Ruchira Gupta

Ruchira Gupta tells the courageous story of a young girl in India who faces being sold into the sex trade by her father to repay his loans. After a chance meeting with a kung fu instructor, 14-year-old Heera realises there is another way – using her body to protect herself and those she loves. So when her best friend from school goes missing, Heera embarks on a daring rescue mission that will take her all the way to New York.

Gupta is founder-president of Apne Aap Women Worldwide, an anti-sex trafficking organisation that has helped thousands of girls and women in India leave a life of forced prostitution. She is a social justice activist, feminist campaigner, Emmy Award-winning documentarian and professor at New York University who has dedicated her life to creating a world where no child is bought or sold. I Kick and I Fly is her debut novel.