Bhavika Govil was born in New Delhi and dreams of the sea. Her debut novel Hot Water was published with Fourth Estate, HarperCollins India in April 2025. It has been shortlisted for the 2025 Godrej Literature Live! Award for Best First Book - Fiction and the 2025 Ramnath Goenka Sahithya Samman Awards for Best Debut. A portion of the novel won the Pontas & JJ Bola Emerging Writers Prize and was a finalist for the DHA New Writers’ Open Week. The novel is being translated into other languages.

Bhavika’s short fiction has won the Bound Short Story Prize, been shortlisted for the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, and can be read in Wasafiri, Extra Teeth, Gutter, A Case of Indian Marvels and elsewhere. She holds a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Edinburgh.

When she isn’t writing, Bhavika teaches creative writing workshops online and in person.