Minal Hajratwala is the author of Leaving India: My Family’s Journey From Five Villages to Five Continents. She spent seven years researching and writing the book, traveling the world to interview more than seventy-five members of her extended family. She is also a poet and performer based in San Francisco, where she was born before being whisked off to be raised in New Zealand and suburban Michigan.  In 2010 she will be moving to India for nine months as a Fulbright Senior Scholar. 
Her creative work has appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, and theater spaces, and has received recognition and support from the world over.
As a journalist, she worked at the San Jose Mercury News for eight years, was a board member of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, and was a National Arts Journalism Program fellow at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in 2000-01. She is a graduate of Stanford University.