Amita Parikh

Amita Parikh grew up in Toronto, holds an honours BSc from there, and spent more than a decade in technology start-ups across Canada, Europe and the United States, work she has carried on alongside writing. She began the manuscript that became The Circus Train in 2014. Published in 2022, it follows Lena Papadopoulos, who uses a wheelchair after childhood polio and is drawn to science and medicine, as she crosses Europe with her father Theo, an illusionist travelling with a circus, and grows close to an orphan named Alexandre who is taken on as Theo's apprentice. The Globe and Mail placed it among its hundred books of 2022. Parikh has trained with Curtis Brown Creative and the Royal Court Theatre writers' group.