Shals Mahajan
Shals Mahajan is a writer and queer feminist who lives in Bombay. They have been part of LABIA – Queer Feminist LBT Collective for the past two decades. Shals is genderqueer and has worked on issues of gender, sexuality, caste and communalism as trainer, teacher and activist. They have studied literature and have conducted workshops on writing with university students, with people working in NGOs, with women returning to literacy, and queer persons. They have also published a few children’s books, "Timmi in Tangles" and "Timmi and Rizu" (Duckbill 2013, 2017), "A Big Day for the Little Wheels  (Pratham 2017) and co-authored No Outlaws in the Gender Galaxy". They have also been involved with the underground zine "Scripts", a journal run by LABIA to give voice to queer Indian women, since 1998. Timmi in Tangles. "Timmi in Tangles" is an experimental children's book that won the Kotak Junior Children writing award. It depicts the quirky and imaginative life of Timmi and the trials she faces in her everyday life. No Outlaws in the Gender Galaxy. "Outlaws" explorers the lives of people assigned the gender female at birth and retells the stories of several such individuals that  faced opposition and the possibility of ostracism from society for their existence outside of the gender norm. Additionally, it questions gender - the need for it and its all encompassing influence on our lives.