Born in 1968 in Tamil Nadu, Salma’s first poetry collection shocked conservative society where women are supposed to remain silent. In 2003, Salma and three other Tamil women poets faced obscenity charges and violent threats. Salma is now head of the panchayat (local level government body) of Thuvarankurichi, near Trichi in Tamil Nadu. The government of Tamil Nadu has appointed her Chairperson of the Tamil Nadu Social Welfare Board. Midnight Tales focuses on the inner world of Muslim women in the conservative society of Tamil Nadu in south India. This is a world in which women remain within the home, in purdah, while their men occupy the space of the outside world. There is much in these different households that goes on in the hours before dawn, when women wake up to a world as yet absented by men, and where they share thoughts, lives, joys and sorrows. zubaan@gmail.com