5 - 7 December 2019 , Thu - Sat.
GALF 2019 : Speakers | Programme | Partners | Performances | Artwork | Videos
Photo Gallery: Inaugural Day | Day 1 | Day 2
Hema Myer Sood
Hema Myer Sood released her first book at 29. The Eternal Ocean of Brahma depicts the wisdom of the Bhagavad Geetha imbibed through intuitive perceptions of the waves of the ocean. She received notable reviews and was compared to Newton and Archimedes for her unprecedented perceptions. Another two books successfully followed within a few years.
Two decades later, The Karmic City trilogy was released in the genre of New Age Philosophy. Karmic Cords is a poignant narrative of the author’s personal loss of her only sibling.
Her foray into historical fiction interwoven with New Age Philosophy created a unique thriller - The Crown of Tijara which will be released in 2020.
Clarice Vaz
Clarice Vaz born in Kampala, Uganda in 1964 returned to Goa - Moira ,her ancestral home with her family in 1970. Although she excelled academically .....she chose nursing as a profession after desiring a career in serving others working in Bangalore and Mumbai briefly, eventually going back to her childhood passion of painting due to a health condition
Being self taught she has had several solo exhibitions in Goa. Today she is a contemporary Abstract Artist working primarily with acrylics constantly experimenting with colours, textures, mediums, gels using non traditional tools and even tools of her trade namely the syringe and different gauge needles, tubes etc. Her unique style of syringe painting which involves caressing the surface of the canvas with short bursts of spirals, dots, lines and curves have become popular with her clients. It's a tedious process. She also uses acrylic paste giving her paintings a 3D effect. Her creative endeavours include photography, writing short real life stories about village life.
Her love for her heritage drove her to create her first visual story book " A Song for Saligao."
She now resides with her family and two dogs in her pristine village of Saligao.
Keki N. Daruwalla
Keki N. Daruwalla writes poetry and fiction and lives in Delhi. His last poetry volume is Naishapur and Babylon (2018 Speaking Tiger), which includes work between 2006-2017. His last novel is "Swerving to Solitude" (2018 , Simon and Schuster). His last award was Poet laureateship of the Literature Live Festival in Bombay, 2017.
Dattaprasad Shetkar
Dattaprasad Shetkar is Goan by birth and heart. He has travelled extensively as a market researcher and brand consultant across India. Since childhood he was drawn towards artistic expression and appreciation, often dabbling into poetry, theatre, debate, elocution and singing. Through Exemplar Strategic Solutions, a firm he co-founded, he has developed strategy and design for many brands and managed events like ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Little Champs’, ‘Jitendra Abhisheki Sangeet Mahotsav’. He founded Susang, a not-for-profit dedicated to art, music and culture, which has revived Konkani poetry and music from 1950s. He is the organiser and curator of TEDxPanaji, an independently organised TED event in Goa.
Astri Ghosh
Astri Ghosh is an actor, writer and translator who has translated twelve plays by Henrik Ibsen into Hindi. In a project initiated by the Centre for Ibsen Studies, Oslo, she collaborated with nine other translators who were translating Henrik Ibsen's contemporary prose plays into Arabic (Classical Arabic and Egyptian Arabic), Spanish, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese and Russian. Astri has translated 20 books into Hindi, English and Norwegian, and her translations have been included in three anthologies. She is currently translating a novel from Urdu to English. A former journalist, she also does poetry performances and has acted in two films.
Alfred Almeida a.k.a. Pogoat
Pogoat is a Goan writer, wrecked by the resource curse upon Goa. Nonetheless, he has never participated in a protest march, nor filed a complaint or even donated money for any environmental restoration.
Pogoat finds it disgusting to live in a society where on a regular basis we need to brutally protest and protect our basic human necessities. Immersed in a world building project of an equal world with the guiding light of Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Kerouac, Hemingway, Dr. Thompson and Bob Marley. He's regularly tormented by his own characters, their deceptions, their lies, their truth and their lust for everything.
Shubha Vilas
Shubha Vilas is an author, motivational speaker, lifestyle coach and storyteller par excellence. He believes that a good teacher, always sees the process of learning along with teaching as an inherent aspect of personal and spiritual growth. He teaches the importance of being governed by dharmic principles, meting out spiritual lifestyle tips and wisdom that can be applied to modern day situations.
Compelled by his deep sense of responsibility towards society, he started writing books that would benefit the readers in all aspects by understanding ancient literature in its true essence.
He took on the monumental task of writing a book on the Ramayana that would bring the epic out of the closet and into the world, to show the lessons hidden in the tales. And thus, he embarked on the ambitious project of a six-volume series titled Ramayana – The Game of Life.
His other bestsellers include Chronicles of Hanuman, which brings out the best and unheard stories from Hanuman’s life, and Open-eyed Meditations, a delightful compilation of his thoughts wherein he meditates with his eyes wide open, deriving practical wisdom for life’s dilemmas through insights from the Ramayana and Mahabharata.
Rochelle D'silva
Rochelle D'silva is a performance poet based in Goa. She writes about her travels, cultural influences and personal experiences. Her poems give voice to feelings of displacement, love and loss. She started performing in 2011, and since then has performed on numerous stages across India, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore and Nepal. She has been a part of a multitude of literary festivals; Times Lit Fest 2018, Goa Art and Lit Fest 2018, Melbourne Spoken Word and Poetry Festival 2018, Kala Ghoda Art and Literature Festival 2018 to name a few. In 2016, she represented the Indian writing community during a poetry tour in Nepal called Words Express – Spoken Word Jatra, featuring international poets from Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and the universally proclaimed Sarah Kay.
Rochelle has created the very first residency solely designed for poets - 'The Poetry Retreat' is a 5-day residency held twice a year in Goa. Both her spoken word albums (A Thin Veneer of Coping and Best Apology Face) are available on Bandcamp/iTunes/Spotify. Her solo collection of poems, When Home Is An Idea, has been widely appreciated as a conduit to talk about identity and belonging.
Ranjit Hoskote
Ranjit Hoskote is a leading Anglophone Indian poet, and has also been acclaimed as a seminal contributor to Indian art criticism. His books include Vanishing Acts: New & Selected Poems 1985-2005 (Penguin, 2006), Central Time (Penguin/ Viking, 2014), and, most recently, Jonahwhale (Penguin/ Hamish Hamilton, 2018). His poetry has appeared in German translation as Die Ankunft der Vögel (Carl Hanser Verlag, 2006) and Feldnotizen des Magiers (Editions Offenes Feld, 2015). His translation of the 14th-century Kashmiri mystic Lal Ded has been published as I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded (Penguin Classics, 2011).
Hoskote curated India’s first-ever national pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2011), co-curated the 7th Gwangju Biennale, and served on the jury of the 56th Venice Biennale (2015). He was a Fellow of the International Writing Program, University of Iowa, and has been writer-in-residence at Villa Waldberta, Munich; Theater der Welt, Essen-Mülheim; and the Polish Institute, Berlin. He has been researcher-in-residence at BAK/ basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht. He has been honoured with the Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Award, the Sahitya Akademi Award for Translation, and the S H Raza Award for Literature. Hoskote is Poetry Editor for DOMUS India and Academic Consultant to the CSMVS Museum, Bombay.
Namit Arora
Namit Arora is a writer, humanist, travel photographer, and former internet technologist. He grew up in Gwalior, studied at IIT Kharagpur, worked in Silicon Valley for two decades, took courses of dubious practical value at Stanford, and visited scores of countries before moving to Delhi NCR with his partner in 2013. He writes essays, reviews, criticism, travelogues, fiction, memoir, and history, often merging many forms at once, and tackling subjects as diverse as identity politics, artificial intelligence, Indian-Americans, eating animals, and cryptocurrencies. He is the author of The Lottery of Birth (2017), A California Story (US) / Love and Loathing in Silicon Valley (India) (2019), and an upcoming book on travel and history (2020). His home on the web is shunya.net.
