From child bride to literary sensation

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Baby Halder is an internationally best-selling author and a literary superstar at home in India. But her road to stardom was a difficult one, full of interruptions and adversity. Her mother left the family when Baby was seven, she was taken out of education, and at the age of 12 she found herself pregnant and in an arranged marriage. Eventually, years later, Baby fled the marriage and became a domestic servant in Delhi, where her employer, an anthropology professor, encouraged her to begin writing, launching her on a glittering writing career. Gary Cranitch is an Australian underwater photographer who recently captured the image of a lifetime, the remarkably rare moment when coral spawns on the Great Barrier reef. James R. Hagerty is an obituary writer for the American newspaper the Wall Street Journal. He’s recently started writing his own obituary, and shares with us some of the lessons he’s learned from it. Image: Baby Halder writing at home in Kolkata Credit: Getty Images