Sonia Faleiro

Sonia Faleiro
Born	Goa, India
Occupation	Journalist, writer
Nationality	Indian

Sonia Faleiro (born 1977) is an Indian writer of narrative non-fiction. Her critically acclaimed first novel The Girl was published by Viking in 2006. This was followed by Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars (2010), and the e-single 13 Men (2015). The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing was published in January, 2021.

Early life and education

Faleiro was born in Goa, grew up in New Delhi where she studied history at St. Stephen's College, and received her master's degree from the University of Edinburgh. While in graduate school, Faleiro started writing her first novel, The Girl, which was published by Penguin Viking in 2006.

Journalism

Faleiro's writing and photographs have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, Granta, The California Sunday Magazine, The Guardian and Smithsonian. She is a co-founder of Deca, a global journalism cooperative that creates long-form stories to read on mobile devices.

Literary writing

In The New York Times Dwight Garner hailed Beautiful Thing as 'an intimate and valuable piece of reportage that will break your heart several times over.' Beautiful Thing was an Economist, Guardian, San Francisco Chronicle, Kirkus, and Observer Book of the Year, CNN's Mumbai Book of the Year and a Time Out Subcontinental Book of the Year. It was The Sunday Times Travel Book of the Year 2011 and one of NPR's Five Best Travel Memoirs 2012. The book has been published worldwide and translated into several languages including Hindi, French, Polish, Swedish and Dutch.

The Guardian compared 13 Men to Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, calling it haunting and impressive. The San Francisco Chronicle called it “A vital contribution to changing attitudes in India and around the world about crimes against women.” All Things Considered made it “Book of the Week.” Amazon named it a Best Book of the Year.

Awards

Faleiro was awarded the 2011 Karmaveer Puraskaar for Social Justice for "drawing attention to India's most vulnerable and writing about them with sensitivity, humanity and integrity". She is the recipient of a runners-up award in the CNN Young Journalist Award of 2006 as well as of awards from the Ratan Tata Trust, the Oxford Cambridge Society of India, and the British Council's de Souza Trust.

Bibliography

• The Girl (Penguin Viking, 2006)
• First Proof: The Penguin Book of New Writing From India II (Penguin, 2006)
• Reflected in Water: Writings on Goa (Penguin, 2006)
• The Fiction Collection: Twenty Years of Penguin India (Penguin, 2007)
• India (ISBN Edizioni, 2008)
• AIDS Sutra: Untold Stories from India (Random House, Vintage, Anchor Books, Mondadori, August 2008)
• Sarpanch Sahib: Changing the Face of India (Harper Litmus, 2009)
• Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars (Penguin, India, October 2010)
• 13 Men (Deca, US, October 2015)
• The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing (Penguin, 2021)

External links

• Her official website