Ruth Vanita taught at Delhi University for 20 years and is now Professor at the University of Montana. She was founding volunteer co-editor of Manushi, India's first nationwide feminist magazine, and an activist in the Indian women's and civil liberties movements from 1978 to 1991. The author of many books, including Sappho and the Virgin Mary: Same-Sex Love and the English Literary Imagination; A Play of Light: Selected Poems; Love's Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India (new edition 2020), she has published over 70 scholarly articles and translated several works of fiction and poetry from Hindi and Urdu. She co-edited the pioneering Same-Sex Love in India: A Literary History. Her first novel, Memory of Light, appeared from Penguin in 2020.