Rathnakumar Raghunath was born in 1988, in Chennai, India. While he was more inclined toward music as a child, as he grew older, he developed a passion for languages. In school, he wrote a couple of short stories and won the Camlin Young Author award for his work, "It Happened One Night: And It Changed My Life." He claims that his life changed the moment he saw the French-Canadian singer, Céline Dion, perform on a show on TV back in 2003. He fell in love with her pure talent and her down-to-Earth personality, and he was inspired to pursue courses in the French language in order to understand her French repertoire. He has done C1 in French at Alliance Française de Madras and A2 in Spanish at Instituto Hispania. During college, he wrote and directed a couple of short films, one of which also won the Bimbam Award for Best Concept. He has, since, gone on to bag acting roles in various musicals and plays such as "Archie: The Musical,” "Oscar,” "Stay by My Side,” "Skipping Christmas,” "Star of Wonder,” "Moulin Rouge,” and has performed in Concerts such as, "Magic of Musicals 2,” "September Symphony,” "Magic of Music 3,” where he opened the show with Michael Jackson’s "Earth Song." He was also a part of a tribute to Simon and Garfunkel and performed with the Philharmonic Society of Selangor Choir from Malaysia. He also features in a Gospel album by Jere Franklin titled "Jeeva Raagangal." He was one of the singers in the single, "Kindle the Fire" that was an official entry in an international competition in 2013. He was the "Artist of the Week" on 104.8 Chennai Live FM in 2015. He is currently following a career involving the French language. He also is a budding entrepreneur and has an online handmade jewelry and gift shop called Something Different. During the COVID-19 Lockdown of 2020, he created an IGTV comedy series called "Rawrange Series." Through everything that he has been doing, his passion for writing has always stayed with him. It is that which has pushed him toward writing more short stories and modern poetry. His first published work is "Elevator," a flash fiction that has won the Literally Story prize. It was published in 2019. His first book of modern poetry is “Smörgåsbord of Musings.” It has sold over 2500 copies and has won The Author Pages 2021 award for Best Debut. He has also written a small collection of poetry in French called “Les Cicatrices,” which was a #1 bestseller on Amazon. He has a series of e-books called Digital Pride. It is a series of LGBTQIA+ short stories that will be published every year in time for Pride Month. “Catch Me ’Cause I’m Falling” is the first story in that series. It became the official selection for NE8x Litfest 2021. “Comeuppance” is his 5th publication and first thriller/horror novelette. It has won The Author Pages 2022 award for Best Thriller, placed 2nd in the Indie Author Championship 2022, and won the Cinemura Award 2022 for best book to be adapted into a film or web series. His highly anticipated new poetry book "Charcuterie of Thoughts" is out in the month of June, 2023. He also has plans of translating his work into French and Spanish. Audio book versions of his works are also under production.Read more about this authorRead less about this author