBXt3X9E9Y.USr0VIq9tsStxSYFx_HKcslQEJ1ckWbtly4dNbJKzxo&dib_tag=se&keywords=a+genre+of+her+own&qid=1754356215&sprefix=a+genre+of+her%2Caps%2C186&sr=8-1</ref> An excerpt in ''The Scroll'' sheds light on the alternative history that Prabhu reveals in her work: "For the first time, both personae – I am a writer and I am a woman – were being claimed in the Indian public sphere in a manner that was desirable and exciting, in that it had almost no precedence."<ref>https://scroll.in/article/1083806/this-book-is-an-alternative-account-of-literary-beginnings-in-modern-india-through-womens-writings</ref> Other excerpts have been featured in ''The Wire''.<ref>https://thewire.in/books/commitment-to-justice-was-the-preeminent-note-in-savitribai-phules-poetry</ref> ''A Genre of Her Own'' illuminates a variety of narrative motifs that "encompass marriage and motherhood, domestic labour and caretaking, romance and sexuality, public service and intellectual prowess, religious quests and scrambles for livelihood, illness and aging."<ref name="bloomsbury.com"/> Uncovering a history and an aesthetics of ingenuity that has been unstudied so far, ''A Genre of Her Own'' is a defining contribution to the study of women's writing and the imagination of India's literary history.

In 2020, scholars Gayathri Prabhu and Nikhil Govind co-published ''Shadow Craft: Visual Aesthetics of Black and White Hindi Cinema'' through Bloomsbury India. With seventy five rare and curated images from the archives, ''Shadow Craft'' offers for the first time a consolidated and intimate journey through the pioneering black and white cinema aesthetic of Hindi mainstream cinema from the years between Indian independence (1947) and the dominance of colour cinema (early 1960s), at its most expressive and climactic moment.<ref name="auto">{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8E0FEAAAQBAJ|title=Shadow Craft: Visual Aesthetics of Black and White Hindi Cinema|first1=Gayathri|last1=Prabhu|first2=Nikhil|last2=Govind|date=18 October 2020|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing|isbn=9789390176267|via=Google Books}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.amazon.in/Books-Nikhil-Govind/s?rh=n:976389031,p_27:Nikhil+Govind|title=Amazon.in|website=www.amazon.in}}</ref> Bloomsbury Publishing describes the work as an "ardent and immersive study of cinematic craftings that emblematize the oeuvres of Kamal Amrohi, Raj Kapoor, Nutan, Bimal Roy, Guru Dutt, and Abrar Alvi. Films such as ''Aag'' (1948), ''Mahal'' (1949), ''Seema'' (1955), ''Pyaasa'' (1957), ''Sujata'' (1959), ''Kagaz Ke Phool'' (1959), ''Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam'' (1962), ''Bandini'' (1963) remain formative to the visual psyche of generations of South Asian viewers."<ref name="auto"/> A review of ''Shadow Craft'' comments on the evocative images in the text from the archives, stating that the text takes on the challenge of verbalizing the visual to pull readers back into the frame of the films.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://asianmoviepulse.com/2020/11/book-review-shadow-craft/|title=Book Review: Shadow Craft: Visual Aesthetics of Black and White Hindi Cinema (2020) by Gayathri Prabhu and Nikhil Govind|date=5 November 2020}}</ref> The visual language studied in ''Shadow Craft'' demonstrates a minutely attuned and sympathetic camera, evocative pools of shadow, affect-rich atmospheric composition, and the visual autonomy of performance.<ref name="auto"/>

==Awards and recognition==

Prabhu won the Vreeland Award at the [[University of Nebraska–Lincoln]] for best creative manuscript in 2011.{{Citation needed|date=August 2022}} Less than a year after the publication of 'If I Had to Tell it Again', the memoir was longlisted under the category of Best Non Fiction (English) in the Atta Galatta Bangalore Literature Festival in September 2018.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.facebook.com/HarperCollinsIN/photos/a.208564659189223/1940835639295441/?type=3&theater|title=Facebook|website=www.facebook.com}}</ref> Prabhu was shortlisted as one of the five authors for the Sushila Devi Literature Award For 'The Best Book Of Fiction Written By A Woman Author', in English and published in 2016 or 2017.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.millenniumpost.in/features/shortlist-for-sushila-devi-literature-award-announced-330279|title=Shortlist for Sushila Devi Literature Award announced|date=4 December 2018|website=www.millenniumpost.in}}</ref>

For her work in the literary field, Prabhu won the R.K. Narayan Award for Best Writer in English in 2019 from the Booksellers and Publishers Association of South India (BAPASI) at the inauguration of the 2019 Chennai Book Fair, handed by the CM of Tamil Nadu.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://bapasi.com/events-2019/|title = நிகழ்ச்சிகள்-2019 – Chennai Book Fair 2022 – Nandanam YMCA, Chennai – Jan 06 – Jan 23, 11am – 8 pm}}</ref>

Prabhu is a winner of the prestigious Charles Wallace Writer's Fellowship (2020), which she held at the University of Stirling. She published a reflection piece on writing in the pandemic in quarantine titled "The writer and her windows", upon her return to India after the fellowship.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.charleswallaceindiatrust.com/latest/gayathri-prabhu|title=Gayathri Prabhu, CWIT Writing Fellow at the University of Stirling reflects on the pandemic.|website=Charles Wallace India Trust|date=July 2022 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.asiaville.in/article/the-writer-and-her-windows-58074|title=The writer and her windows|website=Asiaville}}</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
* {{official website|www.gayathriprabhu.com}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Prabhu, Gayathri}}
[[Category:1974 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:Women writers from Karnataka]]
[[Category:Jamia Millia Islamia alumni]]
[[Category:Alumni of Swansea University]]
[[Category:University of Nebraska–Lincoln alumni]]
[[Category:People from Udupi district]]
[[Category:Manipal Academy of Higher Education alumni]]
[[Category:21st-century Indian novelists]]
[[Category:Novelists from Karnataka]]
[[Category:21st-century Indian women novelists]]

Gayathri Prabhu - Revision history

Roshni at 04:38, 29 April 2026