Alka Joshi

Alka Joshi ran an advertising and marketing agency in California for close to thirty years before she turned to fiction in her fifties. Born in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, she came to the United States with her family in 1967 at the age of nine, took a BA at Stanford and later an MFA at California College of the Arts. She started The Henna Artist in 2010 and it took a decade to reach print. Published in 2020, it follows Lakshmi, a woman who has walked out of an arranged marriage and keeps herself by painting henna for the wealthy women of 1950s Jaipur. Joshi has said the character grew from wondering what her own mother's life might have been. Reese Witherspoon's book club chose it and Netflix optioned it for a series with Freida Pinto. The Secret Keeper of Jaipur (2021) and The Perfumist of Paris (2023) complete the Jaipur Trilogy, each passing the story to a different character from the first book.