Nirupa Rao

Nirupa Rao is a botanical illustrator. Besides her many awards, grants and fellowships (INK, National Geographic, Dumbarton Oaks), her book credentials include Pillars of Life (2018), a debut project on native trees of the Western Ghats (in collaboration with naturalists Divya Mudappa and TR Shankar Raman of the Nature Conservation Foundation), and Hidden Kingdom (in collaboration with Prasenjeet Yadav, Siddharth Machado and Suniti Rao), which was supported by a National Geographic Young Explorers Grant. She has also redesigned the book covers of four of Amitav Ghosh’s book titles for Penguin Press, including his most recent Gun Island (2019).