Gayathri Prabhu is the author of 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). Her most recent work is a novella in prose poetry, Love in Seven Easy Steps (Magic Mongrel Publishers, 2021). She is also the co-author (with Nikhil Govind) of the book Shadow Craft: Visual Aesthetics of Black and White Hindi Cinema (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021).
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, 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 Centre for Humanities.
Strongly invested in mental health advocacy, Gayathri is part of a progressive psychotherapy centre for students at Manipal University.
Apart from writing and teaching, Gayathri 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.