Anjum Hasan is the author of the novels The Cosmopolitans, Neti, Neti and Lunatic in My Head, and the short story collections A Day in the Life and Difficult Pleasures. She has also published a book of poems called Street on the Hill. Her books have been nominated for various awards including the Man Asian Literary Prize, the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, the Hindu Best Fiction Award, the Crossword Fiction Award, anShe has been Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Ashoka University and a Charles Wallace Writer-in-Residence at the University of Canterbury Her short stories, essays and poems are widely published in India and abroad.
Eshwar Sundaresan is the author of Behind the Silicon Mask, Bangalored: the Expat Story, God Save the Toddy, Age-old Tales and Wiser After. As a freelance journalist, Eshwar has contributed to media agencies in India, Pakistan and Singapore. Since quitting the IT industry in 2003, he has found parallel vocations as a trainer and counsellor; thus, he adds value to classrooms and individuals respectively. He has written a restaurant menu, a full-length novel and everything in between. He thus understands that the written word has infinite uses and good writers come in infinite shades. When he mentors aspiring writers, he helps them discover their uniqueness. As a part of the Faith Foundation, Eshwar has helped spread awareness on child sex abuse and sexuality issues to around 55,000 children. He is awaiting the release of his first film while working on his next book, a handbook for the Indian freelancer.
Jayapriya Vasudevan has more than 20 years of experience of working in the field of publishing, during which time she has worked in virtually every area of the business. From editing and event management to sales and distribution, she has ‘done it all.’ The Bookseller magazine hailed her as “one of India’s most dynamic booksellers.” In 1997, she decided to use her years of experience in publishing to set up Jacaranda Literary Agency, India’s first ever literary agency. She went on build an impressive list, working with distinguished authors such as Anita Nair and Shashi Warrior. Over the years the agency has grown and now represents an exciting and diverse list of authors from Singapore, across South East Asia and beyond. Jayapriya has spoken at literary conferences all over Asia – from Istanbul and India to Manila and Singapore, and London and Frankfurt. For the past two years, she has been a regular speaker at author Anita Nair’s Anita’s Attic. Continuing from her stint in 2017, Jayapriya was the Festival Director for the Times of India Literary Festival 2018 in Bangalore. She is passionate about the visual and performing arts, about books, travel, animals and people.
Radhika Chadha is the author of Tulika’s best selling Baby Bahadur Books: I’m So Sleepy, Snoring Shanmugam, Colour Colour Kamini, Mallipoo, Where Are You?, and Yes, Hutoxi!. The Baby Bahadur Series was listed in Young Zubaan’s selection of 101 Indian Children’s Books We Love. Tulika also published her book Basava and the Dots of Fire and she contributed a poem A Well is Born to Tulika’s anthology Water Stories. Her stories have been translated into many languages, Indian and foreign. Apart from children’s books, Radhika has co-authored Innovative India – Insights for the Thinking Manager (Penguin), which explores an integrated model for organizational innovation. She wrote a monthly column on strategy and innovation, Karategy, for the Hindu Business Line for seven years and is the co-author of Intelligent Investing (Wheeler Publishing). She recently worked on the script of Mandukya Sant Vani, a dramatic production of Dhrupad music, dance and theatre performed by Sunaad. She is currently working on a volume of short stories and a novel.
Rohini Mohan is an independent journalist who writes on politics, environment and human rights in South Asia. For 14 years, she has written for several news publications including The New York Times, Al Jazeera, Foreign Policy, The Economic Times, Tehelka, The Caravan, The Hindu, Outlook, Scroll.in, and The Wire. Rohini has a Masters in political journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, New York, and a PG Diploma in Print Journalism from Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. Her debut book is The Seasons of Trouble (Verso/Harper Collins, 2014), a nonfiction account of three people caught up in the aftermath of the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. It won the Shakti Bhatt Foundation First Book Prize 2014, and was on NPR‘s Great Reads of 2014.
Somak Ghoshal is a journalist, editor and critic based in Bengaluru. He writes on books, gender, culture and the arts. Since 2006, he has worked in various roles in media and book publishing, with The Telegraph, Mint, HuffPost India, Penguin India and HarperCollins Publishers India. His work has also appeared in Caravan magazine, Open magazine, CNN Style, Scroll and Daily O among others.
Vanamala Viswanatha, currently visiting professor, School of Education, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, has been a happy teacher of English language and literature over the past four decades. She has taught at various levels beginning from High School students to PhD scholars, and teacher educators, in premiere institutions in Bangalore. Prof. Viswanatha is an award-winning translator who has worked with Kannada and English languages. She was the Honorary Director, Centre for Translation, Sahitya Akademi, Bangalore (2002-04) and a member of the Advisory Committee, National Translation Mission (2006- 2011).
Some (of the many) works she has contributed to: > Translated (with Hans Shostrom) and introduced the Swedish novel The Way of the Serpent by Torgny Lindgren in Kannada. (Sahitya Akademi, 2002) > Published Dalit poetry from Kannada in Tharu and Satyanarayana (eds) Steel Nibs are Sprouting, Harper Collins, 2012. > Translated Raghavanka’s medieval epic Harishchandra Kavyam into English, for the Murty Classical Library of India, Harvard University Press, 2017.
Zac O’Yeah is a Swedish detective novelist and author of the Majestic Trilogy, which is set in his Indian hometown Bengaluru. He has published 15 books including several fiction and nonfiction bestsellers. His Gandhi biography Mahatma! was ranked as the best nonfiction book in Sweden in 2008. His travel writings have appeared in magazines such as National Geographic Traveller, Outlook Traveller, RES and Vagabond, and also been included in many anthologies. All in all, he has written for more than 75 different publications and he is currently a columnist with the BusinessLine newspaper. His writings have been translated into German, French, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Russian, Chinese, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil and Hindi. He is a founder-director of Bangalore’s World-Famous Semi-Deluxe Writing Programme, the first semi-professional writing school in India. His most recent books include the novel Tropical Detective and the travelogue A Walk Through Barygaza and the children’s book The Mystery of the Cyber Friend. He also composes music with the pop group The Ändå.
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