C. S. Lakshmi (born 1944) is an Indian feminist writer and independent researcher in women's studies from India.

[citation needed] She draws great inspiration from her mother who asked her to study in Chennai if it would contribute to a change of any extent in her life.

[citation needed] She received critical acclaim with the short story Siragukal muriyum (lit.

The same year she was awarded a two-year fellowship to study the work of Tamil women writers.

In 1988, her second Tamil short story collection titled Veetin mulaiyil oru samaiyalarai (lit.

[8][9] In 2006, she (along with Lakshmi Holmström) won the Vodafone Crossword Book Award (in the Indian language fiction translation category) for In a Forest, A Deer.

[11][12] In 2021, she won the Sahitya Akademi Award, India's highest literary honor, for her collection of short stories Sivappu Kazhuthudan Oru Pachai Paravai.

In the 1990s, she worked in two research projects – Illustrated Social History of Women in Tamil Nadu sponsored by the Ford Foundation and An Idiom of Silence: An Oral History and Pictorial Study sponsored by the Homi J. Bhabha fellowship.