Payal’s debut novella, Wisha Wozzariter, won the Crossword Book Award 2013 for Children’s Writing and is also featured in the 101 Indian Children’s Books We Love! compilation. Payal finds that stories abound everywhere, sometimes in real life, sometimes in the imagination. She studied English Literature at St Xavier’s College, Bombay and earned a Master of Science degree in Journalism from Northwestern University, Chicago. She worked with Outlook in Bombay and The Japan Times in Tokyo. Journalism, however, was meant only to be a pit stop, and today Payal is living her dream of being a fulltime author.