Media Coverage 2011

Abhay Sardesai has been the Editor of ART India, the premier art magazine of India, since November 2002. Under his editorship, the magazine has developed a Culture Studies-oriented approach and has become more inter-disciplinary in its theme-based explorations. He has been a Visiting Faculty in Aesthetics at the Department of English, University of Mumbai, and has also been the Chair of Humanities, Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture, Mumbai. He teaches at the Smt. P. N. Doshi Women’s College of Arts and also at various other institutions like Jnanapravaha and TISS. He writes in English and translates from Marathi, Konkani and Gujarati. An associate of the research collective PUKAR, he was the Director of the Writing Across the City project which explored the inter-relationships between literatures and literary cultures in the city of Mumbai. He has written widely on Art and Literature and read from his work at various places including the University of Princeton, University of Cambridge, Mumbai University, S.N.D.T. University, Sarai and NGMA.

Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria and is the author of The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, and Sea of Poppies, which is the first volume of a projected series of novels, The Ibis Trilogy. The Circle of Reason was awarded France’s Prix Médicis in 1990, and The Shadow Lines won two presitigious Indian prizes the same year, the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Ananda Puraskar. The Calcutta Chromosome won the Arthur C. Clarke award for 1997 and The Glass Palace won the International e-Book Award at the Frankfurt book fair in 2001. In January 2005 The Hungry Tide was awarded the Crossword Book Prize, a major Indian award. His novel, Sea of Poppies (2008) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, 2008 and was awarded the Crossword Book Prize and the IndiaPlaza Golden Quill Award.

Amitava Kumar is the author of several works of non-fiction and a novel. His latest book, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb, was described by the New York Times as a “perceptive and soulful” meditation on “the cultural and human repercussions” of the global war on terror. His novel, Home Products, was a finalist for the VodafoneCrossword Prize. Amitava Kumar is Professor of English on the Helen D.Lockwood Chair at Vassar College.

Andy Jackson's poetry explores embodiment, identity and difference. He won the 2008 Arts ACT Rosemary Dobson award for Best Unpublished Poem, and the Most Innovative Work award at the 2009 Overload Poetry Festival for a poetry-puppetry collaborative performance. He was an Emerging Writer in Residence at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre in Perth in 2010, and is currently the Librarian for Australian Poetry.Andy Jackson's first full-length collection of poems, Among the Regulars, was published by papertiger media in 2010, and was Highly Commended in the Anne Elder Award and Shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize. In late 2011, he will be a literature resident through Asialink, with the support of the Australia-India Council. At the University of Madras, he will engage with the literary community, while writing a suite of poems exploring the personal stories behind the medical tourism industry.

Anjum Hasan is the author of the novels Neti, Neti (short-listed for the Hindu Best Fiction Award; long-listed for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and the Man Asian Literary Prize) and Lunatic in my Head (short-listed for the Crossword Fiction Award). She has also written the collection of poems, Street on the Hill. Anjum’s fiction, non-fiction and poetry has been widely published in anthologies and journals in India and abroad. She is currently Books Editor, The Caravan. more>>

After 20 years of working in the fields of journalism, communications and graphic design, Aniruddha Sen Gupta has returned to his first love -- writing -- since he moved to Goa in 2006. So far, he has authored a couple of books in a children's adventure series, a graphic guidebook on environmental matters, and a sprinkling of short stories in various anthologies. He is currently working on a chronicle of his travels around India with his wife Anjali and their dogs -- six of them at the last count. Interspersed with all this, he enjoys setting, conducting and participating in quizzes and is a founder-member of Goa's Sunday Evening Quiz Club.

Astri Ghosh is an Indo-Norwegian journalist and translator who lives and works in Goa.She has translated short stories by Qurratulain Hyder in Tiggermunken og Andre Noveller, and songs from the Adigranth to Norwegian in the anthology Sanger fra Adigranth. She has also translated novels, short stories and poems from Norwegian to Hindi. She is currently working on a book on jazz musicians in India and has just coordinated the Jazz Utsav in New Delhi.

Bhalchandra Vanaji Nemade is a Marathi writer from Maharashtra, India. Nemade taught English, Marathi, and comparative literature at various universities including the School of Oriental and African Studies at London. He retired from Mumbai University's Gurudeo Tagore Chair for comparative literature studies. In the 1960s, Nemade edited Marathi magazine Vacha. He received a Sahitya Akademi Award for year 1990 for his critical work Teeka Svayanwar. .Nemade wrote his first novel Kosla in 1963. As a critique, Nemade proposed that short stories are of a genre inferior to that of novels, and that Marathi literature ought to try to be “native”. He has also taken a position against Indians writing in English. Nemade's latest novel, "Hindu - Jagnyachi Samrudh Adgal” was published in 2010. Some of his works include: Novels- Hindu - Jagnyachi Samrudh Adgal, Bidhar, Hool, Jarila and Jhool , all published by Popular Prakashan Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai; Poetry collections- Melody, Dekhani published by Popular Prakashan Pvt. Ltd.; Criticism- Teekaswayamvar, Sahityachi Bhasha, Tukaram, The Influence of English on Marathi : A Sociolinguistic and Stylistic Study and Indo-Anglian Writing. more>>

Bijoya Sawian an autor born on November 15 1949 in Shillong, has done her M.A( English) from Delhi University.Some of her Published works include Translations from Khasi into English - 'The Teachings of Elders'and ‘Khasi Myths Legends and Folktales’, she has also written short stories like 'The Girl In A BlueJainsem’ 'One Rainy Night', a Novel- "Shadow Men", and a Short History of the Khasis of Meghalaya - ‘The Hynniew Trep' , she is presently working on a collection of 9 short stories revolving around life in Meghalaya, The Main Ceremonies of the Hynniew Trep - Naming, Marriage and Death - the last rites. Also working on a sequel to her novel - "Shadow Men" and short stories based on her Dehra Dun experiences and observations.

Bilal Tanweer has an MFA Writing (fiction) from Columbia University and BSc in Social Sciences from Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). His translation of Urdu pulp fiction—The House of Fear by Ibn-e-Safi—was published by Random House India (2010). His other translated works have appeared in Words Without Borders, The Annual of Urdu Studies, and Duniyazad. His short fiction has appeared in Life’s Too Short Literary Review: New Writing from Pakistan. He was one of the eleven recipients of the 2010 PEN Translation Fund Grant for his forthcoming book of translation. He was also awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for his Masters degree. He is currently working on a collection of stories.

Charles Correa was born in Hyderabad, India. He studied architecture at the University of Michigan and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology after which he established a private practice in Bombay in 1958.
His work in India is an adaptation of Modernism to a non-western culture. His early works attempt to explore a local vernacular within a modern environment. His land-use planning and community projects continually try to go beyond typical solutions to third world problems.
Mahatma Gandhi Memorial, at the Sabarmati Ashram, Ahmedabad All of his work - from the planning of Navi Mumbai to the carefully detailed memorial to Mahatma Gandhi at the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad has placed special emphasis on prevailing resources, energy and climate as major determinants in the ordering of space. more>>

Chiki Sarkar is the publisher of Penguin Books India. She did her secondary schooling at MHS, Kolkata and went on to eventually do her BA in Oxford University. After graduation, she worked for Bloomsbury Publishing for seven years in London before returning to Delhi to head up the newly set up Random House India as their first editor in chief. Her authors there included Jhumpa Lahiri, Anita Desai, Salman Rushdie, Mohammed Hanif and Rujuta Diwekar. Earlier this year, Chiki moved to Penguin Books India, the country’s largest publishing house, to be their publisher.

Cyril Almeida is an assistant editor, columnist and reporter at large at Dawn, Pakistan's leading English daily. His areas of interest include national politics, security policy and regional affairs. He is a Rhodes scholar (2004) and received a second BA in Jurisprudence from Oxford University. He earned an undergraduate degree in economics from the Lahore University of Management Sciences in 2003.
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Damodar Mauzo is a short story writer, novelist, columnist and screenplay writer and has been writing in Konkani for over three decades. He has two novels, four collections of short stories and three books for young adults to his credit. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award for his novel Karmelin. This novel and his short stories have been translated into many languages. He is the recipient of Katha Award for Creative Fiction 1998, the Best Dialogues Award at the Goa State Film Festival 1997, the Goa Kala Academy Award and Konkani Bhasha Mandal Award.

Deborah Baker is the author of the biography In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding, which was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. In 2008 Penguin published her book A Blue Hand: The Beats in India, a non-fiction narrative exploring the idea of India in the American literary imagination. While a Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, she researched and wrote The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism published in the US and India in the spring of 2011. more>>

Desmond L Kharmawphlang (b 1964) is a poet and folklorist. He has published books of poetry and collections of theoretical essays on folkloristics pertaining to North East India. He has represented the country in numerous conferences outside the country notably in Switzerland, the United kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, Norway, the United States, Finland and Greece. He is on the Executive Board of the Belief Narrative Network of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research and is the Vice President of the Indian Folklore Congress. He lives in Shillong, Meghalaya where he is Professor and Head at the Department of Cultural and Creative Studies of the North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong - 22.

Eunice de Souza (born 1940) is a contemporary Indian English language poet, literary critic and novelist. Among her notable books of poetry is Women in Dutch painting (1988). She studied English literature with an MA from the Marquette University in Wisconsin, and a PhD from the University of Mumbai. She taught English at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, and was Head of the Department until her recent retirement. She was involved in the well known literary festival Ithaka organized at the college. She has also been involved in theater, both as actress and director. She began writing novels with Dangerlok in 2001. She has also written four children's books. Her works include: Poetry: Fix (1979), Women in Dutch Painting (1988), Ways of Belonging (1990), Selected and New Poems (1994); Novels: Dangerlok (Penugin, 2001), Dev & Simran: A Novel (Penguin, 2003); Interviews: Conversations with Indian Poets (OUP, 2001); Edited: Nine Indian Women Poets: An Anthology (OUP, 2001), 101 Folktales From India. (2004), Purdah: An Anthology (OUP, 2004), Women's Voices: Selections from Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Indian Writing in English (OUP, 2004), Early Indian Poetry in English: An Anthology 1829-1947 (OUP, 2005), The Satthianadhan Family Album. (Sahitya Akademi, 2005). more>>

Fatima Bhutto is a Pakistani poet and writer. She is granddaughter of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the niece of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and daughter of Murtaza Bhutto. She came to fame after the appearance of her first book, a collection of poems, titled Whispers of the Desert. She received notable coverage for her second book, 8:50 a.m. 8 October 2005.She is active in Pakistan's socio-political arena, supporting her stepmother Ghinwa Bhutto's party the Pakistan Peoples Party (Shaheed Bhutto), but has no desire to run for political office. She currently writes columns for The Daily Beast, New Statesman and other publications. more>>

Gulzar is best known in India as a lyricist for songs that form an integral part of Bollywood. He began his career under the directors Bimal Roy and Hrishikesh Mukherjee. His book Ravi Paar has a narrative of Bimal Roy and the agony of creation.Gulzar was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2004 for his contribution to the arts and the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2002. He has won a number of National Film Awards and Filmfare Awards. In 2009, he won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Jai Ho" in the film Slumdog Millionaire (2008). On 31 January 2010, the same song won him a Grammy Award in the category of Grammy Award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.Gulzar's poetry is partly published in three compilations: Chand Pukhraaj Ka, Raat Pashminey Ki and Pandrah Paanch Pachattar (15-05-75). His short stories are published in Raavi-paar (Dustkhat in Pakistan) and "Dhuan" (smoke). more>>

H.M. Naqvi is the award-winning author of Home Boy. He was born in 1974 and spent his childhood between Karachi, Islamabad, Algiers and New York. The eldest of three brothers, he spoke Urdu and English at home and began writing at age six. He has worked in the financial services industry, ran a slam venue, and taught creative writing at Boston University. Ensconced in Karachi, H.M. Naqvi is working on his second novel. more>>

Jai Arjun Singh

Jai Arjun Singh is a freelance writer and journalist based in Delhi. He blogs at Jabberwock, writes a fortnightly film column for Yahoo! India and has also written for Business Standard, The Hindu, Tehelka, The Sunday Guardian, Open, Caravan and The Hindustan Times, among other publications. His book about the cult comedy film Jaane bhi do Yaaro was published by Harper Collins India in 2010, and he has edited an anthology of film writing, The Popcorn Essayists: What Movies do to Writers, for Tranquebar. more>>

Jerry Pinto

In his own description of himself, Jerry Pinto is a poet. His first book of poems Asylum (Allied Publishers) was released in 2004. Some of these poems are to be found in Reasons for Belonging; Fourteen Contemporary Indian Poets edited by Ranjit Hoskote. His poems are also to be found in Fulcrum Number 4; An Annual of Poetry and Aesthetics (Fulcrum Poetry Press, 2005) edited by Jeet Thayl; in Atlas; New Writing (Crossword/Aark Arts, 2006) edited by Sudeep Sen; and Ninety-nine Words (Panchabati Publications, 2006) edited by Manu Dash.
His first book was Surviving Women (Penguin India, 2000) a manual of gender politics, written for confused Indian men, which has gone into several reprints. Bombay Meri Jaan: Writings on Mumbai (Penguin India, 2003), which he co-edited with Naresh Fernandes, has also been reprinted. He has also edited Reflected in Water: Writings on Goa (Penguin India, 2006). Together with Arundhathi Subramaniam, he has edited Confronting Love; Contemporary Indian Love Poems in English. They have also edited A Pocketful of Wry; Indian Poets Also Laugh expected soon from Penguin India.

In 2006, Helen: The Life and Times of an H Bomb was released. It was as much a study of Bollywood’s gender and race politics as it was an affectionate examination of a dancing legend who had served the Mumbai film industry for nearly 30 years.

The book won the National Award for the Best Book on Cinema. more>>

Jonathan Shainin is the senior editor at The Caravan. He was the founder and editor of The Review, a widely acclaimed weekly supplement to The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi, and previously worked at the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. His own writing has appeared in The Nation, Bookforum, Salon and The Paris Review.

Kiran Nagarkar is an Indian novelist, playwright, film and drama critic and screenwriter both in Marathi and English, and is one of the most significant writers of postcolonial India. Amongst his most known works are Saat Sakkam Trechalis (Seven Sixes Are Forty Three) (1974, Ravan and Eddie (1994), and the epic novel, Cuckold (book) (1997) for which he was awarded the 2001 Sahitya Akademi Award in English by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters. Nagarkar is notable among Indian writers for having written acclaimed novels in more than one language. Nagarkar's theatre work also includes Kabirache Kay Karayche and Stranger Amongst Us, and his screenplay work includes The Broken Circle, The Widow and Her Friends, and The Elephant on the Mouse, a film for children. Works in translation: Seven sixes are forty-three. Tr. by Shubha Slee. more>>

Kjell Eriksson, born 1953 in Uppsala,. Sweden, has written a dozen novels and a documentary book, about agricultural workers in Sweden. His books are translated into eleven languages, among them "The princess of Burundi", awarded as the Best Crime Novel in 2002 in Sweden, and "The Hand that Trembles", partly set in Bangalore.
He is one of the most sucessful writers in the Swedish "avalanche" of Crime Novels which has invaded Europe and North America´during the last decade.
Kjell Eriksson start writing late in his life, published his first short novels in magazines, preferentially union papers, and the debut came in 1993.
In his novels he problematize his divided hometown, in one hand with the biggest and oldest University in Scandinavia, and on the other hand his own experiences, coming from the working class.
He works as a fulltime writer, but has 30 years experience of landscape-gardening, and he still do some gardening, and participate in Swedish television and radio as a gardenexpert.
He is currently working with an autobiography and a novel set in Spain in 1937, during the civil war. more>>

Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih writes poems and short fiction in Khasi and English. He has a total of 13 publications in Khasi. His collections of poetry in English include Moments, The Sieve and The Yearning of Seeds (HarperCollins). He is the author of Around the Hearth: Khasi Legends (Penguin) and the co-editor of Dancing Earth: An Anthology of Poetry from North-East India (Penguin). His poetry has been widely published in national and international journals, including The New Welsh Review (Cardiff); Planet: The Welsh Internationalist (Aberystwyth, Wales); Karavan (Stockholm); PEN International (London); The Literary Review (New Jersey); Wasafiri (London); Modern Haiku (Lincoln, USA); Simply Haiku (Pasadena, USA); and Poetry International Web (Rotterdam, Holland).His awards include the first Veer Shankar Shah-Raghunath Shah National Award for literature (Madhya Pradesh, 2008) and the first North-East Poetry Award (Tripura, 2004).

Administrator. Born 20.10.1965 Krishna District, Andhra Pradesh, M.A. (English); M. Phil, Car. Programme Officer, 2003-2007, Regional Secretary 2008-2009 and presently Deputy Secretary (Admn.) in Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi. Actively associated with various national institutions of literature and culture. Languages known English, Hindi, Marathi and Telugu; visited China and Malaysia as the co-ordinator of Indian Writers Delegation, 2006; Thailand & China, 2010 and represented Sahitya Akademi in the General Assembly meeting of Union Academique Internationale, Brussels, Belgium, 2011. Visited Canada as the coordinator of Indian Writers’ Delegation to take part in the Year of India 2011 in Canada. Translated literary works from Marathi to English and English to Telugu etc. Translated Children’s Dictionary from English to Telugu for Star Publications. Had been Jury to Sanskriti Award, Delhi and Examiner and Judge for Adult Education Competitions, Govt. of India. Has organised a number of National/International Seminars, Conferences and Poets’ Meets; Has been working on significant projects like – Encyclopaedia of Indian Poetics, Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature, Archives of Indian Literature and National Bibliography of Indian Literature.

Leena Prakash was born into a family that has generational ties to the Indian Army and grew up in cantonment towns all over India. she is an Alumni of Miranda House, New Delhi and IIT Mumbai. Leena cooked her first meal at the age of ten and almost set the house on fire. It was then her grandmothers decided to teach Leena their magic in the Kitchen. Most of the recipes in her first cookbook originate from this apprenticeship. Grandma's recipes of home style food, of the celebrations and festivals come alive in the "Treasures of the Indian Kitchen".

Manohar Shetty has published four books of poems, including ‘Domestic Creatures’ (Oxford University Press, New Delhi). His poems have been widely published and anthologized in India and abroad. He has edited a special edition on English language poets of India for ‘Poetry Wales’. Several anthologies feature his work, notably ‘The Oxford-India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets’ ( ed Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, OUP, N Delhi). His poems have been translated into Italian, Finnish, German and Slovenian. He was the editor of ‘Goa Today’ magazine for several years and has been a Homi Bhabha and Sahitya Akademi Fellow. He has edited ‘Ferry Crossing—Short Stories from Goa’ (Penguin India).

Mamang Dai is an Indian journalist, author, poet, and former civil servant based in Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh.Mamang Dai's first collection of poetry, River Poems, introduced by Keki Daruwalla established her as a major voice in Indian English Literature and Literature from North East India.She is also the author of Arunachal Pradesh: The Hidden Land. more>>

Meena Kandasamy (b.1984) is a poet, writer, activist and translator. Her work maintains a focus on caste annihilation, linguistic identity and feminism. She has published two collections of poetry, Touch (2006) and Ms Militancy (2010).
Meena was a writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program 2009. She was a featured poet at the City of Asylum Jazz Poetry Concert 2009 held in Pittsburgh, USA, the 14th Poetry Africa International Festival in October 2010 in Durban, DSC Jaipur Literature Festival 2011, Ottawa Writers Festival and the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival (Canada, 2011). She was a Charles Wallace Fellow (Jan-April) at the School of English, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK and also served as a Visiting Fellow (May- June) at the Department of Creative Writing, Newcastle University, UK in 2011. She holds a PhD in sociolinguistics and has just completed her first novel. more>>

Mini Nair is a postgraduate in chemistry at the University of Mumbai. Her writing reveals her love of cooking and the city in which she was born and raised. Mumbai is where she lives with her family and twin daughters.And she spends her weekends in her quaint cottage by the sea writing and reading.Published a collection of short stories, Beyond and Back’Published an illustrated book for middle grade children,’ Adventures of Aman, Avni and JahaanPublished her first fiction ,’ The Fourth Passenger’, October 2011.Two short stories published in an anthology,’ A cup Of Chai and other stories’ Her story idea was the basis for a film on sex selection produced for Population First, Mumbai.Have delivered lectures on the nuances of creative writing at colleges in Mumbai.

She is a well known writer, translator, and columnist of North East India. Acknowledged to be one of the foremost writers in English of the region. She is the author of "The Collector's Wife", which has been very well received in the country and abroad.It is the first novel to be published in English from the North East by two major publishing houses. She is also a regular stage performer in Hindusthani Vocal Classical Music, having performed all over the country and abroad. Also a regular artiste of All India Radio and Doordarshan.
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Mohammed Hanif is a Pakistani writer and journalist. He graduated from Pakistan Air Force Academy as a pilot officer, but subsequently left to pursue a career in journalism.He initially worked for Newsline, The Washington Post and India Today.His first novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes (2008) was shortlisted for the 2008 Guardian First Book Award. It has been also shortlisted for 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize in the Best First Book category as a winner from Europe and South Asia region. He has also written plays for the stage and screen, including a BBC drama and the movie, The Long Night. more>>

To read Mridula Garg is to savor modern and traditional India in all its non-stereotypical variety. She tells her tales with rare candor laced with irony with no fear of eminence or ideologies. She is best read in Hindustani, the language of her fiction; the latest, a novel, MiljulMan. But some works are available in good literary English translation. The most noteworthy are Chittacobra, Anitya, halfway to Nowhere and Country of Goodbyes( Kathgulab in Hindi) more>>

M. T. Vasudevan Nair, popularly known as MT, is a renowned Indian author,screenplay writer and film director.He was born in Kudallur, a small village in the present day Palakkad District, which was under the Malabar District in the Madras Presidency of the British Raj. He is one of the most prolific and versatile writers in modern Malayalam literature. In 2005, India's third highest civilian honour Padma Bhushan was awarded to him.He was awarded the highest literary award in India Jnanpith for his work Randamoozham. more>>

Naresh Fernandes is a journalist who lives in Bombay. He is a consulting editor at Time Out India, which has editions in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. He has previously worked at The Times of India and the Associated Press in Mumbai, and The Wall Street Journal in New York. His pieces have appeared in several Indian and international publications. He is the co-author of Bombay Then and Mumbai Now (Roli, 2009), a photo-led record of the city’s historical and contemporary concerns. In 2003, he was the co-editor, along with Jerry Pinto, of Bombay Meri Jaan (Penguin), an anthology of writing about Bombay.

Born in 1947 at Silchar, Assam, Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee did his M.A. in English Literature from Gauhati University with a Post-Graduate certificate in English teaching from the Centre for English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad. He taught English literature at G C College, Silchar till 1985. In 1985 he joined the Editorial Department of the prestigious Encyclopedia of Indian Literature Project undertaken by the Sahitya Akademi. In 1988 he took charge of Sahitya Akademi's Eastern Regional Office at Kolkata as its Secretary where the nature of his work involved conceptualizing and publishing of books in five languages, organizing literary seminars, symposia, translation workshops etc. in the region. During the nineties, Shri Bhattacharjee gradually specialized in Indian and Comparative Literature, and taught a course in the Post-Graduate Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University from1993 to 1997. In 1998, he was appointed Director of the National Book Trust (NBT), India, a premier organization under the Department of Higher Education, Government of India, engaged in promotion of books and reading habits. During the term (1998-2002) in NBT, he conducted celebration of the Year of the Book (2001), declared by the Government of India and served on panels of many national and international bodies. Shri Bhattacharjee rejoined the Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi in 2002 and worked as Editor, Indian Literature, Akademi’s bi-monthly journal, till his retirement from government service in 2007. In 1993, Shri Bhattacharjee visited the United States of America and researched in the field of ancient manuscripts as an Associate   Fellow of the Bienecke Rare Book and Manuscripts Library in the Yale University. In 1996 he led a delegation of Indian writers to Moscow during the Festival of India in Russia. He also led a research project entitled 'Towards an Integrated History of the SAARC Literature' and worked at the British Museum and India Office Library in 1997 under an Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) Grant. In 2004 he was invited by Tokyo University to speak at their comparative literature advance course. He has also travelled in different other parts of the world like Frankfurt, Budapest, Harare, Laos, Beijing, Cairo etc, either lecturing on book culture in India or copyright situation in India. Shri Bhattacharjee has been associated with respected banners as advisor/commentator/ script-writer for literature-based documentaries and features. He has also been regularly contributing articles and reviews in the literary pages of newspapers and journals including The Statesman, The Times of India, The Book Review and The Biblio. An accomplished translator from Bengali into English and vice-versa, his English translation of Mahasveta Devi's Armanian Champak Tree, Sunil Gangopadhyay’s The Dreadful Beauty , Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay’s The Ghost of Gosain Bagan and Bengali translation of   U R Anantamurthy's short story collection Surya Sarathi have been critically acclaimed. Shri Bhattacharjee co-edits the web-journal Translation Today of Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore and is a Member of the Programme Advisory Committee of the National Translation Mission launched by the Govt of India. Since April 2007 he has been working as the Director of K K Birla Foundation, New Delhi , a private trust devoted to the cause of literature.

Pablo Bartholomew is a self-taught, Indian photographer. In his late teens was awarded first prize by World Press Photo in 1975 for his series on morphine addicts. In 1984, he won the World Press Picture of the Year for his iconic image of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy.
As a photojournalist, he documented societies in conflict and transition for over 35  years. His work has been featured in magazines like Time, Life, National Geographic, GEO and has exhibited widely. Recently he has been working with the family archives to create exhibitions and books on the writings and photography of his father, the well known art critic, Richard Bartholomew. more>>

Writer-diplomat Pavan K. Varma is a graduate in History from St. Stephen's College, after which he took a degree in Law from the University of Delhi. He joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1976.
A writer of depth and insight, he has written over a dozen books including the highly successful Krishna: The Playful Divine on India’s most popular deity, the critically applauded biography of the Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib, Ghalib: The Man, The Times, and the Havelis of Old Delhi. His first book on a contemporary subject was the path breaking The Great Indian Middle Class (published also in French), followed by the astoundingly successful Being Indian: The Truth About Why the 21st Century Will be India’s (Viking/Penguin 2004).
His latest book titled: Becoming Indian: The Unfinished Revolution of Culture and Identity (Penguin-Allen Lane) was launched in February, 2010 and deals with the pivotal issues of culture and identity for postcolonial societies, particularly in an age of aggressive globalization where co-option is the sub-text in the field of culture. A Hindi translation has been published, and a French edition has just been published. more>>

Mr Prabhakar Kamat is a retired I.A.S. officer based in Goa. He has held very senior positions in the administrations of both Portuguese Goa and India. Following his Higher Secondary in Goa, he proceeded for higher studies in Maths and Geographical Engineering from the University of Lisbon and University of Zurich. He worked for the Ministry of Finance in Portugal before returning to Goa as Director, Economic Services (including Industries, Mines and Land survey) in Portuguese Goa. He remained in charge of Goa’s economic activities after Liberation. Mr Kamat joined the IAS, occupying senior positions in Himachal Pradesh and New Delhi. He was a Director in the Office of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Counsellor in the first Indian Embassy in Portugal. He retired as Chairman, Mormugão Port Trust. He is the author of Short Takes Long Memories (Rupa Publications, 2011) with Sharmila Kamat

Preeti Gill is Senior Commissioning Editor and Rights Director at Zubaan, an independent feminist press in New Delhi with many years of publishing experience behind her. Sh has built up a significant list of writers from the Northeast of India for Zubaan, edited an anthology of nonfiction writing from the Northeast called The Peripheral Centre and worked on several projects to do with women and conflict in that region.

Ranjit Hoskote

Ranjit Hoskote is a poet, cultural theorist and curator. His collections of poetry include Vanishing Acts: New & Selected Poems 1985-2005 (Penguin, 2006) and Die Ankunft der Vögel (Carl Hanser Verlag, 2006). His translation of the 14th-century Kashmiri mystic Lal Ded has been published as I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded (Penguin Classics, 2011). His poems have appeared in Akzente, Boulevard Magenta, Fulcrum, Green Integer Review, Iowa Review, Nthposition, Poetry Review (London), Wasafiri, and Wespennest, as well as in numerous anthologies, including The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets (Bloodaxe, 2008) and Language for a New Century (W. W. Norton, 2008). Hoskote has co-authored Kampfabsage (Random House/ Blessing Verlag, 2007), with Ilija Trojanow. He has also co-authored, with Nancy Adajania, The Dialogues Series (Popular/ Foundation B&G, 2011), an unfolding programme of artist conversations. Hoskote has been a Fellow of the International Writing Program, University of Iowa (1995) and writer-in-residence at Villa Waldberta, Munich (2003), Theater der Welt, Essen/ Mülheim (2010) and the Polish Institute, Berlin (2010). He is research scholar-in-residence at BAK/ Basis voor actuele Kunst, Utrecht (2010-2011). Hoskote has curated more than 20 exhibitions of contemporary art, including the 7th Gwangju Biennale (with Okwui Enwezor and Hyunjin Kim, 2008) and the first India Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011). more>>

Robin Ngangom (b.1959, Imphal, Manipur, the "forgotten theatre of World War II") is a bilingual poet and translator who writes in English and Manipuri. He studied literature in St. Edmund’s College, Shillong, and in the North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, where he currently teaches.His three books of poetry are: Words and the Silence, Time’s Crossroads, and The Desire of Roots. His poems have appeared in literary journals and anthologies such as The New Statesman (London), Verse (Georgia), Planet: The Welsh Internationalist (Ceredigion), The Literary Review (New Jersey), Kavya Bharati (Madurai),Chandrabhaga (Cuttack), Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi), Poetry International Web (Rotterdam), Confronting Love: Poems (Penguin Books India), Khasia inGwalia (Alun Books, Wales), and Dancing Earth: An Anthology of Poetry from North-East India (Penguin Books India). Ngangom says that his poetry is “mostly autobiographical, written with the  hope  of  enthusing  readers  with  my  communal or carnal life — the life of a politically-discriminated-against, historically-overlooked  individual from the nook of a third world country. I began by writing dreamy-eyed stuff. My more recent efforts spring from the cruel contradictions of Manipur and its people, and the picturesque Northeast India which seems especially vulnerable to tragedy. I believe that poetry cannot do without love. more>>

S. Anand is the cofounder of Navayana, an independent press that focuses on caste from an anticaste perspective. He is the co-author of Bhimayana (2011), the graphic biography of B.R. Ambedkar, and of Brahmans and Cricket (2003), a polemical critique of cricket, Lagaan and caste. Before turning to publishing full time he was a journalist for ten years and worked for Outlook, The Hindu, Indian Express and Deccan Chronicle. In 2007, he won the British Council–London Book Fair International Young Publisher of the Year award.

Sadia Dehlvi is a Delhi based columnist and the author of " Sufism: The Heart of Islam" published by HarperCollins India. The book draws on a range of Muslim texts and traditions, the lives of the early Sufis, highlights the important Sufi orders of the subcontinent and their message of love, tolerance and inclusion. Her next book' Sufi Courtyard: Dargahs of Delhi' is to be released later this year. For over three decades, Delhlvi's writing have focussed on women, minorities, heritage, faith and culture. more>> 

Saeed Akhtar Mirza is an Indian screenwriter and director in Hindi films and television. He is the maker of important Paralled cinema films like Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho! (1984), Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyon Ata Hai (1980), Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro (1989) and Naseem (1995), which won two National Film Awards in 1996.
He is director of the popular TV serials Nukkad (Street Corner) (1986) and Intezaar (Wait) (1988), along with various documentary films on social welfare and cultural activism. He is also a trustee of ANHAD, a Delhi based NGO working for communal harmony.

Samar Halarnkar

Samar Halarnkar has been a journalist for 21 years and is an Editor-at-Large with the Hindustan Times and Mint. Until 2009, he was Managing Editor of the Hindustan Times. He stepped down from his essentially managerial job to return to his first love, writing. He writes three columns: one, Maha Bharat, a perspective on emerging India, for the Hindustan Times; two, Frontier Mail, on the frontiers of science and technology, for Mint; and three, Our Daily Bread, a married man's guide to creative cooking, for Mint. He also reports major news stories and handles two long, running indepth editorial projects with groups of reporters in both newspapers. "Tracking Hunger", is a chronicle of India's efforts to rid itself of malnutrition and hunger. "ReImagining India", examines public and private efforts to transform India.His areas of interest are poverty, reform, internal conflict, science and technology and religious affairs. He has an MA from the University of Missouri-Columbia, USA, and a B.Com from St Joseph's College of Commerce, Bangalore. He has been a fellow of the American Society for Microbiology and has won the Polestar national prize for technology writing. He is the author of "Nirvana under the rain tree", an exploration of India's internet revolution. He is presently working on two books.Halarnkar is a native of Pedem, Goa, and lives in Bangalore with his wife and infant daughter. more>>

A photographer, writer, curator and activist, Shahidul Alam obtained a PhD in chemistry at London University before switching to photography.His recent book “My Journey as a witness” has been published by the Italian fine art publisher Skira and currently tops the list of contenders for “Photo Book of the year 2011”. He is currently working on a series of books and a film on the 1971 war of liberation of Bangladesh and setting up a rural journalism network in Bangladesh.

Shailaja Bajpai is a journalist and has been working since 1983. She currently works with The Indian Express as a senior consulting editor. She writes a weekly column, Telescope for The Indian Express which has appeared in the paper since 1991. She has also co-authored, the book `The Impact of Television Advertising on Children'. She is Dean of Studies at Express Institute of Media Studies run by the Express Group. This runs a one year programme in journalism.Her first novel, Three Parts Desire has just been published by Harper Collins.

Sharmila Kamat is an astrophysicist who is also an established writer and author. She has a Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and is a recipient of a University Fellowship from Columbia University, New York. Her research studies the constitution of the Universe, particularly what makes up its dark matter. She was Faculty in Physics in a Goan college before proceeding to the US. She has presented papers at international conferences and has over 45 research publications to her credit. She is the author of Mango Mood (Rupa Publications, 2011) and Short Takes Long Memories (Rupa Publications, 2011) with Prabhakar Kamat. She is the recipient of the Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellowship of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has contributed features for, among others, New Scientist, US News and World Report, Smithsonian, NPR, Times of India, Hindu, Sunday Observer, Deccan Herald and PTI Features. She has been Editorial Coordinator in Goa for Femina and a columnist for several Goan papers. Her forte is science, travel and humour writing. She has done radio and TV features besides acting in an off-Broadway play. She was invited to write a book on Alentejo, Portugal by Fundação Oriente and was part of the Rotary International Group Study Exchange Team from India to the US.

Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka was written in Galle, revised in Colombo and edited in New Zealand. He has written rock songs, travel stories, ads, bass-lines and, most recently, a novel: Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, the story of an alcoholic journalist’s quest to track down a mysterious cricketer of the 1980s. Published to great acclaim in India and the UK, it won the 2008 Gratiaen Prize, awarded by Booker Prize Winner Michael Ondaatje, was selected as one of the Top 11 debuts of 2011 by Waterstones UK and shortlisted for the DSC prize for South Asian fiction. He now lives in Singapore, where he is growing his hair and working on a 2nd novel. His writings can be found at www.shehanwriter.com .

Sheen Kaaf Nizam

Born 1947, Urdu poet and critic Sheen Kaaf Nizam has published Lamhon kee Saleeb, Dasht mein Dariya, Naad, Saya Koi Lamba na Tha, Bayazein Kho Gayi Hai and many other collections and anthologies.

He has also published a book in criticism Lafz dar Lafz, and a book on fellow poet Makhmur Saidi. He has edited many Devnagari volumes of poets like Wazir Agha, Nida Fazli, Makhmur Saidi, Kumar Pashi, Muhammad Alwi and others besides editing Deewan-e-Ghalib and Deewan-e-Mir.

He has been honoured with many prizes including the Iqbal Samman (2006), Bhasa Bharti Samman, the Urdu Akademi Award, and the Begum Akhtar Award.

Sidharth Bhatia, author of Cinema Modern The Navketan Story has been a journalist for over 35 years, working both in India and abroad. He is a regular commentator in newspapers and on television on current affairs, society and culture. Till December 2009 he was on the editorial board that launched DNA and ran the editorial page of the paper. He was awarded the press fellowship to Wolfson College, Cambridge and made an associate fellow of the college in 2001. He was a foreign correspondent in South Africa during the transition to democracy in 1993.

Sivasankari

An awareness of social issues; a special sensitivity to social problems; a commitment to set people thinking – these are the unique characteristics of the writer, Sivasankari. A multi-faceted personality, she is best known as the author of many novels, collections of short stories and novellas, travelogues and biographies. Avan, her novel on drug addiction, has been translated into several Indian languages, English and Ukrainian. This novel, when serialized in the national television network under the title ‘SUBAH’ was adjudged as one of the mega hits of 1987. Her writing on eye donation made a deep impact on readers, resulting in thousands of people pledging their eyes for donation after death. Articles on the physically challenged, the aged and the mentally imbalanced special persons have awakened social awareness among readers and she has received grateful acknowledgements in public forums from experts and welfare organizations. Her novel on three generations, Paalangal, and Chinna Noolkanda Nammai Siraippaduthuvathu? – the book comprising a series of 52 non-fiction articles emphasizing self-improvement, parts of which are often quoted by eminent personalities in their speeches and writings, are considered by Tamil readers as outstanding works. Sivasankari, the writer has crossed language and media barriers. Her book Amma Sonna Kathaigal (‘Tales My Mother Told Me’), an illustrated collection of children’s short stories, is supplied with an audiotape in which Sivasankari herself narrates the stories. Her novels have been filmed in Tamil, Kannada and Telugu, receiving popular acclaim for their integrity and social commitment. Tele-serials based on her stories, when telecast every day in the regional and private channels, retained their Number One position in their respective channels. She is also a much sought-after speaker, resource person and participant in public fora and expert committees. Sivasankari the social activist has been instrumental in setting up the Rajaji Centre for De-addiction at the VHS Hospital, Chennai. She is one of the founders of AGNI (Awakened Group for National Integration), a citizens’ movement for the betterment of society through literature, youth development and awareness of women’s rights and issues. She has served as Member of the National High Level Committee for Awareness on Drug abuse; as designated Board Member of the Central Film Censor Board; as Senate Member of the Bharathidasan University, Trichy; Avinashilingam College of Home Science, Coimbatore and Gandhigram Rural University, Gandhigram; and as Member of the Advisory Committees of many organizations, including AIR, the Central Sahitya Akademi and the Voluntary Health Services. She has been a member of the jury for the National Film Awards, and a committee member of the National Film Development Corporation. Knit India Through Literature is her latest mega-project which involved intense sourcing, research and translation of literature from 18 Indian languages. She launched this project with a mission to meet and interview the stalwart writers of all the 18 Indian languages that are approved by the VIIIth Schedule of Indian constitution. The Tamil and English editions of the first volume the SOUTH, the second volume the EAST, the third volume the WEST and the final volume the NORTH of this project have been published in 1998, 2000, 2004 and 2009 respectively. She is the winner of many literary awards and other recognitions including The Kasthuri Srinivasan Award for the novel Paalangal in 1983-84; Dr. Rajah Sir Annamalai Chettiar Award for Chinna Noolkanda Nammai Siraippaduthuvathu? in 1988; The Kolkatta based Bharatiya Basha Parishad Award for the novel Verillatha Marangal in 1989-90. She has served as a Jury in the National Film Awards Committee in 1995 and in 2008. She was honoured as one of the fifty women who have influenced the evolution of independent India under the title ‘Women who’ve made India’ by the magazine FEMINA on August 15, 1997. Has also received the Honorary Citizen Award by the Hon. Mayor of the City of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA in 1999; the Woman of the Year 1999-2000 by the International Women’s Association; was selected as one of the four writers whose works were recorded in their own voices for the Archives of U.S. Library of Congress to mark the Bicentennial Celebration of the Library in August 2000. She is the first writer to receive the GOPICHAND LITERARY AWARD from YUVAKALAVAHINI of Andhra Pradesh in January 2008 after the committee decided it as a National Award for writers of all Indian languages. more>>

Sonia Faleiro is an award-winning reporter and the author of 'The Girl' (Penguin Viking, 2006). Her non-fiction narrative, 'Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars' has been published worldwide and translated into several languages. Sonia was born in Goa, studied in Edinburgh, worked in Bombay, and now lives in San Francisco. more>>

Psychoanalyst and novelist, Sudhir Kakar has been a visiting professor at the universities of Harvard, Chicago (1989-93), McGill, Melbourne, Vienna, Hawaii, and a Fellow at the Institutes of Advanced Study, Princeton and Berlin.
Sudhir Kakar’s many honors include the Kardiner Award of Columbia University, Boyer Prize of the American Anthropological Association, Germany’s Goethe Medal, Rockefeller Residency, McArthur Fellowship, the Bhabha, Nehru and ICSSR National Fellowships of India and the Distinguished Service Award of Indo-American Psychiatric Association. As ‘the psychoanalyst of civilizations’, the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur listed Kakar as one of the world’s 25 major thinkers while the leading German weekly Die Zeit has profiled him as one of the 21 thinkers for the 21st century.
He is the author of seventeen books of non-fiction and four novels. His latest books are the novel The Crimson Throne, the memoir A Book of Memory and the edited volume On Dreams and Dreaming. His books have been translated into twenty one languages around the world.

Born and brought up in Kenya, Sukrita Paul Kumar is a poet and a critic, teaching literature at Delhi University. Formerly a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, she is at present an Honorary Fellow of International Writing Programme, University of Iowa, USA, Fellow of Cambridge Seminars and Hong Kong Baptist University, Centre for Developing Countries, Delhi University as well as Faculty, Durrell Centre at Corfu, Greece. She has published six collections of poems, Rowing Together, Oscillations, Apurna, Folds of Silence, Without Margins and the latest, Poems Come Home published by HarperCollins as a bilingual book, the original English poems alongside their Hindustani translations by the eminent lyricist Gulzar. Her poems have been published In Their Own Voice, the Penguin collection of Indian women poets, and many journals such as ARIEL (Canada), Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi), The Journal of the Poetry Society (Delhi). Her major critical publications include her books, Narrating Partition, Conversations on Modernism, The New Story, Breakthrough (ed.), and Man, Woman and Androgyny. Involved in the study of the theory and practice of literary translation, she has also been Director of Katha’s Project on “Translating Short Fiction”, for two years. Her volume, Ismat, Her Life, Her Times was published by Katha, while as Director of a UNESCO project on “The Culture of Peace”, she edited a volume of Urdu short stories from India and Pakistan, Mapping Memories. She has co-edited Speaking for Herself: An Anthology of Asian Women’s Writing (Penguin India), Women’s Studies in India: Contours of Change (IIAS, Shimla) and the National Book Trust of India published her book of translations, Stories of Joginder Paul. Her translation of a Partition novel, Sleepwalkers was published by Katha. She is the chief editor of the anthology prescribed by University of Delhi on “Cultural Diversity and Literary Traditions in India” (Macmillan India). Also, Pearson Longman has published Interpreting Homes in South Asian Literature, co-edited by her. “Crossing Over”, a special issue on Partition, of Manoa, the journal from University of Hawaii (Summer 2007), has been guest edited by her. She is at present engaged with a major project on “Cultural Diversity in South Asia” as part of which she also convened an International Seminar on the subject. Her papers on “Cultural Diversity in South Asia” have been published in international journals. She has been the academic coordinator of three IGNOU films on “Partition through the eyes of the Writer”. Sukrita was invited to the three-month-long International Writing Programme (2002), at Iowa, USA. In 2004, she was invited by the Hong Kong Baptist University for a month-long residency. She has been a recipient of several grants and fellowships including a translation grant from International Center for Writing and Translation, University of California at Irvine (2004), Rockefeller grant for a seminar held at New York State University, the British Council Visitorship and Charles Wallace sponsorship for a seminar in Cambridge University. She is also an awardee of the Shastri Indo-Canadian Research Fellowship. She has lectured at Cambridge University, SOAS (London University) and several Canadian and American Universities on Indian literature. In 2004, she visited the South Asia Institute at Heidelberg, Germany, to talk on Partition Narratives. She was invited to give readings of her poems and lectures on South Asian Literature in universities in Hong Kong and South Korea. She has given readings of her poems on invitation from ICCR, Sahitya Akademi, Jyanpeeth, The Poetry Society of India and various universities and institutions abroad. She has been on the jury of several literary awards for Sahitya Akademi, Indian Council of Cultural Relations, Crossword, Katha and others.Committed to serving social causes, in November 2002 she set up a shelter for the homeless. The poems that came out of her experiences with the homeless were presented at the Nehru Centre at London on the occasion of a Seminar on “Narratives of Home” at SOAS, University of London. Sukrita has held a solo exhibition of her paintings at AIFACS in New Delhi.

Sunil Khilnani is Director, King’s India Institute at King’s College London. His research interests lie at the intersection of various fields: intellectual history and the study of political thought, the history of modern India, democratic theory in relation to its recent non-Western experiences, the politics of contemporary India, and strategic thought in the definition of India’s place in the world.
Khilnani, who made his name in 1997 with his seminal book, The Idea of India, emphasised that his India Institute would be different from India departments in other British universities because it will focus on “contemporary India”. He is completing a book on India’s global role and prospects, while he continues to research studies of Jawaharlal Nehru and the history of democracy in India – two of his long-term projects.

Temsula Ao is a poet, short story writer and ethnographer. She is a retired Professor of English in North Eastern Hill University (NEHU), where she has taught since 1975. She received the honorary Padma Shri Award in 2007. She is the recipient of the Governor’s Gold Medal 2009 from the government of Meghalaya. She is widely respected as one of the major literary voices in English to emerge from Northeast India along with Mitra Phukan and Mamang Dai.Her works have been translated into German, French, Assamese, Bengali and Hindi. more>>

Urvashi Butalia is an Indian feminist and historian. She is the Director and Co-founder of Kali for Women, India's first feminist publishing house.
She earned a B.A. in literature from Miranda House, Delhi University in 1971, a Masters in literature from Delhi University in 1973, and a Masters in South Asian Studies from the University of London in 1977.
She worked as an editor for Zed Publishing and later went on to set up her own publishing house. Her writing has appeared in several newspapers including The Guardian, The Statesman, The Times of India and several magazines including Outlook, the New Internationalist and India Today. Butalia is a consultant for Oxfam India and she holds the position of Reader at the College of Vocational Studies at the University of Delhi. Her main areas of research are partition and oral histories. She has also written on gender, communalism, fundamentalism and media. more>>

Zac O’Yeah used to work at a theatre in Gothenburg, Sweden – the harbor town where his detective novel “Once Upon A Time In Scandinavistan” (Hachette India, 2010; originally published in Swedish as “Tandooriälgen” in 2006) is set – and toured with a pop group until he retired early at 25 and came to India. Since then he has published eleven books in Swedish, many of them important bestsellers – including the Gandhi-biography “Mahatma!” which was short-listed for the August Prize 2008 for best nonfiction book of the year. His most recent book in Swedish is the conspiracy thriller “Summan av kardemumman” (2009; paperback in 2010). He is currently working on a new thriller and a film project. He is also a literary critic (rather grumpy at that), cultural feature writer and columnist, currently writing on crime fiction in Mint Lounge, the weekend supplement of the Indian edition of Wall Street Journal, and reviewing books in Deccan Herald’s Sunday supplement, and contributing occasionally to the travel magazine Outlook Traveller, plus now and then in major Swedish magazines and newspapers. Zac O’Yeah is also a translator specializing in introducing selections of Indian writing – such as Pankaj Mishra, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and others – to Swedish readers. He has had a long involvement with theatre in as a playwright, director, designer, producer, and occasional performer. Furthermore, he has been a cultural consultant for several bilateral exchange projects involving Swedish and Indian writers, translators, theatre workers and many others who toil in the fields of art. These projects have included, for instance, developing theatre for children and young people. Previous jobs include International Secretary of the Swedish Writers’ Union (1998-2000), dance lighting designer (1988-1992) and dish washer in a seedy pizzeria in Kungsportsavenyn (1986-1987). He lives in India and is married to the author Anjum Hasan. more>>