Sooni Taraporevala is an Indian screenwriter and photographer who is best known as the screenwriter of Mississippi Masala, The Namesake and Oscar-nominated Salaam Bombay (1988), all directed by Mira Nair. She was born in 1957 in Mumbai, India. After studying at Queen Mary School in Bombay, she received a scholarship to attend Harvard University, where she studied English Literature, Film and Photography. She received her BA from Harvard in 1980 after which she enrolled in the Cinema Studies Department at New York University. At NYU she studied Film Theory and Criticism, received her MA in 1981, after which she returned to India to work as a freelance still photographer. She wrote and directed her first feature film, Little Zizou, 2008 , which won the National Award from the Indian government for Best Film on Family Values, as well as ten international awards including the Audience Choice Award at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, Time/Warner Best Screenplay and Best Director awards at the Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council film festival in New York city. She was awarded the Padma Shri by Government of India in 2014. Taraporevala had previously self-published the book in India in 2000, where it sold out in just a few months. The book received glowing advance praise from film director Mira Nair, Harvard literature professor and noted post-colonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha, acclaimed writers Rohinton Mistry and Bapsi Sidhwa and conductor Zubin Mehta.