Mahesh Rao was born and grew up in Nairobi, Kenya. His debut novel, The Smoke is Rising, won the Tata First Book Award for fiction and was shortlisted for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize and the Crossword Award. His stories have been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and the Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Contest. Rao lives in Mysore, India.www.maheshrao.info
