Vaishnavi Patel

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-08-27

Vaishnavi Patel was born around 1995-1996 in Chicago, Illinois, where she grew up, and graduated from Yale Law School, passing the bar exam in 2022. She works as a lawyer specializing in constitutional law and civil rights, and in 2023 served as a law clerk at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas in Houston, balancing a legal career alongside her writing. Her debut novel, Kaikeyi (2022), a feminist reimagining of a key figure from the Hindu epic Ramayana, reached number fourteen on The New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list and was nominated for a widely recognized reader-voted award in both the Fantasy and Debut Novel categories and the 2023 Ignyte Award for Best Adult Novel, drawing praise for its themes of justice and its fidelity to the source material. She followed it with Goddess of the River (2024), a feminist retelling centered on the goddess Ganga that received a 2025 Audie Award nomination for Fantasy, and Ten Incarnations of Rebellion (2025), an alternate-history novel set in 1960s India under continued British colonial rule, which Kirkus Reviews called "an epic and frighteningly plausible work of historical fiction." Her forthcoming novel We Dance Upon Demons, focused on themes of reproductive rights, is scheduled for release in May 2026, continuing her pattern of blending mythological reimagining with contemporary political themes.

Universe(s)

Books

• Kaikeyi (2022) · Kaikeyi Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 1 book
• Award recognitions across all universes: 0 (None recorded)

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