Paula Richman, Danforth Professor of South Asian Religions at Oberlin College in Ohio, USA, received her Ph.D. in South Indian Literary and Cultural History at the University of Chicago. She published two monographs on Tamil literature: Women, Branch Stories, and Religious Rhetoric in a Tamil Buddhist Text and Extraordinary Child: Poems from a South Indian Devotional Genre. She has also edited, and contributed to two volumes of essays: 'Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia' and 'Questioning Ramayanas, a South Asian Tradition.'