Urvashi Butalia is co-founder of India’s first feminist publishing house, Kali for Women (set up in 1984) and now runs Zubaan, another feminist imprint that was set up when Kali shut down in 2003. She has a long involvement in the women’s movement in India, and is an independent researcher and writer who writes and publishes widely on a range of issues to do with gender. Among her best known publications are Speaking Peace: Women’s Voices from Kashmir (edited), Partition: The Long Shadow (edited) and the award-winning oral history of Partition: The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (winner of the Oral History Book Association Award 2001 and the Nikkei Asia Award for Culture 2003). She is currently working on the life of a hijra friend of hers, Mona Ahmed. She is a recipient of several awards including the French Chevalier des Lettres et des Artes, the Nikkei Asia Award for Culture, the Goethe Medaille and the Padmashri.