Dr Ranjana Srivastava is a practising Australian geriatric oncologist, award-winning author and two-time Fulbright scholar. 

Educated in India, the UK, the United States and Australia, she is the recipient of the Monash University Distinguished Alumnus of the Year Award, the JFK Merit Award from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the Medal of the Order of Australia for her contribution to doctor-patient communication.

Ranjana’s writing has been published worldwide, including in Time magazine and The Week, The New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet and JAMA.  

Her fortnightly columns in The Guardian newspaper on the intersection of medicine and humanity have been twice nominated as a finalist for the Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism. In 2024, Beehive News named her the top international health columnist for context and completeness out of a field of 15000 journalists across 55 categories. In 2025, she won the Kennedy Award for Columnist of the Year. 

Her acclaimed books include Tell Me the Truth: Conversations with My Patients about Life
and Death (shortlisted, NSW Premier’s Literary Awards), 

Dying for a Chat: The Communication
Breakdown Between Doctors and Patients (winner, the Human Rights Literature Prize) and 

What it Takes to be a Doctor (finalist, Australian Career Book Award). 

Her most recent book is Every Word Matters: Writing to Engage the Public.