Arushi Avachat, from the Bay Area, California, is studying English and Political Science with a minor in South Asian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Arushi is the author of Arya Khanna’s Bollywood Moment, a Young Adult novel releasing from Wednesday Books/Macmillan in January 2024. She is on contract for a second YA novel, which she is currently drafting as her English honours thesis. Outside of publishing, Arushi has organized voter registration, gun control walkouts, and her local Women’s Marches, and she represented California in the 2020 U.S. Senate Youth Program. She has worked in political communications as an intern for Senator Alex Padilla as well as EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics. As a Marshall Scholar, Arushi will pursue an MA in English and American Studies as well as an MA in Global and Imperial History at the University of Oxford.