Jyoti Patel

Jyoti Patel is the author of THE THINGS THAT WE LOST, published by #Merky Books. Her debut novel is told from the perspectives of 18-year-old Nik and his British Indian mother Avani, flitting between the past and present as Nik searches for answers surrounding the circumstances of his father’s death.

An extract of the novel was chosen as the winning submission from over 2,000 entries for the 2021 #Merky Books New Writers’ Prize, a competition that aims to discover unpublished, underrepresented writers from the UK and Ireland. The panel of judges included #Merky Books founder Stormzy, Candice Brathwaite, Emma Dabiri, Guz Khan, and Katarina Johnson-Thompson.

Jyoti is a graduate of the University of East Anglia's Creative Writing Prose Fiction MA. Her writing has previously been published as part of We Present’s ‘Literally’ series and in the anthology for the 2022 Bristol Short Story Prize, for which she was shortlisted. THE THINGS THAT WE LOST was praised as one of the Observer’s 10 Best New Novels for 2023 and listed as a finalist for the Eastern Eye Arts Culture and Theatre Awards 2024.