Jaishree Misra is an Indian author whose debut novelAncient Promises was published and sold worldwide by Penguin UK and became a major bestseller in India. It is now a prescribed text on several University BA Eng Literature courses. Subsequent books were a comedy of manners called Accidents Like Love and Marriage and a novel about bereavement called Afterwards. Her fourth novel, Rani is historical fiction based on the life of Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi. This was published by Penguin in December 2007 and banned soon after by the Uttar Pradeshstate government in India. In 2009, Misra signed a three-book deal with Avon, the commercial fiction imprint of Harper Collins UK. The first of these books, called Secrets and Lies, was published in June 2009 while the next in the series, Secrets and Sins was released in July 2010. Secrets and Lies appeared on the Heatseekers list in Britain's Bookseller magazine's best-seller lists in the summer of 2009. The third book, A Scandalous Secret, was released in May 2011, at the Hay-on-Wye festival. Misra went on to edit an anthology of writings on the subject of motherhood as a fund-raising project for Save the Children India which was published by the feminist publishing house Zubaan in 2012. In January 2015, Misra's eighth novel A Love Story for My Sister was published by Harper Collins. Part-historical and part-contemporary, it explores Stockholm Syndrome through the story of General Wheeler's daughter, Margaret, who was kidnapped during the 1857 Uprising. Misra's ninth book, 'A House for Mr Misra', is her first work of non-fiction. A memoir of the two years she and her husband spent living in Kerala while trying to build a studio on the beach, it is filled with personal anecdotes and also paints an amusing picture of present day life in Kerala. Jaishree Misra has an MA in English Literature from Kerala University and two post-graduate diplomas from the University of London, the first in Special Education and the second in Broadcast Journalism. She was awarded a scholarship by the Charles Wallace for India Trust in order to complete her course in Special Education. Misra worked for several years in the Child Care Department of Social Services in Buckinghamshire and, more recently, as a film classifier at the British Board of Film Classification in London, England. She resigned at the end of 2009 after a seven-year stint when she went to live in New Delhi, India, where she helped to start up a residential project for adults with learning disabilities. The studio she built on Veli beach in Trivandrum, Kerala is being developed into a writers' residency. She currently lives with her family in the UK. Jaishree is a regular on the literary festival circuit, having taken part in the Jaipur Literature Festival, the Daily Telegraph Hay-on-Wye Festival, The Week Hay Festival in Kerala, the Kovalam Literature Festival, Words on Water in Johannesburg, South Africa, the Odisha literary festival in Bhubaneswar, the Khushwant Singh literary festival in Kasauli, Panchkula Arts festival, the Delhi Gymkhana Club litfest, the Dhaka Literature Festival, the Mathrubhoomi International Festival of Letters in Thiruvananthapuram and the inaugural Kerala literature festival in Kozhikode. She has also held events at the Frankfurt Book Fair and the Sharjah International Book Festival and been part of a panel discussion at the London Book Fair. She was invited by the Arts House in Singapore to conduct creative writing workshops for adults and schoolchildren. She inaugurated the Keraleeya Samajam Book Fair in Manama, Bahrain, and led the pledge for International Women's Day at Technopark, Trivandrum. Jaishree Misra is the great-niece of the late Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, famous Malayalam writer and Jnanpith awardee.
