Arula Ratnakar is a neuroscientist and hard science fiction author. Her science fiction stories are in Clarkesworld Magazine.
She has been on the Locus Recommended Reading List ("Lone Puppeteer of a Sleeping City", "Submergence"), in multiple Year's Best anthologies ("Lone Puppeteer of a Sleeping City," "Submergence"), nominated for the Utopia Award ("Submergence"), and longlisted for the Astounding Award, Hugo Award for Best Novella ("Submergence"), and British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Short Fiction ("Babirusa").
Her Clarkesworld stories are "Insaan Hain, Farishte Nahin" (novelette, 2019), "Lone Puppeteer of a Sleeping City" (novelette, 2020), "Submergence" (novella, 2021) and "Babirusa" (novella, 2022). She has a novella "Axiom of Dreams" that will be in a forthcoming issue of Clarkesworld Magazine as well.
Her short story "Spiral" is published in the 2023 Life Beyond Us Anthology from the European Astrobiology Institute.
Her neuroscience research studies psychedelics and the neural mechanisms of dissociation.