5 - 7 December 2019 , Thu - Sat.
GALF 2019 : Speakers | Programme | Partners | Performances | Artwork | Videos
Photo Gallery: Inaugural Day | Day 1 | Day 2
Rakhshanda Jalil
Dr Rakhshanda Jalil is a translator, writer, and literary historian. She has published over 25 books and written over 50 academic papers and essays. Her book on the lesser-known monuments of Delhi, Invisible City, continues to be a bestseller. Her recent works include: Liking Progress, Loving Change: A Literary History of the Progressive Writers Movement in Urdu (OUP, 2014); a biography of Urdu feminist writer Dr Rashid Jahan A Rebel and her Cause (Women Unlimited, 2014); a translation of The Sea Lies Ahead, Intizar Husain's seminal novel on Karachi (Harper Collins, 2015) and Krishan Chandar's partition novel Ghaddar (Westland, 2017); an edited volume of critical writings on Ismat called An Uncivil Woman (Oxford University Press, 2017); and in the past year a literary biography of the Urdu poet Shahryar for Harper Collins; The Great War: Indian Writings on the First World War (Bloomsbury); Preeto & Other Stories: The Male Gaze in Urdu (Niyogi) and Kaifiyat, a translation of Kaifi Azmi’s poems for Penguin Random House and Jallianwala Bagh: Literary Responses in Prose &Poetry (Niyogi Books). Her latest book is But You Don’t Look Like a Muslim (Harper Collins), a collection of 40 essays on religion, culture, literature and identity. She runs an organization called Hindustani Awaaz, devoted to the popularization of Hindi-Urdu literature and culture. Her debut collection of fiction, Release & Other Stories, was published by Harper Collins in 2011, and received critical acclaim. She was awarded the Kaifi Azmi Award for her contribution to Urdu and the First Jawad Memorial Prize for Urdu-Hindi Translation. She writes regularly for major newspapers such as Hindustan Times, Indian Express, The Hindu as well as magazines such as Outlook, Scroll, The Wire, etc. She is the Editor of the Taj magazine, a bi-annual book-length journal of the Taj group of hotels.
Dhruba Hazarika
Dhruba Hazarika was born in Shillong and educated in St. Edmund’s School & College. He served as a lecturer in economics for a brief period before joining the Assam Civil Service in 1983. In 1999, he was inducted into the Indian Administrative Service, serving in various capacities, and retired while in the rank of Commissioner and Secretary to the Government of Assam in early 2016. Post retirement, he was appointed as Member of the Assam Public Service Commission from where he retired in July 2018.
Dhruba Hazarika’s first step into the literary world began early in life, influenced as he was by his mother’s wide reading as well by the encouragement that he received from his teachers. From being the editor of the college magazine to his many published works over the years Dhruba Hazarika has written over a 100 short stories, essays published in various journals and newspapers. Till date, Penguin has published three of his books comprising two novels, A Bowstring Winter and Sons of Brahma; and a short story collection, Luck. His next collection of short stories Savage Men is due for release later by Speaking Tiger this year.
He has been a regular contributor during the last thirty years to The Sentinel, The Telegraph and, presently, to The Assam Tribune as well as to various magazines. Several universities in India have included his works in their academic syllabi. He has addressed various gatherings, academic and non-academic, on the art and craft of creative writing.
Dhruba Hazarika is a recipient of the DY365 Literary Award and the All-India Katha Award for fiction in English. He is a founder member of the vibrant North-East Writers’ Forum and is presently its President. Apart from reading and writing, his other interests include painting, woodwork, trekking and cosmology. He has travelled widely both at home and abroad but is happiest when with his family.
David Devadas
Author and journalist, David Devadas is an authority on Kashmir. His books, `The Generation of Rage in Kashmir’ (OUP, 2018) and `The Story of Kashmir’ (2019) are eye-openers. Distinguished Fellow of the Institute for Social Sciences, he has been Senior Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Visiting Professor at Jamia Millia Islamia, and Political Editor of Business Standard. He has made critically acclaimed presentations at international conferences at the universities of Heidelberg and Zurich, and has been an Erasmus Mundus scholar at Humboldt University in Berlin.
Professor Devadas’s predictions have proved consistently accurate during more than three decades of reporting and analysing Kashmir. He has lived with families in rural, urban, and suburban Kashmir for long periods over the past quarter-century.
As a journalist, he covered the first Reagan-Gorbachev detente summit in Geneva in 1985, the Conference on Disarmament which drafted the CTBT in 1996, the UNGA in 1997, and the Vajpayee-Sharif Lahore summit in 1999.
Nishant Saldanha
Nishant Saldanha is an independent comics artist and filmmaker with degrees from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (London) and the California Institute of the Art’s School of Film/Video (Los Angeles). This year, he became the first South Asian artist to be included in the prestigious Best American Comics anthology. After 5 years in Los Angeles, Nishant has moved back to his ancestral land, Goa to pursue an independent arts practice, working primarily in the medium of comics and book making, writing and photography. He self-publish his comic series Mr. Good Guy online.
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.
Mahendra Caculo
Born in 1962, Mahendra Caculo has always lived in Goa. He is a civil engineer by training and valuer of real estate. A renowned writer / speaker and much awarded personality in the field of valuation, he regularly conducts workshops on valuation all over the country under ‘Knowledge Series by Mahendra Kakule’. These workshops have received great response from the fraternity of valuers.
Mahendra started writing poetry at the age 54 on a dare by his childhood friend and has now published a book of poems in English aptly called ‘Late Blooms’ which was well accepted and widely acclaimed. His style of writing is simple, vivid and touches the hearts of the readers.
He has a faithful band of followers who liken his poetry to that in local Indian languages.
He is influenced by Kahlil Gibran, Pablo Neruda, Dilip Chitre and Arun Kolatkar.
Supriya Nair
Supriya Nair is an editor and journalist from Mumbai. She writes a weekly books column for Mumbai Mirror. Her work has appeared in Vogue, Wisden and The New York Times. She is co-founder of All Things Small, a media company that specialises in non-fiction from the Indian subcontinent.
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.
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 -Â '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.
Jerry Pinto
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.
