Justine Hardy

Justine Hardy (born April 1966) is a British journalist, author, and integrated trauma therapist who has spent most of her adult life in India. She has been a journalist in South Asia, including Kashmir, where she established Healing Kashmir to help people overcome the trauma of the Insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir that began in 1989.

Early life and education

She was born in London, raised in Oxfordshire, and educated in England. Hardy is the daughter of Robert Hardy, a noted actor, and actress Sally Pearson, and Sir Neville Pearson. In 1978, she won the Partridge Essay Contest at her school in Banbury, Oxfordshire. She attended Tudor Hall School, Banbury.

Hardy has been a residential INSPIRE fellow at Tufts University’s Institute of Global Leadership. In 2011, she received an internship to the Oslo Scholars Program.

Career Journalist and presenter Hardy has reported on South Asia for over 25 years since about 1990.

She has written for an Indian newspaper and contributed to Financial Times, The Times, Vanity Fair, Traveler, She became a regular contributor to Traveller magazine in 2015. She has written about female activists within Islam, peace, and the mental health crisis in Kashmir.

Author Hardy wrote The Ochre Border: A Journey through the Tibetan Frontierlands in 1995, which is an account of Hardy's journey to a remote valley on the Indo-Tibetan border in the Himalayas. Four years later, Scoop-Wallah (1999) recounts Hardy's stint as a reporter for a Delhi newspaper. Goat: A Story of Kashmir and Notting Hill (2000) contemplates the route taken by the goat hair gathered in Tibet to fashionable London, where it is sold in the form of shawls. She wrote Bollywood Boy in 2002, which is a study of the Indian film business, Bollywood. Geographical says, "In this, her best book yet, she captures the glitz of Bollywood while laying bare the more sinister side of a business enmeshed with the underworld, using as her central ploy the year-long tracking down of Hrithik Roshan, Bollywood's brightest new star, for an interview."

The Wonder House (2005), Hardy's first novel, is a family chronicle set against the background of the Kashmir conflict. It takes place in October 1999 and the protagonist is a secular, older woman, Gracie Singh. While Library Journal praised the plot twist, they felt that the characters were "bland" and the pacing of the story was slow.

The Valley of Mist (2009) tells the story of the conflict in Kashmir through the story of the people in Kashmir, where she has lived for several years. (The Valley of Mist was a runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in 2010.) Kenneth McClane, a Cornell professor and judge for the Dayton prize, called the book “magnificent” and compared it to the works of Anton Chekhov and James Baldwin. Booklist wrote that the book's "intimate and dramatic chronicle clarifies and humanizes Kashmir's torments, which are of grave global consequence." Library Journal wrote that "Hardy's account contributes to our understanding of the tragedy of cross-cultural conflicts, if not its solutions."

Hardy's books have been translated into nine languages.

Aid projects Following the October 2005 Kashmir earthquake, she worked to rebuild schools, a medical center, and homes with a local non-governmental organization (NGO). Healing Kashmir, sees patients in the clinical environment—in its main office in Burzalla, Srinagar or in hospitals in six areas—and in villages.