Saumya Balsari is an award-winning British Indian author based in Cambridge and Mumbai. She was named one of Britain’s leading South Asian women by redhotcurry.com. Her debut novel The Cambridge Curry Club is the winner of the first ever Cambridgeshire Book of the Decade 2010. Her new second novel Summer of Blue is for young adult readers. An early version of the book received a commendation from the Yeovil Literary Prize, 2009/Betty Bolingbroke-Kent Award. Balsari is currently researching her third novel as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Cambridge, Centre of Latin American Studies.

Alexander McCall-Smith has compared Balsari to Booker Prize winners Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai. Other reviewers include Meera Syal and Ronald Wolfe.

Balsari was born in Mumbai (previously Bombay. She has worked as a translator in India, teacher in Denmark, lifestyle columnist in London for the Bombay Times, Times of India and humour columnist for The Hindustan Times, UK Edition. Over the years she has contributed to various magazines and newspapers.

In 2003 Balsari wrote her first play The Curry Club that had a rehearsed reading by the Kali Theatre Company at London’s Soho Theatre. Her debut novel The Cambridge Curry Club was based on the same play. The book was also longlisted for the Vodafone Crossword Book Awards in India and featured at Cambridge Wordfest 2012 in Oxygen Books City-Lit Café reading of Cambridge’s finest writing. The title was chosen for The National Year of Reading and for BBC Cambridgeshire’s A Book a Day Project In May.

Reviews and features on the novel have appeared in various international and online publications. The book is a university resource text for postcolonial literature in Finland and in Germany.

Balsari’s short story The Taj by Moonlight is included in Marlow Weaver’s anthology A Long and Winding Road, USA.

Saumya Balsari is a member of Cambridge Writers, Walden Writers, East Anglian Writers and the Society of Authors. She enjoys travel, salsa (both the dance and sauce), jazz and learning languages.