Neelum Saran Gour  Neelum Saran Gour (born 12 October 1955) is a well-known Indian English writer of fiction who represents a special category of fiction that arose in the early 1990s and depicted the world of North India's small towns and their vibrant cultural histories. She is the author of five novels, four collections of short stories and one work of literary non-fiction. She has edited a pictorial volume on the history and culture of the city of Allahabad, where she lives and works, and has also translated one of her early novels into Hindi. In recent years she has come to be recognized as one of the leading practitioners of Indian English fiction coming out of the North Indian heartland. Born in Allahabad, Neelum Saran Gour is the child of a Bengali mother and a Hindiphone father and was exposed to an array of languages and cultural influences in her childhood. Educated in St. Mary's Convent Inter College, a school run by Roman Catholic nuns, she went on to study History, Philosophy and English Literature at the University of Allahabad in the early nineteen seventies. In the course of an outstanding career in University, where she topped consistently in every academic year, she won ten gold and silver medals for academic brilliance. Soon afterwards in 1977 she was appointed Lecturer in English in the Department of English at the Allahabad University. She has taught at the University since 1977 and now holds the position of Professor in her subject, English Literature. Her real identity is that of a prolific novelist, short story writer, folklorist, reviewer, critic and online columnist. Neelum Saran Gour's first writings were magazine stories published in popular Indian literary magazines of the nineteen eighties. One of these was spotted by the Managing Director of the newly opened Penguin India, David Davidar, and he solicited her for a volume of short stories. The famous debut collection "Grey Pigeon" "And Other Stories"  was released by Penguin India in 1993. It received rave reviews, winning Gour a Writers’ Fellowship in Britain from the "Charles Wallace India Trust" . Her next book, a novel, was titled "Speaking of '62" and was published by Penguin in 1995. This was followed in 1997 by "Winter Companions And Other Stories". In 2002 appeared "Virtual Realities" and in 2005 two novels were published, "Sikandar Chowk Park" by Penguin, and "Messres Dickens, Doyle and Wodehouse Pvt.Ltd". by Halcyon Books.