Ruth Padel is an award-winning British poet, Fellow of the Royal Literary Society and Zoological Society of London, but has also been concerned in conservation in India for twenty-five years. Her wide-ranging non-fiction incudes Tigers in Red Weather on tiger conservation, her novel Where the Serpent Lives explores the conservation of king cobras and she is currently finishing a book on Asian elephants. Her poetry collections include a verse biography of her great-great-grandfather Charles Darwin, and most recently Girl. ‘Her poetry paints colliding worlds, unsafe streets from Delhi to Delphi, a Kundalini goddess rising through a girl’s spine, from a poet-novelist-naturalist-scholar-wildlife advocate, who seamlessly integrates her experiences across geographies and histories ’ (Mid-Day Mumbai) .