Sessions
Bad Boys and Bad Girls: The Anti-Heroes of Mythology
Anand Neelakantan, Koral Dasgupta, Madhavi Mahadevan, Ranjith Radhakrishnan with Ravi Singh
Nala Damayanti: A Tale of Love
Anand Neelakantan with Koral Dasgupta
The Elephant Who Flew Over Blue Mountains
Anand Neelakantan with Tina Narang
Main Character Energy: Writing for the Screen
Anand Neelakantan, Kanan Gill, Manish Gaekwad, Shubhra Gupta with Sidharth Jain
Bio
Anand Neelakantan is an Indian author, columnist, screenwriter, television personality, cartoonist and motivational speaker. He is known for writing mythological fiction and has authored eleven books in English and one in Malayalam. He follows the style of telling stories based on the perspective of the antagonists or supporting characters of a larger work. His debut work Asura: Tale of the Vanquished (2012) was based on the Indian epic Ramayana, told from the perspective of Ravana—the first book in his Ramayana series.
Asura: was featured in the list of “100 books by Indian authors to read in a lifetime” by Amazon Books editors. The book has sold more than a million copies over the years. Three of his books have been shortlisted for Crossword Book Award during the respective years. He was listed as one among the “100 top celebrities in India” in 2015 and 2017 by Forbes India.
Anand Neelakantan wrote the official prequel series of novels for the Baahubali film series. Titled Bahubali: Before the Beginning, it is a three-book series which acts as a prequel to the films. The book became a blockbuster and was shortlisted for Crossword Popular Award 2018. Netflix has announced a web series on the book. The second book in the series, Chaturanga was released on 6 August 2020. The third book, Queen of Mahishmathi was released on 28 December 2020
He lives in Mumbai with his wife Aparna, daughter Ananya, son Abhinav and pet dog, Jackie the Blackie.