The longlists of the 2026 Women AutHer Awards, presented by The Times of India and JK Paper, were announced on Sunday, March 8. The awards are presented to Indian women writers in four categories – fiction, non-fiction, children’s literature, and debut – as well as the popular choice and manuscript categories. The winners will be chosen by juries, and, in the case of the popular choice, through online voting. The winning authors receive cash prizes of Rs 1 lakh each, with the amount being shared equally by joint winners.
Here are the complete longlists:
Fiction
Blood Caste, Shylashri Shankar
The Comeback, Annie Zaidi
Real Life, Amrita Mahale
Rising Sons, Kavery Nambisan
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, Kiran Desai
The Remnants of a Rebellion, Ponnu Elizabeth Mathew
The Courtesan, Her Lover and I, Tarana Husain Khan
The Guardian and a Thief, Megha Majumdar
Nonfiction
In the Beginning There Was Bombay Duck: A Food History of Mumbai, Pronoti Datta
Rubber: The Social and Natural History of an Indispensable Substance, Vidya Rajan
A Man For All Seasons: The Life Of KM Panikkar, Narayani Basu
The Maker of Filmmakers: How Jagat Murari and FTII Changed Indian Cinema Forever, Radha Chadha
Scamlands: Inside the Asian Empire of Fraud That Preys on the World, Snigdha Poonam
India’s First Radicals: Young Bengal and the British Empire, Rosinka Chaudhuri
Called by the Hills: A Home in the Himalaya, Anuradha Roy
Farmers Protest!: A Movement for Our Times, Namita Waikar
Debut
Invisible in Plain Sight: Voices From the By-Lanes of Kamathipura, Swati Pandey
Lifequake: A Story of Hope and Humanity, Tarini Mohan
Lōal Kashmir: Love and Longing in a Torn Land, Mehak Jamal
The Cost of a Promised Afterlife: My Escape from a Controversial Religious Cult in India, Priyamvada Mehra
Tales from the Dawn-Lit Mountains, Subi Taba
What Women Want: Understanding The Female Voter in Modern India, Ruhi Tewari
The Ex-Daughters of Tolstoy House, Arunima Tenzin Tara
Sheher Mein Gaon: Culture, Conflict and Change in the Urban Villages of Delhi, Ekta Chauhan
Children’s books
Sneaker Paati, Anita Nair
Uncoded: A Technological History of Independent India, Meghaa Gupta
A Demon in Dandi, Lavanya Karthik
History Unpacked: The Why, When and What of Ancient India, Saisudha Acharya
When Mummy Had Cancer, Priyanka Pandya Bhatt
Ganesh Haloi: Colours of Home, Likla Lall
Spotless: A Novel in Verse, Vibha Batra
Rain Holiday, Shreya Ramachandran
