Arshi Sattar has a PhD in South Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago. She has worked with the Valmiki Ramayana for over 30 years and is particularly interested in the epics and storytelling traditions of the Indian sub-continent. She teaches and writes about classical Indian literature in India and abroad. She has several publications, most notably an abridged translation of the Valmiki Ramayana which has remained in print since 1996. She has been a Fulbright  Scholar in Residence at Hampshire College in the U.S. and a Rockefeller Fellow at the Rockefeller Centre in Bellagio. Her Mahabharata for Children was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Prize for Children's Literature in 2022.