7 - 10 December 2017 , Thu - Sun.
GALF 2017 : Speakers | Performances / Exhibition | Partners | Register Now | Programme | Media Coverage | Videos | Report
Photo Gallery: Inaugural Day | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3
Kripi Malviya
Kripi Malviya is an Indian psychologist, experiential therapist and a mental health professional ; she is also a poet, writer and an avid traveler based in Goa, India where she runs her emotional awareness and wellbeing retreat; TATVA (www.tatvacenter.com) She focuses on the subversive and the still and is always looking for relational variance, intensity and discernment. Her work has been published in the Psychedelic Press UK, the Hermeneutic Circular, the Four Quarters Magazine and the Sunflower Collective. Her first chapbook has been long-listed for an international poetry chapbook contest, most of the poems in her chapbook were written in Finland where she was accepted as a resident artist earlier this year. She was recently invited as a presenter for the topic 'The poetics of the therapeutic relationship' by the Society of Existential Analysis' annual conference in the UK.
Rajat Sethi
Rajat Sethi is the Political Advisor to the Chief Minister of Manipur. He studied Management at MIT, Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, completed his BTech from IIT-Kharagpur. Sethi has been one of India’s first solar entrepreneurs and also collaborated with the World Bank on clean technology finance wing. He is the co-author of The Last Battle of Saraighat: The Story of the BJP's Rise in the North-east (2017). He is also an independent TV debater and print and digital columnist.
Pantaleão Fernandes
Pantaleão Fernandes is a Goa-based writer, photographer and ethnographer. His books include 100 Goan Experiences (2006); Goa Remembered (2011); Traditional Occupations of Goa (2015); and a children’s book Once Upon a Time in Goa (2015). Fernandes scours Goan villages, for hidden cultural stories which he tells with his short documentary films entitled ‘Untold stories from Goa’. He was recently conferred with an international award by the Instituto Felga I Gracias in Brazil for excellence for his contribution using photography towards the cause of preserving Goa’s art and culture. His photographs have been displayed at an exhibition “Goa – Fusao de Culturas” at Lisbon.
Nitu Bhattacharya
Nitu Bhattacharya completed her post-graduate degree from Panjab University, after which she became one of the first women officers to join the Armed forces. An officer of the 1991 batch of CRPF, she has worked in difficult areas and handled critical assignments. Bhattacharya is the recipient of the Police Medal for Meritorious Service, Antrik Suraksha Padak, and Kathin Seva Padak. Her experience in several conflict theatres in the country has provided her with rare insights into the lives of women on both sides of the conflict. Her anthology of poems, Resurrection: A Woman Reborn (2016), deal with issues of women empowerment and self-realization; her collection of short stories, Half Life (2017) is based on conflict-situations of Punjab and Kashmir; and My Life My Horizon (2017) chronicles the work and life of eight women.
Chitra Viraraghavan
Chitra Viraraghavan has worked in academic publishing, taught English, and is a book editor, school textbook writer, author of The Americans: A Novel (Fourth Estate, 2014), and co-editor of Madras On My Mind: A City in Stories (HarperCollins India, 2017). Delhi Thaatha: A Great Grand Story, a children’s book about a philosopher, is forthcoming from Seagull Books (2018). She is working on her second novel, a work of historical fiction.
Paramita Satpathy Tripathy
Paramita Satpathy Tripathy is an influential voice in Odia Literature and has published seven story collections, two novels and one novella. Her works have been extensively translated to other Indian languages such as English, Hindi, Bengali, and Marathi. Satpathy’s work while reflecting in their themes, tones and structure, the current state of Indian short stories and novels, mark the new strides that women’s fiction writing in the country seems to be taking. She has represented Indian literature in many literary forums across the country and abroad. Among many other awards and felicitations, she received the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award in 2016 for her collection of novellas Prapti. Satpathy joined the Indian Revenue Service in 1989 and currently is Commissioner of Income Tax, New Delhi.
Rakhshanda Jalil
Rakhshanda Jalil is a writer, critic and literary historian and has published more than 15 books. Her book on the lesser-known monuments of Delhi, Invisible City (2008) remains a bestseller. Her recent works include Liking Progress, Loving Change: A Literary History of the Progressive Writers Movement in Urdu (2014) and The Sea Lies Ahead (2015), a translation of Intizar Husain's seminal novel on Karachi. She was awarded the Kaifi Azmi Award for her contribution to Urdu; the First Jawad Memorial Prize for Urdu-Hindi Translation; and her translation The Sea Lies Ahead won the KLF Peace Prize. Jalil runs Hindustani Awaaz, an organization devoted to the popularization of Hindi-Urdu literature and culture.
Pragya Bhagat
Pragya Bhagat has lived in nine cities across five countries. She has degrees in Biology and Dalit and Tribal Studies, taught children, and coached teachers. She now lives in the hills of Kumaon, writing. Bhagat has performed her poetry across India and America, from coffee shops to colleges, from open mics to India’s first spoken word festival. She is the author of More Than a Memory, a poetry collection that has been called ‘a melodious autobiography’. Her fiction and nonfiction have been published in The Huffington Post, Helter Skelter, The Open Road Review, and The Bombay Review, amongst others. She is a fan of Bollywood, the violin, and cold milk.
Odette Mascarenhas
Odette Mascarenhas is a TV host, columnist, food critic, and author with 10 books of different genres to her credit. She won the Special Jury Award 2008 at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards for her first book Masci: The Man Behind the Legend. Another book, The Culinary Heritage of Goa (2014) won her the Gourmand Award for historical recipes. She has also written the The Shadow of the Temptress (2016). Mascarenhas is the co-founder of the Goan Culinary Club, which is dedicated to preserving the authenticity of Goan cuisine and researching long-lost recipes. She is he co-curator for ‘Food as Art’ for the Serendipity Arts festival. Mascarenhas is the recipient of the Orchid Award 2017 for Women Achievers in the field of Art and Culture, and the Trinity Medallion for outstanding contribution towards Goan cuisine.
Carlo Pizzati
Carlo Pizzati has published the novels Criminàl (2011) and Nimodo (2014) (both in Italian), a collection of short stories and the non-fiction books Technoshamans (2012) and more recently Edge of an Era (2017). He was earlier a special correspondent for La Repubblica in the US, Mexico, Argentina, Spain and Italy. He now writes about Asia for the Italian national newspaper La Stampa and essays and reviews for The Hindu, while teaching a post-graduate communication theory course at the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai. Born in Switzerland, Pizzati grew up near Venice, Italy, then in Florida, Washington D.C. and New York City, where he received his Master’s in Journalism from Columbia University. After living in Mexico, Argentina, Spain, he now lives near a fishermen’s village in Tamil Nadu.
