A writer and painter from Goa, Amruta Patil is considered one of the first female graphic novelists in India. Her works touch upon subjects such as feminism, sexuality mythology and ecology through a visual style that uses a combination of acrylics, watercolours, charcoal drawings and collages.
Patil completed her BFA from the Goa College of Art (1999) and went on to receive an MFA from Tufts University, Boston (2004). She briefly worked as a copywriter at an advertising firm before beginning work on her first graphic novel.
Patil has published four graphic novels — Kari (2008), Adi Parva: Churning of the Ocean (2012), Sauptik: Blood and Flowers (2016) and Aranyaka: The Book of Forests (2019). Based on the life of the eponymous lesbian protagonist, Kari resulted from Patil’s desire to see more LGBTQ+ characters in Indian literature. Her subsequent novels, Adi Parva and Sauptik, constitute a two-part retelling of episodes from the Mahabharata narrated from the perspective of two peripheral characters. For Aranyaka, she collaborated with Devdutt Pattanaik to present retellings of narratives from the Vedas that revolve around the mythical forest of Aranyaka and examine concepts of ecology and the conflict between humankind and nature.
In 2017, Patil received the Nari Shakti Puraskar from the Ministry of Women and Child Development. She has also received residencies and awards from La Maison des Auteurs (2009–16) and Villa Marguerite Yourcenar, France (2014). She relocated to India from France in 2019.
At the time of writing, she lives and works in Goa.
