I love Alka Joshi’s books. I wrote about The Henna Artist A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick (The Jaipur Trilogy 1) and The Secret Keeper of Jaipur (The Jaipur Trilogy Book 2) and her new book, The Perfumist of Paris (The Jaipur Trilogy Book 3) is available TODAY!
The Perfumist of Paris takes readers to 1970s Paris where Radha, a passionate assistant perfumer is trying to navigate her home life while building her career one scent at a time. Radha travels back to India in search of essential oils for her first major project and enlists the help of her sister, Lakshmi, and the courtesans of Agra. During her olfactory journey, her senses are awakened by India’s vibrant majestic flora, woods, herbs, and spices. Due to its unique biodiversity, India cultivates dozens of natural ingredients used in modern perfumery today, sourced from as far south as Kerala’s spice gardens to Aligarh’s northern flower fields.
Born in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India, Alka Joshi has lived in the United States since the age of nine. She has a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from California College of the Arts. She ran her own advertising and PR agency for 20 years. At 62, her debut novel, The Henna Artist, became an instant NYTimes Bestseller, a Reese Witherspoon Bookclub pick, was Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, translated into 26 languages and is being developed into a series by Netflix. The sequel, The Secret Keeper of Jaipur, is also being translated into multiple languages and the third book in the Jaipur trilogy, The Perfumist of Paris, will be released TODAY!
New York Times Bestselling Author Alka Joshi Enlists LilaNur Parfums for ‘The Perfumist of Paris’ Book Tour
The discovery set offers readers of Alka Joshi’s upcoming novel a multi-sensorial understanding of main character Radha’s journey as a fledgling female perfumer in the ’70s.
While author Alka Joshi’s story starts in 1955 in Jaipur, India, I have to admit some of her descriptions reminded me of my travels there in 2013. I spent three months on the public bus traversing the sub-continent—and her descriptions of the colorful saris, delicate samosas and other tasty treats reminded all my senses (especially my sense of smell) of my adventures.
Women’s lives are intertwined from the village, to town, from one town to another and one life to another. The way that boys become men, and men act like boys, causes many dramas and traumas in this tale. The women find ways to run away from one life but are often surprised by the ways it catches up to you.
Lisa Ellen Niver is an award-winning travel expert who has explored 102 countries and six continents. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, she worked on cruise ships for seven years and backpacked for three years in Asia. She is the founder of the website WeSaidGoTravel which is read in 235 countries and was named #3 on Rise Global’s top 1,000 Travel Blogs. Niver is a speaker at the Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Dallas Travel and Adventure Shows for 2023. Her podcast, “Make Your Own Map,” has been watched in more than 11 countries on 4 continents. Niver is represented by Chip MacGregor of MacGregor Literary, Inc. Look for her memoir in Fall 2023 from Post Hill Press/Simon and Schuster.
You can find Lisa Niver talking travel on broadcast television at KTLA TV Los Angeles, Satellite Media Tours, The Jet Set TV and Orbitz travel webisodes as well as her YouTube channel, where her WeSaidGoTravel videos have nearly 2 million views.
With more than 150,000 followers across social media, she has hosted Facebook Live for USA Today 10best, is verified on Twitter and listed on IMDb, and is the Social Media Manager for the Los Angeles Press Club.
As a journalist, Niver has interviewed Deepak Chopra, Olympic medalists, and numerous bestselling authors and been invited to both the Oscars and the United Nations. She has been a judge for the Gracie Awards for the Alliance of Women in Media, and has run 15 travel competitions on her website, publishing over 2,500 writers and photographers from 75 countries.
For her print and digital stories as well as her television segments, she has been awarded three Southern California Journalism Awards and two National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards and been a finalist twenty times.
Niver has published more than 2000 articles, in more than three dozen magazines and journals
including National Geographic, Wired, Teen Vogue, HuffPost Personal, POPSUGAR, Ms. Magazine, Luxury Magazine, Smithsonian, Sierra Club, Saturday Evening Post, AARP, AAA Explorer Magazine, American Airways, Delta Sky, enRoute (Air Canada), Hemispheres, Jewish Journal, Myanmar Times, BuzzFeed, Robb Report, Scuba Diver Life, Ski Utah, Trivago, Undomesticated, USA Today, TODAY, Wharton Magazine, and Yahoo.
https://bit.ly/m/lisaniver
Awards
National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards
2021 Winner: Book Critic: Ms. Magazine “Untamed: Brave Means Living From the Inside Out”
2019 Winner: Soft News Feature for Film/TV: KTLA TV “Oscars Countdown to Gold with Lisa Niver”
2019 Finalist for: Soft News, Business/Music/Tech/Art
Southern California Journalism Awards
2022 Finalist: Book Criticism
2021 Winner: Technology Reporting
2021 Finalist: Book Criticism
2020 Winner: Print Magazine Feature: Hemispheres Magazine, “Painter by the Numbers, Rembrandt”
2020 Finalist: Online Journalist of the Year, Activism Journalism, Educational Reporting, Broadcast Lifestyle Feature
2019 Finalist: Broadcast Television Lifestyle Segment for “Ogden Ski Getaway”
2018 Finalist: Science/Technology Reporting, Travel Reporting, Personality Profile
2017 Winner: Print Column “A Journey to Freedom over Three Passovers”
Social Media Presence
YouTube Channel: We Said Go Travel (1.7 million views)
Short form video:TikTok, Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, YouTube Shorts
Twitter: lisaniver (90,000 followers)
Instagram: lisaniver (24,000 followers)
Pinterest: We Said Go Travel (20,000 followers and over 70,000 monthly views)
Facebook: lisa.niver (5,000 followers); We Said Go Travel (3,000 followers)
LinkedIn: lisaellenniver (9000 contacts)
