Born in 1942, Vasant Abaji Dahake is a well-known Marathi poet, critic, essayist, playwright, novelist, short fiction writer and artist. His first collection of poems, Yogabhrashta (1972), instantly established him as a successor to the early modernists in Marathi literature such as Mardhekar, P.S. Rege and Vinda Karandikar. He has received several awards, including the Sahitya Akademi Award for his collection Chitralipi for the year 2009.

In 2014 he received the Vinda Karandikar Lifetime Achievement Award from the Government of Maharashtra. His writings show an influence of existentialist-marxist writers. His poetry is often dark and engaging. He was associated with the little magazine movement in Marathi during the mid-sixties. Dahake is married to Prabha Ganorkar, also a writer and lives in Amravati. Rahee Dahake has been writing and translating in English for the past two decades.