5 - 7 December 2019 , Thu - Sat.
GALF 2019 : Speakers | Programme | Partners | Performances | Artwork | Videos
Photo Gallery: Inaugural Day | Day 1 | Day 2
Born in Jaipur, Meenal Shrivastava now lives in North Saanich, British Columbia where she is a writer and a professor of political economy and global studies at Athabasca University. Currently, aside from serving on several professional boards, Shrivastava regularly speaks on the erasure of women in historical narratives and issues in the global political economy. Her research has led to more than thirty peer-reviewed publications, more than seventy paper presentations, and two books. In Amma’s Daughters, her first work of creative non-fiction, Shrivastava weaves together interviews, her mother and grandmother’s writings, and archival research to tell the story of her remarkable family. The stories in the book show that the personal and the political are relentlessly interconnected, both in how our lives unfold and in how we curate human history(s). Individual stories make these connections immediate and personal by revealing the continuum between past and present, local and global, and us versus them.
Vince Costa started his journey in the mid 90’s as an audio engineer and then moved to Australia to study Music Business Management. He later returned to Goa and in 2009 he started to write his first music album called “Saint and Sinner”.
A few years later he released the album, but he felt that as a storyteller he wanted to explore other mediums .
Over a four year period he produced his debut documentary, “Saxtticho Koddo - The Granary of Salcete” an ethnographic film about the agrarian culture of his village Curtorim and the intrinsic relationship rice has with the Goan people.
Vince believes that Goa is a sea of stories and so he founded RedMackerel to tell them.
Priya Kuriyan is a children's book author and illustrator and comics maker based in Bangalore. She has directed educational films for the Sesame Street show (Galli Galli Sim Sim) and has worked on various TV commercials. She has illustrated many comics and children’s books including 'Ammachi's glasses' and 'Princess Easy Pleasy'. She was part of the Indo German collaboration 'Elephant in the room' published by Zubaan books and has collaborated with the writer Devapriya Roy on a graphic biography of Indira Gandhi for young adults.
Jerry Pinto is a much-awarded author, poet and editor. His works include Em and the Big Hoom for which he was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for Fiction and the Windham-Campbell Award from Yale, USA. He has also won the Crossword Award, the Hindu Lit for Life Award, the REC-Valley of Words Award and the Bangalore Festival Prize for Translation. His translated works include the seminal Baluta by Daya Pawar, the first Dalit autobiography in Marathi; I want to destroy myself by Mallika Amar Sheikh; Half-Opened Windows by Ganesh Matkari; I, the salt doll by Vandana Mishra; Strike a blow to change the world by Eknath Awad and When I hid my caste and other stories by Baburao Bagul. His first translation from Hindi, I have not seen Mandu by Swadesh Deepak, is expected next year.
Mr Pinto has taught journalism for more than 25 years at the Social Communications Media department of the Sophia Polytechnic, which is consistently ranked as one of the top ten media departments in India. He sits on the board of MelJol, an NGO that works in the sphere of child rights and represents it on the international board of Aflatoun in the Netherlands. He is a trustee of the People’s Free Reading Room & Library, one of the city’s oldest libraries. He is on the Board of Studies of the English Department of the Sophia College.
He has been a Visiting Fellow at the Suzy and Donald Newhouse Centre at Wellesley College, USA and a Fellow of the Raza Foundation.
When she was eight, Samhita Arni started writing and illustrating her first book. The Mahabharata - A Child's View went on to be published in seven language editions and sell 50,000 copies worldwide. Samhita's second book, Sita's Ramayana, a graphic novel developed in collaboration with Patua artist Moyna Chitrakar, was on the New York Times Bestseller list for Graphic Novels. Her third book, The Missing Queen, has been published by Penguin (Viking) and Zubaan. Samhita's fourth book, The Prince, has been published by Juggernaut.
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.
Air Vice Marshal Arjun Subramaniam is a retired fighter pilot from the IAF who has flown MiG-21s and Mirage-2000s. He is also a military historian, academic and strategic commentator with an interesting post-retirement career. He has been a Visiting Fellow at Harvard and Oxford universities and Visiting Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He is currently a Visiting Prof at Ashoka and Jindal Universities and has lectured extensively at war colleges in India and the US and at a wide range of Universities and think tanks in the US and UK including Harvard, MIT, Georgetown University, Oxford, Carnegie Endowment, RUSI and IISS. He is the author of ‘India’s Wars: A Military History 1947-1971 with the sequel being published next year. He writes extensively in the public domain on diverse strategic and national security issues.
A young passionate entrepreneur and a prolific story-teller is what would best describe Mr Inacio A Fernandes. He comes with a rich IT experience, working with IT Majors like Wipro Infotech, CGI and OPSPL. He has a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from Goa Institute of Management and Masters of Computer Application degrees to his credit. A vociferous reader and a budding author by passion and a techie by qualifications, Inacio inspires youngsters through his workshops and motivational talks to explore their imaginations and handholds them to into writing short stories in fiction. Inacio Fernandes is currently the CEO, and Founder Director of Criador Solutions and Curator of Novella Short Stories- an online portal for authors to publish their work in short story fiction. (https://novella.co.in)
Derek Mascarenhas is the author of the acclaimed debut linked short story collection, Coconut Dreams (Book*hug, 2019). A graduate of the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies Creative Writing Program, Derek is a finalist and runner up for the Penguin Random House of Canada Student Award for Fiction, and a nominee for the Marina Nemat Award. He has works published in places such as The Dalhousie Review, Switchback, Maple Tree Literary Supplement, Joyland, and The Antigonish Review. Derek is one of four children born to parents who emigrated from Goa, India, and settled in Burlington, Ontario, Canada. A backpacker who has traveled across six continents, Derek currently resides in Toronto.
Yvonne Vaz Ezdani stays in Saligao, North Goa but lives for some months of the year with her family in Brisbane . She is an ex teacher turned school counsellor and an author of two books, 'Songs of the Survivors' published by Goa 1556 and 'New Songs of the Survivors' published by Speaking Tiger. Although the genre of these books is oral history, she is also interested in psychology and stories of the human mind and spirit. She loves reading ,writing and gardening.