Balli Kaur Jaswal is the author of five novels, including Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows which was a Reese Witherspoon's Book Club pick in 2018. Born in Singapore and raised in Japan, Russia and the Philippines, Jaswal studied creative writing at Hollins University in Virginia and worked as an English teacher in Australia and Turkey. She has held fellowships at the University of East Anglia and Nanyang Technological University, where she also completed her PhD in South Asian diaspora writing. Jaswal's non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, Harper's Bazaar India, Refinery29 and Salon.com, among other publications.