Shankari Chandran is an Australian Tamil writer, human rights lawyer and leader in the creative community. She is the winner of the 2023 Miles Franklin Literary Award for her third novel, Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens and the author of Song of the Sun God, The Barrier, Safe Haven and Unfinished Business. 

Shankari is currently the Deputy Chair of Writing NSW, an Ambassador for the Refugee Advice & Casework Service and a member of the Sweatshop Western Sydney Literacy Movement. Her essays and short stories have been published in critically acclaimed anthologies and journals. She explores dispossession and the creation of community through her fiction.

Shankari has spent two decades working as a lawyer in the social justice field, on national and international program design and delivery. She holds a Bachelor of Laws/Commerce (UNSW, Sydney), having previously led the pro bono legal programs for Allen & Overy (globally) and Ashurst (Australia). She is based in Sydney, Australia, where she lives with her husband and her four children.