About Ekta R. Garg

Ekta’s love affair with words began at the age of 4, and by the age of 8 she was writing poetry and short essays. In elementary school she participated in a word junkie’s ultimate past time: spelling bees. She won the South Carolina state title four times, the regional title once, and competed in two national level competitions, including the 1993 Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Her love for spelling supplemented her love for writing. Ekta was the co-editor of her high school yearbook for her junior and senior years. In college she worked for the University of South Carolina campus literary magazine, The Garnet and Black, and in 2002 she got her MSJ in magazine publishing from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

Since the start of her career in 2005 Ekta has edited and written about everything from health care to home improvement to Hindi films. She has written for and edited: The Portland Physician Scribe, Portland, Oregon’s premier medical newspaper; show magazines for home tours organized by the Portland Home Builders Association; ABCDlady.com; The Bollywood Ticket; The International Indian; annual anthologies published both by the Avondale Inkslingers, based in Avondale, Arizona, and the Facebook writers groups Authors’ Tale and the Stone Soup Writers.

A freelance editor since 2011, Ekta has edited short stories, novels, memoirs, and how-to books. She’s currently a short story judge for the Florida Writers Association, the Saturday Writers, the St. Louis-based chapter of the Missouri Writers’ Guild, and the Champaign Public Library‘s annual writing contest.

As host of Biblio Breakdown, she does deep-dive analyses of novels and offers practical tips for writers based on featured works. She also reviews books for her own book review blog, The Write Edge Bookshelf, as well as NetGalley and Bookpleasures. When she’s not doing all that, she’s working on her own short stories and reading everything she can get her hands on about the craft.

Her novella, The Truth About Elves, released October 19, 2021, from Atmosphere Press, and she’s happy that the world can finally meet protagonist Curtis and find out about the power of forgiveness along with him during the holiday season.

In her non-writing life, Ekta is a domestic engineer — known in the vernacular as “a housewife.”  She’s married and has two energetic daughters who keep her running, and she divides her time between keeping house and fulfilling her writing dreams on a regular basis.

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