Shana Chandra is a Tāmaki Makaurau born writer, researcher and educator of Indo-Fijian heritage and Girmitiya descent, currently based in France. Her writing voices the history of her displaced indentured-labourer ancestors, repairing and restoring it from beneath the empire's shadow and exploring how the violence and complexities of their indenture rooted into her life growing up in Aotearoa. After living in Japan and Naarm, she completed her Masters of Creative Writing at the University of Technology in Sydney. Her work has appeared in Lindsay, Love in the Time of Covid Chronicle, UTS Anthology: The Light Borrowers and Landfall magazine. For the past decade Shana has also worked as a freelance writer and has been featured in international fashion, arts and culture publications. Banjara is her first novel.