A woman’s skin remembers every touch it has ever known. A village weaver wields the power to save a single life on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. A mother finds her daughter waiting in the kitchen on her birthday. A tiger keeps vigil on a forest road for the poacher who killed its kin. The 24 stories in the first The Red Pen Anthology range from the everyday to the familiar to the mythic and the bizarre.

An official release by the Indian Copyeditors Forum, India’s preeminent body, this collection was born when shapers of other people’s stories shaped their own, when copyeditors whose red pens smatter other manuscripts with crosses and corrections decided to use them to write their own.

Curated by Cora Pereira Bhatia and Inderpreet Uppal, let this debut endeavour by editors-turned-authors surprise you and intrigue you.