Writer Gouri Dange takes the lid off the ‘mystique’ of being a published writer. Whether you are published, unpublished, self-published, overpublished, underpublished, maybe-published, pretend-published... you will recognize many of your secret indignities as well as silent triumphs in these hilarious readings from her diary.

Agents, publishers, editors, illustrators, fellow-writers, marketing and accounting execs, the press, reviewers, bookstores, celeb-guests, lit-fests, readers...she carpet-bombs the entire three-ringed circus that is Indian publishing. 

The idea of sharing a laugh with other writers, aspiring as well as published, by looking at the absurdities of the publishing world, she says, “is to turn neurotic misery into common grief” (to paraphrase Freud).

Gouri Dange is the author of 9 books – three fiction, six non-fiction and one children’s book. She has long-running columns in national publications, on food, Indian music, parenting, people-watching and social satire.