text:
A Ramachandran
Abhinav Kumar is a lawyer based in New Delhi. His stories have appeared in Open Road Review, Jaggery, Muse India and Earthen Lamp Journal, among others. His poetry has appeared in Indian Literature, The Madras Mag, The Bangalore Review, and The Madras Courier. His first collection of short stories, Razor-Sharp, is available on Amazon.
Adil Jussawalla
Adil Jussawalla was born in Mumbai. He spent most of the years between 1957 and 1970 in England where he studied to be an architect, wrote plays, read English at Oxford, and taught English at a language school. Returning to Mumbai, he taught English at St Xavier's College between 1972 and 1975. He is an influential presence in Indian poetry in English. He has written four books of poetry, edited a seminal anthology of new writing from India (1974), and co-edited an anthology of Indian prose in English (1977).
Afrah Shafiq
Agha Shahid Ali
Ahdaf Soueif
Ahdaf Soueif is the author of The Map of Love, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1999. She writes regularly for The Guardian in London and has a weekly column in Al Shorouk in Cairo. A collection of her essays, Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground was published in 2004. Her translation of Mourid Barghouti's I Saw Ramallah was released in 2004.
Aishika Chakraborty
A.J. Thomas
A.J. Thomas is an award winning Indian English poet, fiction writer and translator. He was a former editor of Indian Literature. His publications include the collection of poems Germination. He also translated Paul Zacharia's stories in Bhaskara Pattelar and Other Stories and Reflections of a Hen in Her Last Hour and Other Stories. For more on the author and his work, see ajthomas.in.
Ajay Joshi
Ajay Joshi is a theatre journalist. He has translated numerous Marathi plays into English, and has written two books on theatre. He lives in Pune.
Akhil Katyal
Akhil Katyal is a writer and translator based in Delhi. His first book of poems, Night Charge Extra was published by Writers Workshop in 2015. He has a doctorate from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and currently teaches literature at the Shiv Nadar University in Uttar Pradesh.
Ali Ahsan
Alok Rai
Born and bred in Allahabad, Alok Rai taught English literature at Allahabad University and at Delhi University and was also the Head of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Delhi. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on George Orwell at the University College London, and has translated Premchand's Nirmala, published by Oxford University Press. He has also authored a book on the politics of Hindi titled Hindi Nationalism published by Orient Blackswan and a book based on his doctoral dissertation titled Orwell and the Politics of Despair: A Critical Study of the Writings of George Orwell published by Cambridge University Press. He is the grandson of the legendary Hindi writer Premchand.
Alok Bhalla
Alok Bhalla is a visiting professor of English at Jamia Millia Islamia. He is the author of Stories About the Partition of India. He has also translated Dharamvir Bharati's Andha Yug, Intizar Husain's A Chronicle of the Peacocks and Ram Kumar's The Sea and Other Stories into English.
Amarjit Chandan
Amarjit Chandan was born in 1946 in Nairobi. He has published seven collections of poetry and five books of essays in Punjabi, and the bilingual collection Sonata for Four Hands prefaced by John Berger (2010). He has also edited and translated over thirty anthologies of poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction by Brecht, Neruda, Ritsos, Hikmet, Vallejo, Cardenal and Berger into Punjabi.
Ambai is the pseudonym of C.S. Lakshmi, one of the foremost writers of Tamil fiction. Her stories have been translated in three volumes entitled A Purple Sea, In a Forest, a Deer and Fish in a Dwindling Lake. Her work has won numerous awards, including the Kalaignyar Mu. Karunanidhi Porkizi award for fiction by the Booksellers and Publishers' Association of South India and the award for excellence in literature from the University of Madras. In addition to her writing, C.S. Lakshmi has been an independent researcher in Women's Studies for the last thirty-five years. She is currently the Director of SPARROW (Sound & Picture Archives for Research on Women).
Amlanjyoti Goswami
Amlanjyoti Goswami's poems have been published in India, Nepal, Hong Kong, the UK, USA, South Africa, Kenya and Germany, including the anthologies 40 under 40: An Anthology of Post Globalisation Poetry (Poetrywala) and A Change of Climate (Manchester Metropolitan University, Environmental Justice Foundation and the University of Edinburgh). He grew up in Guwahati, Assam and lives in Delhi.
Anand (P. Sachidanandan)
P. Sachidanandan is an award-winning Malayalam writer. He is the author of short stories, plays, essays and novels. His novels include Aalkkoottam (The Crowd), Samharathinte Pusthakam (The Book of Murder) and Apaharikkappetta Daivangal (Stolen Gods). Two of his works, Desert Shadows and Vyasa and Vighneswara are available in English translation.
Anand Haridas
Ananya Vajpeyi
Ananya Vajpeyi is a fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi.
Animikh Patra
Animikh Patra's poetry collections include Patanmoner Kursi (2016), Kono Ekta Naam (2013), and Jatadur Boidho Boli (2009).
Aniruddha Nagaraj
Anjana Kothamachu
Anjana Kothamachu is a visual artist based in Bangalore. She has a degree in fine arts and has also studied animation. She has participated in several residency programs including Khoj and ISCP (New York City) in 2015, and Prohelvetia (Zurich) in 2016. Her work has been part of exhibitions and screenings in India and elsewhere, including the Creative India Public Art Intensive and the Changwon Sculpture Biennale, South Korea.
Anjum Hasan
Anuja Ghosalkar
Anuja Ghosalkar is an actor, writer and director based in Bangalore. Drama Queen, her documentary theatre company focuses on oral histories, personal narratives and archival material to extend the idea of theatre that unsettles the status quo.
Anuradha Kapur
Anuradha Kapur is the former Director of the National School of Drama, New Delhi. She is the author of Actors, Pilgrims, Kings and Gods: the Ramlila at Ramnagar. She was associated with the theatre group Dishantar from its inception. She is also one of the founder members of Vivadi, a working group of painters, musicians, writers and theatre practitioners.
Anuradha Vijayakrishnan
Anuradha Vijayakrishnan was born in Cochin, India. A trained singer, she followed up a Bachelor's in Chemical Engineering from Calicut University with postgraduate studies in Management from XLRI, Jamshedpur. Her poetry first appeared in print under the editorship of Ms. Kamala Das. Granta and British Council first published her fiction in the select New Writing anthology series. Her work has appeared in Magma, Orbis, Stony Thursday Book, The Pedestal Magazine, Soundings, Aesthetica, Asian Cha, Eclectica, Asia Literary Review, Mascara, Indian Literature and Nth Position among others. Her poetry and prose have won prizes at various literary competitions. Seeing the Girl, her debut novel, was long listed in 2007 while it was still a manuscript for the Man Asian Literary Prize. In 2010 her poetry was nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes. She is a 2010 alumna of Western Michigan University's Prague Summer Program.
Aparna Bhagwat
Aparna Bhagwat has an M.Sc and an M.Ed. She is keenly interested in English, Hindi and Marathi literature. Hence, writing and translation come naturally to her. She draws on her own experiences and views and her understanding the writers' perception to write poems and translate, catching on to the basic thread of thought and further constructively progressing on it. She is a resident of Bhopal.
Aparna Karthikeyan
Aparna Karthikeyan is an independent journalist currently living in Mumbai. She documented a series on vanishing livelihoods of rural Tamil Nadu on a Fellowship from NFI, and volunteers with P. Sainath's People's Archive of Rural India. She now wants to tell stories of everyday people: short fiction, set mostly in Tamil Nadu.
Ari Sitas
Ari Sitas is a South African poet, sociologist and activist. He has published six books of poetry, including Rough Music: Selected Poems (1989-2013) (Deep South, 2013). For a semester he was Bhagat Singh Chair in Historical Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Arpana Caur has had solo exhibitions in museums all over the world, including at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. She won the gold medal at the Sixth International Triennale in 1986, and her work was commissioned by the Hiroshima Museum of Modern Art for its 50th anniversary in 1995. Since 1981, she has worked on large, non-commercial murals in Delhi, Bengaluru, Hamburg and Kathmandu. For more on her work, see arpanacaur.com.
Arundhathi Subramaniam
Arundhathi Subramaniam has published four books of poetry. Her prose works include the bestselling biography of a contemporary mystic and yogi, Sadhguru: More Than a Life, and The Book of Buddha. She edited Pilgrim's India, an anthology on sacred journeys, and Eating God: A Book of Bhakti Poetry.
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra is the author of several books of poetry including the volume of essays called Partial Recall: Essays on Literature and Literary History; the editor of The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets and Collected Poems in English by Arun Kolatkar; and the translator of The Absent Traveller: Prakrit Love Poetry.
Aryanil Mukherjee
Aryanil Mukherjee (b. 1964) is a bilingual poet, translator, and editor who grew up in Kolkata, India, and later emigrated to the United States. He has authored ten books of poetry and essays in two languages. Widely published in both Indian (Bengali) and American poetry circles, his work has been featured in many anthologies, including the HarperCollins Book of Indian Poetry in English (2011), the Indian Poetry issue of TLR, Indivisible, an anthology of South Asian American poetry, and Pared de Agua, an anthology of contemporary Bengali poetry (Olifante Press, Madrid, Spain). He edits Kaurab, a much-celebrated Bangla literary magazine of experimental poetry and literature published since 1970. His poetry has been translated into Hindi and Spanish. A PhD in aerospace engineering, Aryanil works as an engineering mathematician and lives in Cincinnati.
Asghar Wajahat
Asha Kuthari Chaudhuri
Asha Kuthari Chaudhuri is Professor of English, Gauhati University. She specialises in Drama and Theatre Studies. Her publications include Mahesh Dattani, and Ideas of the Stage: Selections from Drama Theory. On a Fulbright Fellowship in 2015-16, she worked on a research cum lecture project called Theaters, Spectacles, Audiences: Indian and American Cultures of Viewership at the CUNY Graduate Center, New York.
Ashok Gopal
Ashok Gopal is an independent researcher and writer based in Pune. He has been studying Ambedkar's thought and Dalit Marathi literature for over a decade.
Ashok Vajpeyi
Ashok Vajpeyi is a popular Hindi poet, essayist and critic. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1994 for his poetry collection Kahin Nahin Wahin. He returned the award in 2015 as a gesture of protest against increasing intolerance in the country.
Ashwani Kumar is a poet and professor of development studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and a senior fellow of the Indian Council of Social Science Research. He is author of the acclaimed non-fiction work Community Warriors (Anthem Press, 2008). His poems have appeared in Indian Literature, Muse India, Post-Colonial Text, International Gallerie and the Dhauli Review, among other publications. He has published two volumes of poetry, My Grandfather's Imaginary Typewriter (Yeti Books, 2014) and Banaras and the Other (Poetrywala, 2017).
Askari Naqvi
Askari Naqvi is a trained vocalist and performer. Having received his training in music from Pandit Amit Mukherjee of the Indore gharana, he inherited the Soz-khwani from his family and took to performing at a very young age. Along with the Soz, Naqvi performs the Dastangoi, a traditional form of storytelling in Urdu. Naqvi is also a practising human rights lawyer based out of Lucknow.
Asma Anjum Khan
Asma Anjum Khan teaches English at a college in Maharashtra. She has written for prestigious publications like Arab News, DailyO, Siasat Daily, among others. She runs an NGO called the Foundation of English and Ethical Learning (FEEL) and regularly writes on issues of gender inequality and social and cultural inequalities. 'Of Beef, Biryani and Ghafoor' was conceived when the talk of banning beef first started doing the rounds in our country. According to her, Ghafoor is the quintessential Muslim man, honest yet confused, and foolishly owes his fealty to an old order that has long perished.
Atul Dodiya
Atul Dodiya is a highly acclaimed artist. He was trained at the Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai, and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris. He has had more than 30 solo shows around the world, including a mid-career retrospective at the Japan Foundation Asia Centre in Tokyo; a solo show at the Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid; and the Contemporary Arts Centre in the USA. A major survey show of his work was held at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, in 2013.
Avinash Karn
Avtar Singh (Pash) Sandhu
Avtar Singh Sandhu was a poet and revolutionary. His first collection of poems, Loh Kath (The Iron Story) came out in 1970, while he was still in jail. After his release, he published Uddade Bazan Magar (Behind Flying Hawks) and Sade Samian Vich (In Our Times). He was assassinated on March 23, 1988.
Ayona Datta
Baburao Bagul
Baburao Bagul (1930–2008) was a Marathi writer from Maharashtra, India; a pioneer of modern literature in Marathi and an important figure in the Indian short story during the late 20th century, when it experienced a radical departure from the past, with the advent of Dalit writers such as him. He is most known for his works such as, Jevha Mi Jaat Chorli (1963), Maran Swasta Hot Ahe (1969), Sahitya Ajache Kranti Vigyan, Sud (1970), and Ambedkar Bharat.
Balagopalan
Balagopalan is a sculptor and painter based in Delhi. He also collaborates with theatre productions and curators. His work, he says, 'engages with metaphysical and philosophical ideas combined with traditional and contemporary poetic tradition'.
Bama Faustina Soosairaj
Bama (born 1958) rose to fame with her autobiography Karukku (1992), which chronicles the day-to-day lives of Dalit Christians in Tamil Nadu in general, and the paraiyar community in particular. She subsequently wrote two novels, Sangati (1994) and Vanmam (2002), and two collections of short stories: Kusumbukkaran (1996) and Oru Tattavum Erumaiyum (2003).
Basharat Peer
Basharat Peer is a Kashmiri journalist, scriptwriter, author and political commentator, currently based in New York.
Bhagyalakshmi M Krishna
Bhagyalakshmi M Krishna is India's only woman morching player. She is the daughter and disciple of morching exponent Vid. Dr. L. Bhimachar. An 'A' grade artist of All India Radio, Bhagyalakshmi has widely performed in India and abroad, accompanying eminent artists like Dr. M. Balamuralikrishna, Vid. Neela Ramgopal, Vid. A. Kanyakumari, Vid. Sanjay Subramanyam, Vid. Sudha Raghunathan, Vid. Lalgudi Vijayalakshmi and several others. She was the recipient of the 'Ananya Yuva Puraskar' in 2014 and the 'Best Senior Upapakkavadyam' award from Madras Music Academy in 2017.
Bhaskar Chakraborty
Bhaskar Chakraborty (1943-2005) was hailed as one of the best poets in Kolkata. His first book of poems, Sheetkaal Kabe Asabe Suparna (When Will It Be Winter, Suparna) is highly acclaimed. An entire generation of poets living in the city in the sixties and seventies attempted to write like him, but not one could capture metropolitan isolation with the delicate intimacy of Chakraborty's poems.
Bina Shah
Bolwar Mahamad Kunhi
Bolwar Mahamad Kunhi is an award-winning writer of fiction in Kannada. He was the first to introduce the language, customs and traditions of a small Muslim community of coastal Karnataka into Kannada literature. He weaves the syncretic culture of this region into his fiction. His two major novels are Swatantrada Ota (The March to Freedom), and Odiri (Read), a fictionalised biography of the Prophet Mohammed. The latter went into its second reprint within four days of publication.
Chaman Lal
Chaman Lal was Professor of Hindi Translation at the Centre of Indian Languages in the Jawaharlal Nehru University. He compiled Pash's collected poems in Punjabi and translated them into Hindi; the translations won the Sahitya Akademi Translation Prize. He returned the award in 2015 to protest against growing intolerance in the country.
Chandan Gowda
Chandan Gowda teaches at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. He has recently translated UR Ananthamurthy's story, Bara (Oxford Univ Press, 2016) and edited, The Post Office of Abachooru, a book of short stories of the Kannada writer, Purnachandra Tejasvi (forthcoming, HarperCollins, 2018). A Life in the World, a book of autobiographical interviews he did with UR Ananthamurthy will be published later this year (HarperCollins, 2017). He has also edited Theatres of Democracy: Selected Essays of Shiv Visvanathan (Harper Collins, 2016). He is presently completing a book on the cultural politics of development in old Mysore state and a fictional work on the legendary engineer, Sir M Visvesvaraya.
Chandrakant Patil
Chandrakant Patil is a Marathi poet, critic, translator and editor. He has also written 15 books in Hindi. He is the recipient of several national and regional awards. He lives in Pune.
Chetana Sachidanandan
Chetana Sachidanandan is a biologist by profession. She is a senior scientist at the CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Delhi. She is also the daughter of Malayalam writer Anand, whose works she has translated from Malayalam into English. Her translation of Samharathinte Pustakam (The Book of Destruction) was shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.
Civic Chandran
Civic Chandran is a poet and playwright. He is also well-known for his powerful street-plays. He was a school teacher in Wayanad. He edits a journal of resistance, Patabhedam which raises significant social, political, human-rights and environmental issues.
Dalpat Chauhan
Dalpat Chauhan was instrumental in establishing the Dalit Panther in Gujarat and ran a few radical little magazines like Kalo Suraj (The Black Sun) and Akrosh (Outrage) during the 1980s and 90s. He also set up Dalit Sangharsh Sangh (DSS) in Gujarat in 1982 and brought out an anthology of Dalit Poetry and booklets resisting and condemning instances of atrocities and questioning the Government reports on them between 1982 and 1985 when Gujarat burned with anti-reservation riots. His notable works are his novels Malak (Homeland) (1991), Gidh (Vulture) (1991) and Bhalbhankhalun (Dawn) (2004). His collections of short stories like Munjharo (Buffaloed) (2002), Dar (Fear) (2009) have been critically acclaimed. He has also scripted well-received plays like Patanne Gondre (1987-1988), Anaryavarta (2000), Antim Dhyey (2000) and Harifai (2003). He has been given more than 15 literary awards, including those from Gujarati Sahitya Parishad, Gujarati Sahitya Academy and the prestigious Narsinh Mehta Award. His works have been translated into English, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, French and German.
Darshan Butter
Darshan Butter has written seven collections of poetry. He received the Sahitya Akademi award for his poetry collection Mahakambni (The Great Shivering). He returned the award in 2015 to protest against growing intolerance in the country. His poems have been translated into Hindi, Urdu, English and other languages.
Davalsaab
Davalsaab is a jogappa (transwoman) who sings devotional songs in Kannada.
Dayanita Singh
Dayanita Singh's art reflects and expands on the ways in which people relate to photographic images. Her recent works, drawn from her extensive photographic oeuvre, are a series of mobile museums that allow her images to be endlessly edited, sequenced, archived and displayed. Stemming from Singh's interest in the archive, the museums present her photographs as interconnected bodies of work that are replete with both poetic and narrative possibilities. She has published twelve books: Museum of Chance (2014), File Room (2013), House of Love (2011), Dream Villa (2010), Blue Book (2009), Sent a Letter (2008), Privacy (2003), Myself Mona Ahmed (2001) and Zakir Hussain (1986).
Debarshi Mitra
Deepa Onkar
Dion D'Souza
Dion D'Souza's first collection of poems, Three Doors, was published by Poetry Primero in 2016. He is currently working on a book of short stories. He lives in Mumbai.
Divya Rajan
Divya Rajan's works have appeared in Berfrois, After Hours, Missing Slate, Gloom Cupboard, Silk and Spice – Chicago Anthology , and several others. She has previously served as co-editor at The Furnace Review.
Dona Mayoora
Dona Mayoora's poetry and art have been published in journals in seven languages. Her first collection of poetry in Malayalam, Ice Cubukal was published in 2012.
E.P. Unny
E.P. Unny is a well-known cartoonist. He has worked for a range of newspapers, such as The Hindu, the Sunday Mail, the Economic Times and the Indian Express, where he is currently chief political cartoonist. His most recent publication is Business As Usual: Journeys of the Indian Express Cartoonist. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Indian Institute of Cartoonists in 2009.
E.V. Ramakrishnan
E.V. Ramakrishnan has published poetry and literary criticism in Malayalam and English. He has three volumes of poetry in English, and several critical works in both English and Malayalam. The latter includes Aksharavum Aadhunikatayum, for which he was awarded the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award. At present he is professor emeritus in the School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies at the Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar.
Farid Mohammed 'Adil' Mansuri
Farid Mohammed Mansuri is a bilingual poet who writes in Gujarati and Urdu. He moved from Gujarat to Pakistan with his family at the time of partition, only to return to the city of Ahmedabad, where he currently lives. His family finally moved to the USA in 1985. He is also an accomplished calligrapher.
Ganga Sati
Gauhar Raza
Gauri Gill
Gauri Gill is a photographer based in New Delhi. Her work is widely shown and is in the collections of prominent North American and Indian institutions. In 2011 she was awarded the Grange Prize, Canada's foremost award for photography. Gill's book Balika Mela was published by Edition Patrick Frey, Zurich, in 2012. For more information about her work, see gaurigill.com.
Gireesh G.V.
Gireesh G.V. is an artist and photographer based in New Delhi. Some of his works are part of private collections in Switzerland, Tokyo, New York, Bangalore, New Delhi and Kerala, with the Kerala Tourism Development Corporation and at the Indira Gandhi Memorial Library in Hyderabad.
Gita Jayaraj
Githa Hariharan
Githa Hariharan has written fiction, essays and columns over the last three decades. Her most recent book is Almost Home: Cities and Other Places. For more on the author and her work, see githahariharan.com
Gopika Jadeja
Gopika Jadeja is a poet and translator. She publishes and edits a journal as well as a series of pamphlets for a performance-publishing project called Five Issues. Her work has been published in Asymptote, The Wolf, Indian Literature, Vahi, Sahcharya and elsewhere. She is currently engaged in translating Gujarati poetry into English.
Gopika Nath
Gopika Nath ia a textile artist and craftsperson. She works towards redefining the value of hand-crafting in India. She is a Fulbright Scholar and alumnus of the Central St Martins School of Art and Design in the UK. She is also an art critic, blogger, poet and teacher.
Gorakh Pandey
Gorakh Pandey (1945-89) was a popular Hindi poet from Uttar Pradesh. He is known his collections Bhojpuri ken Au Geet (1978), Jagte Raho Sone Walon (1983), and Swarg se Bidai (1989).
Gulammohammed Sheikh (born 1937) is a painter, poet and art critic from Gujarat. He was awarded the Padmashri in 1983 and the Padmabhushan in 2014 for his contribution to the field of art.
Haraprasad Tripathy
Haraprasad Tripathy is a Delhi-based contemporary Indian artist. He had a solo exhibition in 2017 titled 'Shifting Terrains: A Psychological Landscape' at the Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi and has been part of many group shows like 'Tentacles' (2011) and 'Titilation and Gratification' (2012). His current body of work deals with the issue of urbanisation and concerns of an individual in contemporary society, seen from his personal perspective and real life experiences.
Hemang Desai
Hemang Desai a bi-lingual poet, short story writer and a translator negotiating Gujarati, his mother-tongue and English. He has published three books of literary translations with critical introductions (1) Anuvidhan (Post-statement) (2010) which anthologised select Marathi poetry in Gujarati translation (2) Thirsty Fish and other Stories (2013) which carries English translations of eminent Gujarati poet Sundaram's short stories (3) Poetic Refractions (2012), a collection ofcontemporary Gujarati poetry in English translation. His poems and transcreations have appeared in World Literature Today, Etad, Vahi, Cerebration, Maple Tree Literary Supplement, Indian Literature, Sandhi, New Quest, Tathapi, Four Quarters Magazine, Danse Macabre, Museindia etc. He has recently finished the translation of Arun Kolatkar's poetry collection 'Kala Ghoda Poems' into Gujarati. He is presently translating fiction of eminent Gujarati Dalit writer Dalpat Chauhan into English and finalizing a monograph on Indian perspectives on translation theory. He works at Central University of Gujarat, Gandhianagar and can be reached at [email protected]
Hiralal Rajasthani
Huchangi Prasad
Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist
Ina Puri
Inderpal Grewal
Inderpal Grewal is professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University. She is the author of Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire and the Cultures of Travel (Duke University Press, 1996) and Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms (Duke University Press, 2005).
India Foundation for the Arts
Indira Chandrashekar
Indira Chandrashekar is a scientist, fiction writer, and the founder and principal editor of Out of Print, an online platform for short fiction from the Indian subcontinent. Her own stories have appeared in literary journals across the world; a collection will be published in 2017. She is co-editor of the anthology Pangea (Thames River Press, 2012).
J.V. Pawar
Known among people and friends as JaVi, J.V. Pawar (74) was one of the founding members of Dalit Panthers in Maharashtra. Pawar has been the part of Ambedkarite Movement for 52 years now. He was the youngest Samata Sainik Dal(founded by Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar) cadre from Dhobi Talaw branch when he was just twelve years old in 1957. When Dalit Panthers was announced in 1972 by Namdeo Dhasal, Raje Dhale and J.V. Pawar and others, they got instant support from Dalit masses as they had seen criticising the opportunistic politics of leaders from RPI (Republican Party of India) and their negligence to the social and economic issues of Dalits. His first poetry anthology Nakebandi was immediately translated into English as Blockade. However, his writings on the history of Republican Party, especially since from its beginning is a very significant contribution to the literary world. Once Sambhaji Bhagat Shahir, playwright, songwriter and an Ambedkarite activist said, 'we created so many things, but J.V. Pawar documented the movement.' He works as the general secretary of BaRiP (Bhartiya Republican Party, a political party leads by Prakash alias Balasaheb Ambedkar) and currently resides in Mumbai.
Jaswinder
Jaswinder is the author of six collectons of poetry. He received the Sahitya Akademi award in 2014 for his collection of ghazals Agarbatti. He returned the award in 2015 in protest against growing intolerance in the country. He lives in Canada.
Jayant Kaikini
Jayant Kaikini, Kannada poet, short-story writer, columnist and playwright, with six short-story volumes, five poetry collections, three collections of non-fiction, and three plays to his credit, is also a much sought-after award-winning lyricist, script and dialogue writer for Kannada films. He won his first Karnataka Sahitya Akademi award at the age of nineteen in 1974 for his debut poetry collection, followed by three more in 1982, 1989 and 1996, for his short-story collections. He has also received the Dinakar Desai Award for poetry, the B.H. Sridhar award for fiction, the Katha National Award and the Rujuwathu Trust Fellowship for his writing. He is the recipient of the Karnataka State Award for best dialogue and lyrics, and the Filmfare Award for best lyrics in Kannada four times – in 2008, 2009, 2016 and 2017. Born in the coastal temple-town Gokarn, Kaikini is a biochemist by training and worked with pharmaceutical companies in Mumbai for two decades before moving to Bangalore, where he lives presently. A well-known television personality, he was given an honorary doctorate from Tumkur University in 2011 for his contribution to Kannada literature, film and television. He was honoured as Zee Kannadiga of the Decade in 2016. He was the first recipient of the Kusumagraj Rashtriya Bhasha Sahitya Puraskar in 2010. His latest book is a collection of essays on cinema.
Jhilam Chattaraj
Jitish Kalat is a well-known contemporary artist. His solo presentations include 'Circa' at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne (2012); 'Fieldnotes: Tomorrow was here Yesterday' at the Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai (2011); 'Likewise' at Arndt, Berlin (2010); 'The Astronomy of the Subway' at Haunch of Venison, London (2010); 'Aquasaurus' at the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Paddington, Australia (2008) and 'Lonely Facts' at the Kunsthalle Luckenwalde, Luckenwalde, Germany (1998). He was a curator of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in 2014.
Johny ML
K M Sherrif
K M Sherrif writes in Malayalam and English and translates among Malayalam, English, Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati. His work includes Ekalavyas with Thumbs, the first selection of Gujarati Dalit writing in English, and Kunjupathumma's Tryst with Destiny -a study of Vaikom Muhammad Basheer's fiction. Sherrif teaches English at Calicut University.
K. Satchidanandan is a widely translated Malayalam poet and a bilingual writer, translator and editor. His most recent works available in English are While I Write and Misplaced Objects and Other Poems. For more on the author and his work see satchidanandan.com.
Kalpana Swaminathan
Kanchan Chander
Kanchan Chander studied painting and printmaking and at art colleges in New Delhi, Santiago, Berlin, and Paris. She received the International Print Biennale Award, Bradford, UK, in 1986. She has had numerous solo and group exhibitions all over the world. For more on her work, see kanchansartworks.net.
Kanji Patel
Kanji Patel's published works include novellas, short stories and poetry. He is editor of Vahi, a journal of poetry, ritual, and the multilingual expression of society. He has also edited the Gujarat volume of the People's Linguistic Survey of India (Orient BlackSwan, 2016) led by Ganesh Devy.
Kanupriya Dhingra
Kanupriya Dhingra is an MPhil research scholar at the Department of English, University of Delhi. Her translations have appeared in Indian Culture Forum and The Sunflower Collective.
Kareem James Abu-Zeid
Kareem James Abu-Zeid is an award-winning translator of poems and novels from across the Arab world. He is currently completing a doctorate in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley, with a focus on spirituality and modern poetry. He is also translating Najwan Darwish's second book.
Katherine Culver
Katherine Culver is a linguistic anthropologist studying at the University of Pennsylvania.
Kaushika Draavid
Kaushika Draavid is a researcher, translator and photographer. She lives and works in Banaras, Kanpur and Pune.
Kavitha Balakrishnan
Kavitha Balakrishnan is an artist, poet and art educator based in Kerala, India. She has an MFA in Art History from MS University Baroda (1998). Her PhD work is on the illustrated print-picture culture in Malayalam periodicals (2009). Since 2000, she has been engaging with the changing scenario of practice, writing and teaching art and art-history in Kerala. Her articles are widely published in journals like Marg, Art & Deal, TAKE on art, peer reviewed Journal of Illustration, Research Intellect, London etc. She also intensely engages with artistic languages at the crossroads of art, history and poetry. She has three collections of Malayalam poetry to her credit and has also done experimental displays at various poetry festivals in Kerala.
Kedar Namdas
Kedar Namdas is a visual artist based in Pune. He has completed BFA (Painting) from Sir J. J. School of Arts, Mumbai and MVA (Printmaking) from M. S. University, Baroda. His works were selected for Tokyo International Mini-Print Triennial and China Print Biennale last year.
Keerti Ramachandra
Keerti Ramachandra is a teacher by training, aptitude, and inclination. She is also a freelance editor and translator by virtue of being multilingual. Her translation of a Marathi novel, A Dirge for the Damned was shortlisted for the Crossword Award in 2015.
Keki Daruwalla
Keki Daruwalla writes poetry and fiction. He lives in Delhi. His novel Ancestral Affairs was recently published by Harper Collins. He won the Commonwealth Poetry Award (Asia) for his poetry volume Landscapes.
Khandakar Ohida
K.K. Muhamed
K.K. Muhamed did his M.A. in visual arts from Kala Bhavan, Viswabarati University, Shantiniketan. He has had eight solo exhibitions in India and more than 45 group shows in India and abroad. He has received several awards, including the Kerala Lalitha Kala Academy Award in 1990; the India International Arts Centre Kolkata Award; the Working Artists Association Award from Orissa; and the Bombay Arts Society Award.
K.M. Madhusudhanan
K.M. Madhusudhanan is an Indian film maker and artist, born 1956 in Alappuzha. His artistic practice flows seamlessly across various mediums in art and cinema, including video art and narrative feature film. His work confronts India's film history, the colonial period and contemporary war politics. He is deeply concerned with war, colonisation, and man-made borders. Marxism and Buddhism have been decisive influences on Madhusudhanan's art.
Koushiki Dasgupta
Krishna Mohan Shrimali
Krishna Mohan Shrimali was professor of history at the University of Delhi. He has written several research monographs and papers on ancient Indian history and archaeology. He was President of the Ancient Indian History Section, Indian History Congress; General President of Numismatic Society of India; and History Congresses of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and West Bengal. He was also Secretary of the Indian History Congress from 1992 to 1995.
Krishna Sobti
Krishna Sobti is a prominent Hindi novelist. She was born in West Punjab (present-day Pakistan) in 1925. She received the Sahitya Akademi Award for her novel Zindaginama. She also received the Shiromani Award in 1981 and the Hindi Academy Award in 1982. Her well-known novels and short stories include Dara se Bichuri, Mitro Marajani, Surajmukhi Andhere Ke, 'Nafisa', 'Sikka Badal Gaya', and 'Badalom Ke Ghere'.
Kumkum Sangari
Kumkum Sangari is currently the Vilas Professor of English and the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.
Labhshankar Jadavji Thakar
Labhshankar Thakar, also known by his pen names Lagharo and Vaidya Punarvasu, was a Gujarati poet, playwright and short story writer. He had a modernist approach to literature, and was heavily influenced by the theatre of the absurd and other traditions of experimental literature. He received the Ranjitram Suvarna Chandrak Award, the Narmad Suvarna Chandrak Award, the Kumar Chandrak Award, and the Sahitya Akademi Award.
Lakshmi Pillai
Lakshmi Pillai is one of the few female mridangam players of India. Daughter of mridanga vidwan Sri.Gurumurthy Thangavelu, Lakshmi hails from a family of musicians. She is the disciple of Padmabhushan Dr. T. V Gopalakrishnan. She is a national gold medalist of the year 2009-2010 organised by Nehru Yuva Kendra held at Chennai. She is a 'B-High' grade artist from All India Radio, Bangalore and a recipient of the CCRT scholarship. She has performed extensively in India and abroad. As part of Pandita Anuradha Pal's Sthree Shakti group, Lakshmi has been part of concert tours in Nigeria and Europe.
Lal Singh Dil
Lal Singh Dil (1943-2007) was born into a dalit family in Ludhiana district. He was part of the Naxalite movement and was arrested by the police. His first book of poetry is Bahut Sare Suraj (Many Suns), published in 1971. He then wrote his autobiography Dastan. His poems have been translated into Hindi, Urdu and English. A selection of his translations and memoirs, Poet of the Revolution, was published in English in 2012.
Latha Viswanathan
Latha Viswanathan is the author of a collection of short stories titled Lingering Tide, which received honorable mentions at the Southern California Book Festival and the New York Book Festival. The story 'Brittle' appeared in this collection. Her stories have won several awards including the Goodheart Prize for fiction and two Pushcart nominations.
Laxman Guru
Laxman Guru is a jogappa (transwoman) from Nipani who sings devotional songs in Marathi.
Linda Hess teaches at the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University. She is a renowned Kabir translator and scholar. She is deeply involved in translating poetry and studying ways in which it functions. Her latest publication is Bodies of Song (2015).
M. Mukundan
M. Mukundan is a novelist and short story writer. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award for Daivathinte Vikruthikal (God's Mischief) in 1989. Four of his novels have been made into feature films, with God's Mischief winning the State Award for best film. He was President of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi for three years. His stories and novels have been widely translated into various Indian languages as well as French.
Madhavikutty (Kamala Das)
Kamala Das (1934-2009) was an iconoclastic award-winning Indian poet in English and a fiction writer in Malayalam, besides being famous for her autobiography My Story in English, and her memoirs in Malayalam. She wrote six collections of poetry in English, and three novels and 11 collections of short stories in Malayalam.
Madhusudhanan
Makarand Sathe
An architect by profession, Makarand Sathe has been writing plays, novels and articles in Marathi for the last three decades. His plays have been performed in many national and international festivals. His works have been translated into English, French, Russian and many Indian languages. His three-volume socio-political history of Marathi theatre was published by the Oxford University Press in 2015.
Mala Dayal
Mala Dayal has long worked as an editor and publisher of books for children. Her work includes the Puffin Treasure of Modern Indian Stories, Nanak: The Guru, and The Story of Krishna.
Malini Seshadri
Malini Seshadri is a freelance writer, editor, and translator based in Chennai.
Mallikarjun B. Katakol
Mallikarjun Katakol is a Bangalore-based photographer. He has worked as a freelancer with advertising agencies and print media for the past 15 years. He was born in Dharwad, Karnataka, and studied at the CAVA Art School in Mysore. He then worked as a graphic designer in Bangalore for a couple of years. Following a stint as an assistant photographer in Mumbai, he set up his own company in 1993. In addition to commercial photography, he has pursued the craft of image-making in projects that explore the aesthetics of tradition in contemporary India.
Mamang Dai
Mamang Dai is a poet and novelist from Arunachal Pradesh, and a former journalist. She was president of the Arunachal Pradesh Union of Working Journalists. Her poetry, fiction and articles have been published in numerous journals and anthologies. She also worked with the World Wide Fund for Nature in the Eastern Himalaya Biodiversity Hotspots programme. She lives in Itanagar.
Manas Acharya
Manas Acharya is an inter-disciplinary visual artist and curator. He earned a diploma in fine arts from the Indian College of Art, Kolkata, and a postgraduate diploma from Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan. His work spans across various media and art practices, including drawing, painting, installation, video, performance art, documentary film, popular art and craft, and design and collaborative art projects. He is also engaged as a curator-coordinator of Studio 21, a multi-disciplinary art space that serves as a creative platform for young artists in Kolkata.
Manash 'Firaq' Bhattacharjee
Manash Bhattacharjee's poems have appeared in The London Magazine, the New Welsh Review, The Fortnightly Review, the Elohi Gadugi Journal, Mudlark, Metamorphoses, Modern Poetry in Translation, The Postcolonialist, and The Indian Quarterly. His first collection of poetry, Ghalib's Tomb and Other Poems (2013) was published by The London Magazine. He teaches at the School of Culture and Creative Expressions in the Ambedkar University, New Delhi.
Mangalesh Dabral
Mangalesh Dabral is a celebrated Hindi poet. He has published five books of poems, two collections of literary essays and socio-cultural commentary, a book of conversations, and a travelogue on his experiences in Iowa, where he was a fellow at the International Writing Program in 1991. He has received numerous awards, including the Shamsher Sammaan (1995), the Pahal Sammaan (1998) and the Sahitya Akademi Award (2000).
Manohar Shetty
Manohar Shetty has published seven books of poetry, including Domestic Creatures and Living Room. His poems have appeared in Shenandoah, The Common, Chelsea, the Atlanta Review and The Baffler in the USA; and in The London Magazine, Poetry Review and Poetry Wales in the UK. His poems have also been widely anthologised. He lives in Goa.
Medha Singh
Medha Singh is a Delhi-based poet. She is currently the India Editor at The Charles River Journal, and Editorial Board member of the Freigeist Verlag.
Meena Kandasamy
Meena Kandasamy (born 1984) is an Indian poet, fiction writer, translator and activist. Most of her works are centred on feminism and speak out against caste. As of 2013, Meena has published two collections of poetry, Touch (2006) and Ms. Militancy (2010). Two of her poems have won accolades in all-India poetry competitions. From 2001 to 2002, she edited The Dalit, the bi-monthly alternative English magazine of the Dalit Media Network. She lives in Chennai.
Meena Alexander has recently published her eighth book of poems, Atmospheric Embroidery. She has been a Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry, and her works include the PEN Award-winning Illiterate Heart. In 2014, she was a National Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. She is Distinguished Professor of English, Graduate Centre, Hunter College, CUNY. To no more about the writer and her work, see meenaalexander.com.
Meenakshi Sengupta
Meenakshi Sengupta finished her Bachelor of Visual Arts (painting) at the Government College of Art and Craft, University of Calcutta; and her Master's degree (painting) with distinction (Gold Medal) at M.S. University, Baroda in 2013. She had her first solo show titled 'Flavour Chart' at the well-known gallery Maskara in Mumbai in 2013. In 2009, she won the Nandlal Bose Award and received the Academy Award from the Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata. In 2012, she received the prestigious Nasreen Mohammedi Award from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S.U. She lives and works in Kolkata, West Bengal.
Merlin Moli
Merlin Moli is a Delhi-based artist. She has three decades of sculpting experience with various materials. She has participated in exhibitions both in India and elsewhere.
Michelle D'costa
Mini Krishnan
Mitra Phukan
M.K. Raghavendra
M.K. Raghavendra is a film scholar and critic. He received the National Award (the Swarna Kamal) for Best Film Critic in 1997. He has authored three volumes of academic film criticism: Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema; Bipolar Identity: Region, Nation and the Kannada Language Film; and The Politics of Hindi Cinema in the New Millennium: Bollywood and the Anglophone Indian Nation. He has also written two books on cinema for the general reader, 50 Indian Film Classics and Director's Cut: 50 Film-makers of the Modern Era.
M.M. Somashekharan
M.M. Somashekharan is a theoretician of Marxist politics and a cultural theorist. He was a student at Government College, Madappally, when he was arrested in connection with the Naxalite attack on Kayanna police station. He was then jailed in the Central Prison, Kannoor.
Mourid al-Barghouti
Mourid al-Barghouti is a Palestinian poet. His works include Collected Works (1997), I Saw Ramallah (2003), A Small Sun (2003), Muntasaf al-Layl (2005), and Midnight and Other poems (2008).
MP Pratheesh
Mridula Garg
Mridula Koshy
Mridula Koshy is a community organiser and library activist who works for The Community Library Project. She is also the writer of three works of fiction: If It Is Sweet, Not Only the Things That Have Happened and Bicycle Dreaming.
Muhammad Umar Memon
Muhammad Umar Memon was an accomplished scholar, translator, poet, Urdu short story writer, and the editor of The Annual of Urdu Studies. Memon served as the Professor Emeritus of Urdu Literature and Arabic Studies at the University of Wisconsin for 38 years. Besides working on the translation of Urdu works into English, he served on the editorial board of Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies and was also an advisor to the Urdu Project. He died on June 03, 2018.
The late Muhammad Ali was a voracious reader, poet and activist.
Mustansir Dalvi
N Kalyan Raman
N Kalyan Raman is a Chennai-based translator of contemporary Tamil fiction and poetry into English. He has published nine volumes of Tamil fiction in translation, with two more books forthcoming in the near future. He has also translated over 200 poems by leading contemporary Tamil poets, published in journals and anthologies in India and abroad. He also regularly contributes essays, reviews and articles on literature, culture and public policy. In February 2017, he received the prestigious Pudumaipithan award for the year 2015, given by Vilakku, for his contribution to Tamil literature through his translations.
Najwan Darwish was born in Jerusalem in 1978. He is a poet, journalist, editor and cultural critic. Currently he is chief editor of the cultural section of the Al Araby Al Jadeed newspaper. He serves as literary advisor to the Palestine Festival of Literature. Since the publication of his first collection in 2000, his poetry has been translated into several languages.
Nandini Dhar
Poet and academic Nandini Dhar is the author of Historians of Redundant Moments (Agape Editions), Jitakshara (Aainanagar Prakashani), and a chapbook called Lullabies Are Barbed Wire Nations (Two of Cups Press). Her poems are published in The Los Angeles Review, The Mayo Review, The Four Quarters Magazine, among other places. She also co-edits co-edit two online journals – Elsewhere and Aainanagar. Dhar has taught graduate and undergraduate classes on the postcolonial historical novels, food literatures, and cultures of domesticity in postcolonial and US ethnic novels. She teaches at the Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanitites, O P Jindal University. To know more about her work, please visit her website nandinidhar.com.
Naushil Mehta
Naushil Mehta is a writer, translator, director and producer. His play Atyare (Now), staged by Sabira Merchant's Studio 29, is a cult production. He is the founder of Vikalp (The Alternative), a group dedicated to theatre. A collection of his short plays was recently published as Leela Laghu Natako.
Nilanjan Das
Nilanjan Das graduated from the Rabindra Bharati University with an M.F.A. and B.F.A. from the Graphics Department. As a printmaker, he uses the reproductive possibilities of print, choosing objects and formats for his work that are common, popular, witty, interactive, communicative and commercial, often manipulating their marketable characteristics to connect to people.
Nilima Sheikh
Nilima Sheikh studied history at Delhi University and painting at M.S. University, where she later taught between 1977 and 1981. She began exhibiting her work in 1969, and has had 12 solo exhibitions. She has participated in several artists' camps and residencies, both in India and elsewhere. Her interest in theatre has led her to design theatre sets for several productions. She has also illustrated books for children, and written essays for journals and art books.
Nirban Bandhyopadhyay
Nirban Bandhyopadhyay was born in 1974 and raised in Hooghly, West Bengal. His first book of poems, Ei Janmo, Jaduprabanata was published in 2011. His second collection titled Mangsashi Medhar Trapeze was published in 2013, and was awarded the Krittibas Award in 2015.
Nirupama Dutta
Nirupama Dutta is an established figure in the field of Punjabi poetry and short fiction. Her poems have featured in various anthologies. They have also been translated into English, Hindi, Kannada, Bengali and Urdu. In 2004, she co-edited with Ajeet Caur an anthology of SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) poetry titled Our Voices. A seasoned translator of poetry and fiction, she has translated and edited Stories of the Soil, an anthology of Punjabi short stories published by Penguin India.
N.S. Madhavan
N.S. Madhavan is a Malayalam writer, commentator and columnist. He has published six collections of stories, two plays, a travelogue, a book of literary criticism, and a novel. The English translation of his novel, Litanies of Dutch Battery, won the annual Crossword award for best Indian fiction in translation. His most recent work is a collection of stories, Pancha Kanyakakal (Five Virgins).
Om Prakash Valmiki
Om Prakash Valmiki (1950-2013) is one of the most important voices in Hindi literature. He was a Dalit writer and poet from Uttar Pradesh. His autobiography Joothan (1997) is considered a major milestone in Hindi and Dalit writing.
Orijit Sen
Orijit Sen is a graphic artist, cartoonist, muralist and designer. He is author of the graphic novel River of Stories as well as many other works of graphic fiction and non-fiction. He is one of the founders of People Tree, a collaborative studio and store for artists, designers and craftspeople. Sen is also Mario Miranda Chair Visiting Professor at Goa University.
P N Gopikrishnan
P. Udayabhanu
The late P. Udayabhanu regularly contributed poems to periodicals and also published a book of collected poems. He wrote the introduction to the first edition of Thadavarakkavitakal. He also worked with All India Radio. Udayabhanu was arrested when he was a student of history at the Government College, Madappally, and spent more than 500 days in the Central Prison in Kannoor.
Pallav Chander
Perumal Murugan is a well-known Tamil novelist, short story writer and poet. Three of his novels have been translated into English: Seasons of the Palm, which was shortlisted for the prestigious Kiriyama Prize in 2005, Current Show, and One Part Woman. He has received awards from the Government of Tamil Nadu as well as from Katha Books.
Pinky lives in Kolkata. She was a participant in the Kolkata Women's Dialogue, a series of social art events initiated by artists Joan Marie Kelly and Shikah Das in the brothels of Kolkata.
P.K. Parakkadavu
P.K. Parakkadavu has published story collections, children's literature, essays, memoirs, and translations. He received the S.K. Pottekkad Award for Maunathinte Nilavili (The Wail of Silence); the Abu Dhabi 'Arangu' Sahitya Award for Parakkadavinte Kathakal; the Vaikom Muhammad Basheer Award of the Kerala Language Institute for the collection Aval Peyyunnu (She Rains); and the Kuttamath Award for the poem 'Sneham Kaaykkunna Maram' (The Love-bearing Tree).
Poile Sengupta
Prashant Bagad
Prashant Bagad is a writer and critic. He has received the Baburav Bagul Shabda Award and the P.N. Pandit Award for his short story collection, Vivade Vishade Pramade Pravase. He teaches philosophy at Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur.
Pratheesh
Pratheesh is a poet and artist. He has published three poetry collections in Malayalam. He lives and works in Kerala.
Pratishtha Pandy
Priya Adarkar
Priya Adarkar is a writer and translator who has translated the works of iconic Marathi writers and playwrights such as Vijay Tendulkar, Satish Alekar and Vishnubhat Godse.
Priya Kuriyan is a children's book illustrator, comic book artist and an animator. A graduate of the National Institute of design (Ahmedabad), she has directed educational films for the Sesame street show (India) and the Children's Film Society of India (CFSI) and illustrated numerous children's books for various Indian publishers. She currently lives in New Delhi, filling her sketchbooks with funny caricatures of its residents. You can see her work at priyakuriyan.blogspot.com, pkuriyan.blogspot.com
Priya Sarukkai Chabria
Priya Sarukkai Chabria has a novel, two poetry collections, speculative fiction, and a work of non-fiction in collaboration with the photographer Christopher Taylor to her credit. She has also co-translated the eighth century Tamil poet Andal, in Andal: The Autobiography of a Goddess. She edits poetry at Sangam. For more on her work see priyawriting.com.
Pushpamala N.
Pushpamala has been called 'the most entertaining artist-iconoclast of contemporary Indian art'. She seeks to subvert the dominant discourse through her sharp and witty work as a sculptor, writer, curator and provocateur. She lives in Bengaluru.
Ra Sh
Ra Sh's poems have been published in various national and international online journals. He has translated works from English to Malayalam and vice versa. His poems were included in the anthology A Strange Place Other Than Earlobes, and in a collection called Architecture of Flesh, published by Poetrywala, Mumbai.
Radwa Ashour
Radwa Ashour is an Egyptian writer and translator. Hajar Dafi is her first novel. Her trilogy Gharnata was declared 'best book of the year' by the General Egyptian Book Organization in 1994. She co-edited the Encyclopedia of Arab Women Writers: 1873–1999 (2005). She also supervised the translation of the ninth volume of the Cambridge History of Literary Criticism (2006) into Arabic.
Rahman Abbas
Rahman Abbas' novels include Nakhlistan ki Talash (In Search of an Oasis), Ek Mamnua Muhabbat ki Kahani (The Story of Forbidden Love), Khuda ke Saaye mein Ankh Micholi (Hide and Seek in the Shadow of God) and Rohzin (The Melancholy of Souls). He has also written a collection of essays called Ekkiswin Sadi mein Urdu Novel aur Digar Mazameen (The Urdu Novel in the Twenty-First Century and Other Essays). He was awarded the Fiction Award in 2011 for Khuda Ke Saaye Mein Ankh Micholi by the State Academy of Maharashtra.
Rahul Rai
Rahul Rai is a poet and playwright. He has worked with theatre groups such as The Players in Delhi, and Motley in Mumbai. He is co-founder of the theatre company T for Theatre. He is an editor and contributor to Kachhikavita, an online journal of poetry in Hindi. His plays include Kaali Ghadi, Shoony Batta Sannata, Daalmot, Virah and most recently Outer Dilli.
Rajesh Joshi
Rajesh Joshi is a Hindi poet, playwright and a journalist. He was the recipient of the 2002 Sahitya Akademi Award in Hindi for his collection of poems Do Panktiyon ke Beech (Between Two Lines). He returned the award in 2015 in protest against growing intolerance in the country. He lives in Bhopal.
Rajesh Vangad
Rajesh Vangad is a Warli painter from Ganjad, Dahanu, an Adivasi village in coastal Maharashtra. He has exhibited his work at Pune, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Bhopal in India, and London and Barcelona in Europe and through the Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India Limited, as well as the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Government of India.
Rajeshree Thakker
Rajeshree Thakker is an artist based in Chicalim, Goa. She won the State Art awards from 1986 onward and received the Harmony Award for Emerging Artist and the Lalit Kala Akademi's Millennium Art Award in 2001. Her recent accomplishments include being a participant of 'The Sacred Feminine', an exhibition on Goddesses and other Archetypes in March 2018, 'Kama Interrupted', an exhibition reinterpreting the Kama Sutra in February 2015, a show on Goan art in Hyderabad and 'Bioscope', an exhibition commemorating the centenary year of Indian cinema in 2013. She can be contacted at [email protected]
Rajib Chowdhury
Rajib Chowdhury is a visual artist based in Baroda. He studied Painting in Govt. College of Art & Craft, Kolkata and Printmaking in Faculty of Fine Arts, M. S. University, Baroda. He has been showing his works nationally and internationally through several group shows and solo shows since 2000. He is the recipient of National Scholarship from the Ministry of Human Resource Development, AIFACS Award, and Gujarat State Lalit Kala Academy Award.
Rakhi is a jogappa (transwoman) who sings devotional songs in Marathi.
Ranbir Kaleka's work reflects a view of the world that is highly internalised and appears to place much reliance on the juxtaposition of improbabilities. In iterations of figurative painting and sculpture the relationship with the metaphysical and surrealist imagination is oblique rather than direct; he incorporates personal experience with wider and more general issues. A later body of work sees him as a painter of expressionist fabulism. The artist's movement into video art, in which he projected video onto a painted canvas, has been an essential endeavour in his further exploration of the 'psychological event', one which can take place only outside the physical confines of the frame of the painting, through the use of light to create the image and the subsequent aura of the image. Kaleka has also created and exhibited constructed photographs, sculptures and installations. The artist's work has been widely exhibited in India and abroad.
Randi L. Clary
Randi Clary is a doctoral student focusing on Sikh studies in the Religious Studies department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She completed her M.A. in religious studies at Rice University.
Ranjit Hoskote
Ranjit Hoskote is a poet, cultural theorist and curator. His collections of poems include Vanishing Acts: New & Selected Poems 1985-2005 and Die Ankunft der Vögel. His published translations of the poems of the fourteenth-century Kashmiri mystic Lal Ded is called I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded. He is the editor of Dom Moraes: Selected Poems, the first annotated critical edition of a major Anglophone Indian poet's work.
Rita Kothari
Rita Kothari is an author and translator who writes in both Gujarati and English. She has translated several Gujarati works in English. Her works include Translating India: The Cultural Politics of English (2003), The Burden of Refuge: The Sindhi Hindus of Gujarat (2007), Unbordered Memories: Partition Stories from Sindh (2009) and Memories and Movements (2016).
Ritu Menon
Ritu Menon is a feminist publisher and writer. She was convener of a multi-language project on 'The Gendered Nature of Censorship in India' from 2000 to 2005. The project worked with over 300 writers from more than 10 Indian languages. She has written extensively on censorship and dissent in newspapers, magazines, and periodicals.
Riyas Komu
Riyas Komu was born in 1971 in Kerala, and moved to Mumbai in 1992 to study literature. Dropping out during his final year, Komu eventually obtained his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Fine Art from the Sir J. J. School of Art in 1997 and 1999 respectively. The artist's oeuvre, spanning several different media and genres, is particularly noticed for its strong political overtones. His paintings, to put it in his own words, carry a protest symbol one way or the other.
Riyaz Latif
Originally from Ahmedabad, Gujarat, Riyaz Latif is currently a professor at FLAME University in Pune. He emerged as a significant voice in Urdu poetry during the last decade of the twentieth century, and his poems have been published in reputed Urdu literary journals of India & Pakistan. Along with two collections of Urdu poetry, Hindasa Be-Khwaab Raton Ka (2006) and Adam Taraash (2016), as well as a book of translations into Urdu from European poetry, titled Mera Khoya Awazah (2014), he has published a number of articles, and has translated Urdu fiction and poetry into English.
Robin S. Ngangom
Robin Ngangom is a bilingual poet and translator who writes in English and Manipuri. He describes himself as 'a politically-discriminated-against and historically-overlooked poet who, nonetheless, believes that poetry cannot do without love in all its outlandish manifestations'.
Rochelle Potkar
Rochelle Potkar is a fiction writer and poet. Her book, The Arithmetic of Breasts and Other Stories was shortlisted for The Digital Book of the Year Award 2014, by Publishing Next. She was a writer-in-residence at The University of Iowa's International Writing Program, Fall Residency 2015. She has read her poems in Hyderabad at Ten Thousand Waves, Our Sacred Space, Hyderabad Literary Festival (HLF); in Chennai at the Prakriti Festival, The American Library; in Hong Kong at Out Loud, Fringe club, and with the Peel Street poets; in Goa at Goa Arts and Literary Festival (GALF); and in Iowa city.
Rollie Mukherjee
Rollie Mukherjee is an artist and critic based in Baroda. She studied at Visva Bharathi, Shantiniketan, and the Maharaja Sayyaji Rao University in Baroda. Her work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows in India and abroad.
Romila Thapar
Romila Thapar (born in 1931) is an Indian historian whose principal area of study is ancient India. She is the author of several books including the popular volume A History of India, Vol. 1. She is currently professor emerita at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Rupalee Burke
Rupalee Burke heads the English department in a college in Ahmedabad and uses her writing/ translation/ editing/ research skills for cultural activism. Her translations of works by writers of the Dalit, Adivasi, and denotified nomadic communities have been published as anthologies, and in journals such as Indian Literature and Muse India.
Rusati Sen
Rusati Sen is an Associate Professor of Economics at Basanti Devi College, Kolkata. She is author of the authorised biography of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, which won the Indrani Roy Memorial Award for the best non-fiction book for the years 1997-99. Her major publications include Prachchhanner Akhyan (Thema 2002), Khada Bodi Thod (Thema 2005), Paraner Alo Bhubaner Andhar: Mayeder Katha Meyeder Katha (Patralekha 2012), Phaltu Lekhay Phaltu Kathay (Sutradhar 2012), Bibhutibhushan: Dwander Binyash (Papyrus 2013), Chhodano Srinkhal: Jeebaney O Bayaney, and Manusher Katha Phanusher Boyan (Ebong Mushayera), Kichhu Muhoorto Kichhu Ashroy (Ebong Mushayera, 2017).
S. Vijayaraghavan
S. Vijayaraghavan holds an M.F.A. degree with a major in painting from the College of Art in New Delhi. He has participated in various shows, festivals and residency programmes in India and elsewhere. For more on the artist and his work, see here.
Saadat Hasan Manto was a Pakistani writer, playwright and author born in Ludhiana, British India. Writing mainly in the Urdu language, he produced 22 collections of short stories, a novel, five series of radio plays, three collections of essays, two collections of personal sketches. Manto was tried for obscenity six times; thrice before 1947 in British India, and thrice after independence in 1947 in Pakistan, but never convicted. Boo, Khol Do, and Toba Tek Singh are some of his renowned short stories. On January 18, 1955, Manto passed away.
Saba Hasan
Saba Hasan is a multidisciplinary artist. She has worked on book installations, photographs, paintings, videos and sound since 1998. She has an M.A. in cultural anthropology with certification in art/ art history from the Ecole d'Arts Visuels, Lausanne, and Cambridge University. Her work was showcased at the 55th Venice Biennale at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia, as part of the Imago Mundi Collection (2013). She received the Raza National Award for painting in 2005 and international fellowships for the 'Book of Disquiet' from Syracuse University, New York; the French Cultural Ministry, Paris (2006); the George Keyt Foundation (2002) and the Oscar Kokoschka Academy, Salzburg (2010).
Sabika Abbas
Sabika Abbas is a poet, short-story writer, and translator. She is a graduate in history from the Lady Shri Ram College for Women (LSR), New Delhi. She did her postgraduate work in conflict transformation and peace-building from the ASSK Centre for Peace, LSR. She is currently pursuing an M.A. in modern Indian history from the Department of Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Delhi. She has worked with the Youth Forum for Foreign Policy, Adhay and Pehchan, Chehel, and Sandrishti.
Sabitha Satchi
Sagar Bhaskar Walke
Sagar Bhaskar Walke is a jogappa (transwoman) who sings devotional songs in Marathi.
Saheli Khastagir
Saikat Majumdar
Saitya Brata Das
Saitya Brata Das teaches literature and philosophy at Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Sajitha Shankar
Sajitha Shankar was a member of the Lalit Kala Akademi, Kerala, and was on the governing body of Vyloppilly Sanskriti Bhavan. She has served on the award juries of several art exhibitions. She has had numerous solo shows around the world. She is also founder-director of an innovative centre for art in Kallar, the Gowri Art Institute. She works at the Garhi Studios of the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi.
Salik Shah
Salik Shah is a writer, editor and film director based in New Delhi. He edits the Mithila Review, a quarterly journal of international science fiction and fantasy. His poetry and fiction has appeared in leading publications including Asimov's Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Vayavya, Juggernaut, and La.lit. You can find him on Twitter: @salik. Website: http://salikshah.com.
Salil Chaturvedi writes short fiction and poetry in English and Hindi. He was the winner of the Wordweavers Poetry Contest 2015, the Asian region winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Competition, 2008, and the Unisun/British Council Short Story Competition 2007. He has brought out two poetry collections—In The Sanctuary Of A Poem, and Ya Ra La Va Sha Sa Ha (in Hindi), both available on Amazon.
Salim Yusufji
Salma is a well-known name to readers of contemporary Tamil literature. With two volumes of poetry – Oru Maalaiyum Innoru Maalaiyum and Pacchai Devadai – and a novel – Irandaam Jaamangalin Kadhai – all of which have been translated to several languages, Salma has made her mark as a distinctive literary voice. Lakshmi Holmstrom's English translation of her novel, entitled The Hour Past Midnight, was recently shortlisted for the Crossword Book Prize. Salma's poetry and fiction have carved an undeniable place in the Tamil literary terrain for the articulation of desire and sexuality as well as the emotions that animate the domestic space every day, subjects that are often considered beneath literary consideration.
Sanaz Davood Zadeh Far
Sanghamitra Halder
Sanghamitra Haldaer writes poetry and non-fiction. Her collections include Naamaano Rucksack (2010), Deergho-ee (2014) and Hey Ektu Sambodhan (2016).
Sankar Basu
Sankar Basu is a poet. His collections of poetry include Shudhu Sur Jege Aachhe, E Basona E Nirbason, and Backbencharer Travelogue.
Santanu Mitra
Santanu Mitra graduated in visual arts from the Government College of Art & Crafts, Kolkata. He completed his postgraduate work in printmaking from the same institution in 2001. He has participated in various exhibitions, group shows and art workshops across India. He also likes to illustrate graphic novels.
Sarabjeet Garcha
Sarabjeet Garcha is a bilingual poet, editor and translator. He has published a book of poems in Hindi and two in English, the latest being Lullaby of the Ever-Returning. He received a junior fellowship in Hindi literature from the Ministry of Culture in 2011. Sarabjeet is co-founder and director of Copper Coin, an independent multilingual publishing company.
Sarover Zaidi
Savi Sawarkar
Savi, as he is popularly known, had to face mainstream modern Indian art and struggled to evolve a space for Dalit art and imagery in the realm of the art gallery exhibiting space. He is the first artist in independent India to address issues of unsociability and the Devadasi tradition through the medium of painting, with highly communicative figures narrating their own existence in the Brahmanical social order. Savi's ideas emerged from the legacy of social struggle of Mahatma Phule and Dr Ambedkar.
Sehar Qazi
Sehar Qazi, 29, hails from Srinagar, Kashmir. She completed her postgraduate degree in Convergent Journalism from the Central University of Kashmir. Her first assignment was to report and write on the 2014 September flood in Kashmir. In 2016, she started her career as a photojournalist in New Delhi. Her work is primarily focused on social issues, specifically on the issues facing refugees and marginalised communities. Presently, she is experimenting with black and white photography instead of using a variety of vibrant colours for a long-term project (Refugees in Delhi) which she intends to complete by the end of this year. She currently lives and works in New Delhi. She can be contacted at [email protected]
S.G. Vasudev
S.G. Vasudev obtained his diploma from the Government College of Arts in Chennai. He has won several awards, such as the National Award from the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi. His works have been included in important national collections, and have travelled widely all over the world. He is a founder member of the Cholamandal Artists' Village in Chennai. He lives and works in Bangalore.
Sayed Haider Raza
Sayed Haider Raza (1922–2016) was one of modern India's greatest painters and abstractionists. He was born in Babaria, Madhya Pradesh and spent most of his life in Paris, before returning to Delhi in 2010.
Shailesh B.R.
Based in Vadodara, Gujarat, Shailesh B.R received his P.G Diploma in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S University, Baroda. He participated in the Atelier Mondial Residency/ Pro Helvetia – Swiss Art Council, Switzerland in the year 2016, and exhibited his work recently, from 13 July to 12 August 2017, at the Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi. He was the winner of the FICA Emerging Artist Award in 2015.
Shanta Acharya
Shanta Acharya is a poet and novelist. She worked in the asset management industry and has written extensively on the subject. She is the author of eleven books. Her publications range from poetry, literary criticism and fiction to finance. Her latest collection, Imagine: New and Selected Poems, is published by HarperCollins (India). More on her work can be read here.
Shanta Gokhale
Sharankumar Limbale
Sharankumar Limbale is one of Maharashtra's foremost writer-activists, and the author of more than forty works, including novels, poetry, short stories, and essays.
Sharanya Ramprakash
Sharmistha Mohanty
Sharmistha Mohanty is the author of three prose works, Book One, New Life and Five Movements in Praise. She has also translated a selection of Tagore's short fiction, Broken Nest and Other Stories. Her translation of the Bengali classic Pather Panchali is forthcoming from Penguin. She is the founding editor of the online literature journal Almost Island. Mohanty is on the International Faculty at the Creative Writing MFA programme, City University of Hong Kong.
Shashi Deshpande
Shashi Deshpande has written novels, short stories, essays and books for children over several decades. She has also translated works from Kannada and Marathi into English. Her most recent novel is Strangers to Ourselves.
Shiraz Hussain
Shivaraju B.S.
Shivaraju B.S. whose artist-sobriquet is 'Cop Shiva' is a professional artist/photographer with ten years of experience as a coordinator of the art space and residency 1Shanthiroad in Bangalore, India. During these ten years, he has coordinated and managed more than hundred exhibitions and art events, and has assisted more than fifty international artists in residency. In his practice he documents the complexity of rural and urban India, focusing on people and portraiture as a genre. He is fascinated with the idea of masquerade and the roles people play in public and private. His portfolio includes intimate portraits of urban migrants, people of alternative sexuality, street performers and others living in the hinterland of urban and rural conflict. He captures the diversity of humans who live on the edge and represent the spirit of our times. His works are presented in Gallery Sumukha in Bangalore and Art Heritage Gallery in New Delhi. He has had the opportunity to present his work in seven individual shows in well reputed galleries and museums. It has also been part of several group shows, nationally and internationally, including Chobi Mela in Bangladesh, India Art Fair and Kochi Biennale. He is the recipient of the 2017 grant Prohelvetia-Switzerland and Swedish Art Council and was the 2016 finalist of the most prestigious Harvard University Peabody Museum Robert Gardner Fellowship of Photography. In 2001, he joined the Karnataka Police Department. Read his extended bio here.
Shivarama Padikkal
Shoili Kanungo
Shoili Kanungo is a graphic designer, illustrator and visual artist. She has worked on a range of communication design projects in Sydney and New Delhi. She is currently visiting faculty at the School of Planning and Architecture. For more on her work, see shoilikanungo.com.
Shreyas Karle
Working across disciplines, Shreyas Karle uses formats such as illustration, collage, video, publications, sculptural forms and collaborative community projects to visually harness absurdity and social puns that shine light upon more serious psychological issues and situations. In his own words, Karle concerns himself with the grammar of art, and his process-based practice comes together in unique ways that is more concerned with the idea than the final form. Karle purposefully works against ideas of linear creative processes and celebrates the accidental findings of research that link his nomadic moments of inspiration. In addition to his work as a visual artist and directly linked to process of his practice, Karle is also the founder and co-director of CONA, an artist run space in Mumbai, and has also served as the Artistic Director of Sandarbh, another artist-run residency in a village in Rajasthan. Karle has participated in the New Museum Triennial (2015), Kochi Biennale (2012-13) and also exhibited at the ESSL Museum in Vienna. He has been awarded residencies at Gasworks, ProHelvetia, Montalvo Arts Center and various honors such as the FICA Emerging Artist Award, the Bodhi Award, and the Nasreen Mohamedi Scholarship from the Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU Baroda. He is in the collection of the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco and prominent private collections. His projects also include the Aichi Triennial, Japan in 2016. Shreyas Karle returns to his role as a keen observer of mountainous entities with a new series of drawings. The triangular collaged piece defines and hides the shape of the mountain simultaneously. The vastness of the mountain often results into a single dimensional view of the mountain; the drawing allows the human metaphor to define the rear of the mountain. Riser and tread follow a fixed pattern until a shift in the perspective creates a periodical change in the role-play. The riser becomes the tread and vice versa.
Shriranga
Adya Rangacharya (1904-1984) was one of India's most eminent dramatists. He wrote 40 full-length and 67 one-act plays, as well as books and articles on the theatre. He also wrote about the Gita and translated Bharata's Natyashastra into Kannada and English. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award, Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, and the Padma Bhushan. He was the first director of the Kalidasa Academy in Ujjain.
Shruthi Vishwanath
Shubha Mudgal
Shubha Mudgal is a singer of Hindustani classical music. She was awarded the 1996 National Film Award for Best Non-Feature Film Music Direction for 'Amrit Beej'; the 1998 Gold Plaque Award for Special Achievement in Music, at the 34th Chicago International Film Festival, for her music in the film Dance of the Wind; and the Padma Shri in 2000. Her first guru was Pandit Ramashreya Jha, in Allahabad. She pursued her musical education in Delhi under Pandit Vinay Chandra Maudgalya.
Shubigi Rao
Shubigi Rao is an artist and writer, currently working on 'Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book', a decade-long film, book, and art project about the history of book destruction. Her publications include Written in the Margins; Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book, Vol. I of V; History's Malcontents: The Life and Times of S. Raoul. Read more on her work here.
Siddappa G. Algonda
Siddappa Algonda is a jogappa (transwoman) who sings devotional songs in Kannada.
SK Sahajahan
Smruthi Gargi Eswar
Sneha Chowdhury
Sneha Chowdhury is a member of the editorial collective of Guftugu.
Soibam Haripriya
Soibam Haripriya is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics. Her writings have appeared in East Wind – The North East Journal, The Telegraph (Kolkata), Alternative Perspective, Indian Currents, The Sangai Express, Eastern Quarterly and Imphal Free Press, to name a few. She is currently engaged in documenting and analysing the changing meaning of 'sites' in the cultural landscape of Manipur. She has a special interest in reading and writing poetry, besides translating Manipuri literary work to English. Her poems have been included in an anthology called Tattooed with Taboos (Loktakleima Publications, 2011). She blogs at Nambul Turel.
Sophia Naz
Pushcart Prize nominee (2016), Sophia Naz is a poet, writer, translator and an editor published in numerous literary journals including Poetry International Rotterdam, The Adirondack Review, Scroll, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Daily O, Dawn, BlazeVOX, The Stonecoast Review, Cactus Heart, Askew Poetry, Bank Heavy Press, Spilled Ink, Lantern Journal, Convergence, Antiphon Poetry UK, AAJ, The Sunflower Collective, AntiSerious, Zubaan Journal, Pseudomag, The Ghazal Page, Life & Legends among others. Her poetry collections are Peripheries, Pointillism and Date Palms. Naz is Poetry Editor at The Sunflower Collective and City, a Quarterly of South Asian literature. She is the founder of Rekhti, a site on avant-garde Urdu poetry. Her website is www.trancelucence.net
Souradeep Roy
Souradeep Roy is a poet, translator and member of the Guftugu editorial collective.
Sridala Swami
Sridala Swami writes poetry and lives in Hyderabad.
K. Srilata
K. Srilata is a poet, fiction writer, and professor of English at IIT Madras. Her collections of poems include Bookmarking the Oasis, Writing Octopus, Arriving Shortly and Seablue Child. She co-edited the anthology Rapids of a Great River: The Penguin Book of Tamil Poetry. Her novel Table for Four, longlisted in 2009 for the Man Asian literary prize, was published by Penguin.
Srinivas Kuruganti
Srinivas Kuruganti is a photographer whose work explores the lives and relationships of people in communities that face both economic and social hardships in India. Srinivas' work has evolved over 20 years, shifting between the personal and the political. While his early work revolved around his community of friends and activism in New York and London, his current documentary practice focuses on environmental issues.
Subhadip Maitra
Subhadip Maitra is an author, translator, and journalist. He writes in English and Bengali. His poetry collections include Jadukori Boighar (2014) and Adar Bapari Jabe Armeni Ghate (2016). One of his stories was included in Shunya Doshoker Golpo Sangraha, an anthology of Bengali short stories.
Subhro Bandhopadhyay
Subhro Bandhopadhyay is the author of four books of poetry, one of which fetched him the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar in 2013. Two of his books have been translated into Spanish, and published in Spain. He has also written a biography of Pablo Neruda in Bengali. He received the Antonio Machado International Poetry Fellowship from the Government of Spain.
Sujith S N
Sukanya Ghosh
Sukanya Ghosh is an artist, animator, and designer. She works with popular imagery, photographs, collage, poetry, and the moving image. She trained in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University of Baroda and Animation Film Design from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. She has received the Charles Wallace India Trust Award, Sarai Independent Fellowship; commissions from the French Embassy in India, Royal Commonwealth Society, Motiroti, UK among others. She has been Artist-in-Residence at Khoj, New Delhi; Spike Island, Bristol, UK; and AIR Vallauris, France. Her recent shows include Mutations, 24 Jor Bagh, New Delhi; Fòcas India: Document (various venues in India, Scotland); Goa Photo 2017; The Surface of Things (2016 Alliance Française, New Delhi and 2017 Dr Bhau Daji Lad City Museum, Mumbai); India Art Fair 2017; Tales & Fables (2015, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Yokohama). She currently lives and works between Delhi and Calcutta.
Sukanya Venkataraman
Sukkanya Ramgopal
Sukkanya Ramgopal is India's first woman ghatam player. Disciple of ghatam legend Sri Vikku Vinayakram, she is one of the foremost exponents of Carnatic percussion in India. She has performed extensively at home and abroad. The ghata tharang, where she plays melody on multiple ghatams, is her brainchild. She leads an all-women's instrumental ensemble called Sthree Thaal Tharang. She is the recipient of numerous awards and titles, including the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 2014.
Sukrita Paul Kumar
Sukrita Paul Kumar is a well-known poet, translator and educator. She held the Aruna Asaf Ali Chair at Delhi University till recently, and has been a fellow of the International Writing Programme in Iowa, USA, the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla, and the Hong Kong Baptist University. She is an honorary faculty member of the Durrell Centre at Corfu, Greece. Her books include Dream Catcher, Untitled, Poems Come Home (with Hindustani translations of her poems by Gulzar), Narrating Partition, Conversations on Modernism and The New Story.
Suman Keshari
Suman Keshari is a poet and freelance writer. She has published four collections of poems namely Yagyavalkya se Behas, 2008, Monalisa ki Aankhen, 2013, Shabd Aur Sapne (e-book, 2015) and Piramidon ki tho Mein (2018). She is well known for her rewritings of Indian mythological figures such as Draupadi, Karna, Gandhari, Seeta and Savitri. Her poems have been received with much appreciation at forums like ICCR, Sahitya Akademi, Raza Foundation, Benaras Hindu University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Central University of Gujarat, Bhartiya Jnanapeeth, All India Radio, IIT Mumbai and various literary festivals held at Patna, Ajmer, Bikaner, Dehradoon, Port Blair, among others.
Sumana Chandrashekar
Sumana Chandrashekar is a carnatic vocalist and ghatam player. She has studied vocal music and the ghatam under Vidushi Rupa Sridhar and Vidushi Sukkanya Ramgopal. She has worked on educational projects that incorporate music, and conducted music/ sound workshops for school teachers. She was project coordinator for a ghatam-making training project supported by the Sangeet Natak Akademi. In 2015 she received a grant from the Sandbox Collective, Goethe Institut to create an experimental performance work titled 'Rendu Ghatam'. She currently works as a programme executive and is responsible for the Arts Practice programme at the India Foundation for the Arts.
Sumona Chakravarty
Sumona Chakravarty holds degrees in art and design from the Srishti School of Art Design and Technology, Bangalore. She earned an M.A. in art and design for civic engagement from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. She has worked in the field of community art and participatory design practices in India, the USA, and Mexico. Chakravarty explores the role of participatory art and design practices in creating spaces for civic engagement and reactivating the public domain.
Suneet Chopra
Surjeet Kalsey
Surjeet Kalsey (born in Amritsar) is a Canadian poet, dramatist, short story writer and translator. He lives in British Columbia and writes in both Punjabi and English.
Surjit Akre
Born in Taran Tarn, Punjab, Surjit Akre has been painting for more than 40 years. She received a postgraduate degree in easel painting from the Academy of Fine Arts, Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Russia, and was decorated with the Order of the Red Banner of Labour in St. Petersburg. Akre has held over 70 solo painting exhibitions in India, Russia, the US and Canada, and has participated in numerous national and international exhibitions and artist camps. She makes use of oil, acrylic, water colour, pastel, ink and pencil in her work. Her works feature in several public and private collections in India and elsewhere.
Surjit Patar
Surjit Patar is one of the most celebrated Punjabi poets. His first collection of ghazals is titled Hava vich Likhe Harf (Words Written in Air). He was given the Sahitya Akademi award for his poetry collection Hanere vich Sulgadi Varnmala (Alphabets Smouldering in Darkness) in 1994. He returned the award in 2015 to protest against growing intolerance in the country.
Susmit Panda
Susmit Panda was born in 1996. He began composing poetry at the age of fifteen. Since then he's been trotting out poems recklessly and his first book, titled 50 Arteries, was published in 2016.
Tamim al-Barghouti
Tamim al-Barghouti is a Palestinian poet, columnist and political scientist. His collections of poetry include Mijana and Al-Manzar. He studied politics at Cairo University and Boston University, where he received a doctorate in political science. His works on history and political thought include Benign Nationalism: Nation State Building Under Occupation, The Case of Egypt, and The Umma and the Dawla: The Nation State and the Arab Middle East. He was awarded a poetry prize in 2000 by the Regional Cultural Foundation in Marrakesh.
Tejaswini Niranjana
Tejaswini Niranjana won the Central Sahitya Akademi Prize for her translation of M.K. Indira's Phaniyamma (1989) and the Karnataka Sahitya Akademi Prize for her translation of Niranjana's Mrityunjaya (1996). She has also translated Pablo Neruda's poetry and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar into Kannada. Her translations into English include Vaidehi's Gulabi Talkies (2006). She grew up in Bangalore, and has studied and worked in Mumbai. She is currently professor of cultural studies at Lingnan University, Hong Kong.
T.M. Krishna
T.M. Krishna is a Carnatic music vocalist. He was born in Chennai in 1976. Krishna has been written about extensively by art reviewers and music critics worldwide. He has been featured in several publications, for both his music and his many and growing contributions off-stage. He has received numerous awards and titles from various institutions around the world. In 2013, his book A Southern Music – The Karnatik Story was released by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen and the chairman of Kalakshetra, Gopalkrishna Gandhi. It discusses the philosophy, aesthetics, sociology and history of Carnatic music.
T.P. Sabitha
T.P. Sabitha is a poet, essayist and art critic. She teaches English at the University of Delhi. She has been a Commonwealth Scholar at UCL, University of London and a Paul Mellon Fellow at the Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven.
Uday Prakash
Uday Prakash is a contemporary Hindi poet, scholar, journalist, translator and short-story writer. He was a recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award for his collection of short stories Mohan Das. He returned the award in 2015 as a protest against the murder of scholar M.M. Kalburgi.
Udayan Thakker
Udayan Thakker is an Indian poet who writes in Gujarati. English translations of his poems have appeared in the following journals or magazines: 'Poetry' magazine (Chicago), 'Young Indian Poets' edited by K Satchidanandan, 'Digest of West Indian Languages' (Sahitya Akademi), 'Indian Literature', 'Modern Gujarati Poetry', 'Modern Indian Poetry' edited by E. V. Ramakrishna), 'Breath Becoming Word' (Government of Gujarat), 'Beyond the Beaten Track' (Gujarati Sahitya Parishad) and 'Stand' (Leeds). A volume of English translations of his poems has been published by Onslaught Press, England. He writes a weekly column on world poetry in the newspaper 'Janmabhumi'. He is the editor of poetryindia.com.
V. D. Chandanshive
V. D. Chandanshive is the translator of Vinaya Pitaka (Vol.– V): The Basket of Discipline (Volume-V). He lives in Nanded, Maharashtra.
Vaasanthi
Vanamala Viswanatha
Vanamala Viswanatha, an award-winning translator, has translated into English important modern Kannada writers such as Vaidehi, Anantamurthy, Lankesh, and Sara Aboobacker. Vanamala, who has also served as honorary director of the Centre for Translation, Sahitya Akademi, and member of the National Translation Mission, has taught English language and literature in several premier institutions in Bengaluru.
Varis Alvi
Varshita Khaitan
Varshita Khaitan completed her graduation in visual communication from the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore in 2012. Since then, she has been working as a graphic designer at The Free Agency. She is also a junior committee member of Dakshini Prayash, an NGO for the underprivileged in Calcutta.
Vasudha Thozhur
Vasudha Thozhur was born in 1956 in Mysore. She studied at the College of Arts and Crafts, Madras, and at the School of Art and Design in Croydon, UK. She lived and worked in Chennai from 1981 to 1997 and in Baroda from 1997 to 2013. She is currently associate professor in the Department of Art, Design and Performing Arts at the Shiv Nadar University, Dadri.
Vidya Rao
Vidya Rao a is a well known academic and Hindustani classical singer. She trained under the legendary singer, late Vidushi Naina Devi, and continued her study under Vidushi Shanti Hiranand and Vidushi Girija Devi.
Vishnu Khare
Vishnu Khare is a prominent Hindi poet, critic, journalist, translator and film critic. He also writes in English. He is former editor of the Navbharat Times and assistant editor of The Times of India. He has translated two major European epics into Hindi. He has also written six collections of poetry, a book of criticism and over 20 books of translations in Hindi, German, and other German-dominated European languages. He lives in Mumbai and Chhindwada.
Vivan Sundaram
Vivan Sundaram is a highly acclaimed artist. He works in many different media, including painting, sculpture, photography, installation and video art. His work is politically conscious and deeply intertextual in nature.
Vivek Narayanan
Vivek Narayanan is a widely published poet whose books include Universal Beach and Life and Times of Mr S. Narayanan is a publisher and co-editor of Almost Island, an India-based journal and literary organisation. He has been a fellow in creative writing at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, Harvard University, and is now a fellow at the Cullman Centre for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.
V.K. Prabhakaran
V.K. Prabhakaran is a poet and playwright. He was a student at Government College, Madappally. He was arrested at the time in connection with the Naxalite attack on the Kayanna police station and spent time in the Central Prison, Kannoor.
Wandana Sonalkar
Wandana Sonalkar has spent most of her life as a university professor of Economics and later, Women's Studies. From the mid 1980's, she has been interested in questions of gender and caste, and Marxist-feminist approaches to Economics; also in bringing different genres of writing in Marathi to a wider readership through translation. Her translation of Urmila Pawar and Meenakshi Moon's history of women's participation in the Ambedkar movement was published by the feminist publication Zubaan in 2008 as We Also Made History. She has translated poetry by Tulsi Parab, V.V. Shirwadkar and others from Marathi to English, for the Sahitya Akademi journal Indian Literature. She has been associated with projects aiming to bring multilingual teaching to university classrooms, while teaching at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
Yaseen Ashraf
Yaseen Ashraf is associate editor of Madhyamam and managing director of Madhyamam Broadcasting. He was associate professor and head of the Department of English in Farook College, Calicut. He has authored several books in English and Malayalam. These include two original books, six translations, and reviews and articles. He has won the Muttathu Varkey Award, the Calicut Press Club Award and the Pandalam Rama Varma Award for the best editorial in Malayalam.
Yasmine Seale
Yogesh Maitreya
Yousuf Saeed
Yousuf Saeed is an independent filmmaker and researcher. He has an M.A. in mass communication from the Jamia Millia University's A.J.K. Mass Communication Research Centre. He has worked in educational television and produced documentaries on a range of subjects. His films, shown in several film festivals, academic venues and television, include Inside Ladakh, Basant, Yashpal – A Life in Science, and The Train to Heaven. For more on his work see yousufsaeed.com.
Y.S. Alone
Y.S. Alone is professor in visual arts at the Jawaharlal Nehru University's School of Arts and Aesthetics specialising in ancient and modern Indian art, Buddhist art, and caste studies.
Zai Whitaker
Zai Whitaker is director of the Madras Crocodile Bank, where she also lives. Apart from her interest in conservation, she loves teaching and learning, and has taught at the Kodaikanal International School. She has also been principal of two schools. She plays an active role in the Irula Tribe Women's Welfare Society in Thandari near Chinglepet.


Supporters of former Chicago Public Schools President Gery Chico cheered wildly when he took the stage Tuesday night at the Westin Hotel to concede to Rahm Emanuel. "Class act!" someone yelled.
But when it came time to talk about their guy losing the mayoral race before even getting to a runoff, few wanted to be named as supporting an opponent to newly elected Mr. Emanuel.
"You don't want to be seen taking sides," said a small-business owner who had supported Mr. Chico with his vote--and his wallet.
Another supporter only half-joked when he said they were headed to Mr. Emanuel's election-night party at Plumbers Union Hall in the West Loop.
There was an overall feeling of inevitability in the Westin River North ballroom, where Mr. Chico's supporters nibbled on hoagie sandwiches and a cheese and cracker spread. They juggled drinks and BlackBerrys while checking election returns.
Maybe knowing the numbers would tell a story not fit for a party, campaign organizers instead showed campaign video and pictures from the past few months on the big screen in the ballroom, instead of voting updates.
Mike Haggerty, owner of a longtime Chicago car dealership, was disappointed in the 42% turnout. "It's just so easy to vote now. There shouldn't be an excuse," he said.
Attorney Moses Suarez said he thinks the city has "hit rock bottom" in terms of corruption and hopes the election will motivate a change. "The election has prompted a dialogue. Maybe that's the best thing."