Gayathri Prabhu is the author of eight books in varied genres. These include the memoir If I Had to Tell It Again (HarperCollins, 2017) and the novels Vetaal and Vikram (HarperCollins, 2019), The Untitled (Fourth Estate, HarperCollins, 2016), Birdswim Fishfly (Rupa Publications, 2006), and Maya (Indialog Publications, 2003). She has also written a novella in prose poetry, Love in Seven Easy Steps (Magic Mongrel Publishers, 2021), and a study of cinema (with Nikhil Govind) titled Shadow Craft: Visual Aesthetics of Black and White Hindi Cinema (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021). Her most recent work is A Genre of Her Own: Life Narratives and Feminist Literary Beginnings in Modern India (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025).
Gayathri studied television and film production from MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, and worked in the media industry for a decade before returning to academics. She studied for a creative writing degree (MPhil) followed by a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA, where she won the Vreeland award for best creative manuscript in 2011.
After many years of traveling and being elsewhere, Gayathri has returned to live not far from where she was born, in a town that allows her glimpses of the Arabian Sea on the one side and the Western Ghats on the other. She teaches literary studies at the Manipal Institute of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, of which she is also the Director.
Strongly invested in mental health advocacy, Gayathri is part of a progressive psychotherapy centre for students at Manipal University (ssc.manipal.edu).
Apart from writing and teaching, she has also worked as a television producer, an assistant director on feature films, a screenwriter, a bookseller, a content writer, and a director of an independent media company.
Gayathri received the RK Narayan Award from the Booksellers and Publishers Association of South India in 2019. She was the Charles Wallace Writing Fellow at the University of Stirling, Scotland, 2020.
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