Manaswini Lata Ravindra is a playwright, screenwriter, director and short story writer whose work has kept the Marathi stage in conversation with its time: the dilemmas of urban youth, strained families, and people of principle in a compromising world. Vijay Tendulkar called her one of our most important playwrights. Born in Mumbai to the activists Lata and Ravindra, she carries both their first names as her surname, a choice made so that her name would signal no caste.
She trained in theatre at Lalit Kala Kendra, Pune University, and with fellow alumni founded Lalit Mumbai, which produced her first play, Cigarettes (around 2004), on young love and a woman's right to choose. It won the Alpha Gaurav Puraskar, and in 2006 she received the Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar. Alvida (2007) was staged by Satish Manwar, and from Ekmekat (2009) she has directed her own scripts. Amar Photo Studio, a two-act play, has been widely staged and published.
Her screenplays include Kaccha Limboo (2011) and Ti Saddhya Kay Karte (2017), and she has written more than six hundred episodes of the serials Thipkyanchi Rangoli (2021–2023) and Muramba (2022–2025). Her story collection Blogchya Aarshapalyad won the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar in 2016. She is now studying for an M.A. in Film at the University of South Wales.
