About the Author

Mriya Upadhyay is 16 years old. She began creating and writing about what she deeply felt, observed, and imagined from age four. She loves the small things books, lemonade, friendship, music, stars, animals, movies, sunlight, travel, windows, trees and firmly believes they are the important ones.

She writes because, in her own words, “I can’t imagine not doing it. I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember – poetry and prose – dreaming up new worlds and seeing this one in different ways”. She’s had so many ideas, and she is glad to have created the space for some of them to come to life in this book.

She also writes and works for the causes she is passionate about in the world around her. She is the winner of a Merit Award in
the highly reputed John Locke Essay Competition, where she researched adolescent choice. She is the leader of Project Neer for groundwater conservation, where her team has blended ancient cultural wisdom with modern science to make clean water accessible by reconnecting communities through shared water resources. They’ve been awarded the IB Festival of Hope Award, the Harvard MUN Award, the COWE Youngpreneurs Award, and the Astitva-Samman Award for this work. She has also published an article on systemic heat stress as an intern at the climate journalism firm Carbon Copy.

This is her first book.