Sonia Patel

Sonia Patel is a first-generation Indian American born in New York and raised in Hawai’i. Her break-out novel, Rani Patel In Full Effect, was a finalist for the William C. Morris Debut Award, a YALSA and Kirkus Reviews Best Teen Book, and received four-starred reviews. Her subsequent YA novels Jaya and Rasa: A Love Story and Bloody Seoul both received the In the Margins Book Award. She contributed a short story—Nothing Feels No Pain—to the YA anthology Ab(solutely) Normal: Short Stories That Smash Mental Health Stereotypes. Her fourth YA novel, Gita Desai Is Not Here to Shut Up, will be published Fall 2024 (Penguin/Dial). As a child and adolescent psychiatrist trained at Stanford University and the University of Hawaii, Patel has spent over twenty years providing psychotherapy to youth and their families. She lives in Honolulu with her husband and teenage son, and misses her daughter who’s away at college.