Minakshi Thakur is publisher of translations and Indian languages at Westland Books. She set up Harper Perennial (HarperCollins India’s imprint for literature in translation) and Harper Hindi (Harper’s list for books in Hindi). She has published some of India’s most iconic writers, including Krishna Sobti, Geetanjali Shree (Winner of the International Booker Prize 2022), Vinod Kumar Shukla, Intizar Husain (shortlisted for the International Man Booker Prize), lyricist-filmmaker Gulzar, Urdu poet-screenwriter Javed Akhtar, Chetan Bhagat and Amish, Kiran Nagarkar, Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, Manoranjan Byapari, Perumal Murugan, among others. At Westland Books, she set up set up EKA, a 360-degree publishing programme for books in Indian languages, translations into English from the languages and vice versa, and translations between Indian languages. She has published three collections of poems and a novel. Her Hindi poetry collection Neend Ka Akhiri Pul was shortlisted for the Sahitya Akademi Young Writer’s Prize. Her first novel in English (Lovers Like You and I) was shortlisted for the Tibor Jones South Asia Prize. She was a writer in residence at Chateau da Lavigny (Fondation Heinrich Maria and Jane Ledig-Rowohlt, Switzerland) in 2014, the Toji Cultural Centre writer’s residency in Wonju, Korea (2014), and a Sangam House Fellow (Bangalore) in 2012. She has also trained in Indian classical music for over two decades.

Pradhan urges Delhi University to adopt collective singing of 'Vande Mataram' in classrooms as a unifying tradition.