6 - 8 December 2018 , Thu - Sat.
GALF 2018 : Speakers
Arundhathi Subramaniam
Arundhathi Subramaniam is an award-winning poet and prose writer. Widely translated and anthologised, her recent volume of poetry, When God is a Traveller (2014) was the Season Choice of the Poetry Book Society, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. She is the recipient of various awards and fellowships, including the inaugural Khushwant Singh Prize, the Raza Award for Poetry, the Zee Indian Women’s Award for Literature, the International Piero Bigongiari Prize in Italy, the Homi Bhabha Fellowship, the Charles Wallace Fellowship, among others. She has written extensively on culture and spirituality, and has worked over the years as critic, poetry editor and curator. As prose writer, her books include The Book of Buddha (2005); the bestselling biography of a contemporary mystic, Sadhguru: More Than a Life (2010); and most recently, Adiyogi: The Source of Yoga (co-authored with Sadhguru). Most of her books have gone into several reprints. As editor, her most recent book is the acclaimed Penguin anthology of Bhakti poetry, Eating God.
Salil Tripathi
Salil Tripathi is an award-winning journalist and writer whose books include Offence: The Hindu Case (Seagull), The Colonel Who Would Not Repent (Aleph), and Detours: Songs of the Open Road (Tranquebar). He is chair, Writers-in-Prison Committee at PEN International. Born in Bombay and educated at New Era School, Sydenham College, and later, Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth College in the US, Salil has been a correspondent in India and Singapore, and now lives in London. His awards include the Red Ink Award for human rights journalism from the Mumbai Press Club, Bastiat Award in the United States, and the Citibank Pan Asian Journalism Award in Hong Kong. His articles have appeared in publications around the world. He is working on a book on Gujaratis.
Anil Yadav
Anil Yadav is a traveller and Hindi prose writer with three books to his credit. Wah Bhi Koi Des Hai Maharaj (2013), a travelogue of India’s North-East, was translated in English as Is That Even a Country Sir! Journeys in Northeast India by Train, Bus and Tractor (2017) and in Punjabi. His collection of short stories Nagar Vadhuyen Akhbar Nahi Padhti (City Brides Don’t Read the Papers) was published in 2011 and is shortly to be translated and published in Italian. His collection of journalistic writings - Sonam Gupta Bewafa Nahin Hai (Sonam Gupta Is Not Unfaithful) – was published in 2017. Anil also writes political commentary and articles for websites including BBC Hindi, Newslaudry, Media Vigil and a few other selected newspapers. He lives in New Delhi.
Antara Dev Sen
Antara Dev Sen is the founder editor of The Little Magazine, an independent journal of ideas and letters, and the first Indian magazine to focus on contemporary South Asian literature and offer it in English translation. Sen is also a literary critic and translator, a newspaper columnist and commentator on the media, politics and culture. She has edited several books including the TLM Short Stories from South Asia series. Earlier, Sen was Senior Editor of the Hindustan Times and the Indian Express in Delhi. She has also been a Reuters Fellow at Oxford University. Sen is associated with other media, literary, educational, and voluntary organisations in India and overseas. She lives in Delhi.
Ramachandra Guha
Ramachandra Guha is a historian and biographer. He has taught at Yale and Stanford universities; held the Arné Naess Chair, University of Oslo; and served as the Indo-American Community Visiting Professor, University of California, Berkeley and the Philippe Roman Professor of History and International Affairs, London School of Economics. In 2014, Yale University awarded him an honorary doctorate in the humanities. Ram’s books include a pioneering environmental history, The Unquiet Woods (1989); and an award-winning social history of cricket, A Corner of a Foreign Field (2002). India after Gandhi (2007) was chosen as a book of the year by the Economist, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal among others; and as a book of the decade in the Times of India, the Times of London, and The Hindu. His most recent books are Gandhi Before India (2014), which was chosen as a notable book of the year by the New York Times; and Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World (2018). The New York Times referred to him as ‘perhaps the best among India’s non-fiction writers’; and Time Magazine called him ‘Indian democracy’s pre-eminent chronicler’. Ram has received the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society of Environmental History; the Malcolm Adideshiah Award for excellence in social science research; the Sahitya Akademi Award; the R. K. Narayan Prize; and the Fukoka Prize. In 2009, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan.
Vasudhendra
Vasudhendra is a Kannada author and lives in Bangalore. He worked as a software professional for more than 20 years and now runs his own publication house, Chanda Pustaka, which publishes and encourages new writing in Kannada. He has also instituted the Chanda Pustaka Award which recognizes young short story writers. Vasudhendra is also associated with local support groups for LGBT individuals. The author of 15 books in Kannada that have sold over one lakh copies, he has won many literary awards, including the Kannada Sahitya Academy Book Prize. His award winning nammamma andre nangishta (I like my mother) has been reprinted 20 times. His book Mohanaswamy chronicles the life of a young queer man. The book has been translated into English, Spanish, Telugu, Malayalam and the Tamil, Marathi, and Hindi translations are in progress. Being a passionate hiker, he has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro of Tanzania and trekked to Kailash & Mansarovar of Tibet. World Cinema and Mahabharata are his other passions. He vouched not to watch television 18 years back and walks his words!
Supriya Nair
Supriya Nair is a Mumbai-based journalist and studied at St Xavier's College. She is a sports columnist for Mumbai Mirror and former associate editor at The Caravan magazine and staff writer at Mint Lounge, Mumbai. In 2016, she edited the anthology The Caravan Book of Profiles, a collection of award-winning political and cultural reportage from the magazine. Nair writes about books, sports and culture and her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Republic, Vogue and Wisden.
Ashwani Kumar
Ashwani Kumar is an Anglophone Indian poet, writer, and professor at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). His anthologies include My Grandfather’s Imaginary Typewriter (2014) with a prolegomenon by Ashis Nandy and Banaras and the Other (2017). Ashwani’s poems - translated in Indian languages and Hungarian - are noted for their ‘lyrical celebration’ of garbled voices of memory and their subversive ‘whimsy’ quality. Banaras, the first of a trilogy on religious cities, was long-listed for the 1st Jayadev National Poetry Award 2017. Select cantos of the Hungarian translation of Banaras were performed by Hungarian band Kalaka at the Times Lit Fest 2017 in Mumbai. He is currently working on Ayodhya, the second volume in the trilogy; the non-fiction book Biharis (forthcoming, Aleph Books); and a special volume on Tagore in Hungarian Architecture of Alphabets/Betűrendek architektúrája (forthcoming, 2019). Ashwani is the co-founder of Indian Novels Collective which brings classic novels of in Indian Literature to English readers. He is the author of Community Warriors (2008); and co-editor of Power Shifts and Global Governance (2010), Global Civil Society Yearbook 2009: Poverty and Activism (2009). Migration and Mobility (forthcoming). He also writes articles and reviews for Financial Express, the Print, Business Standard, The Hindu, Indian Express, DNA, Open Democracy and others.
Suneeta Peres da Costa
Suneeta Peres da Costa was born in Sydney, Australia, to parents of Goan origin. She has published and produced across the genres of fiction, non-fiction, playwriting and poetry. Her debut novel, Homework, was published internationally by Bloomsbury in 1999; a novella Saudade, on the legacies of Portuguese colonialism and the Goan diaspora in Angola, was published by Giramondo in March 2018. Her literary honours include a Fulbright Scholarship, the Australia Council for the Arts BR Whiting Residency, Rome, and, recently, an Asialink Arts Creative Exchange to the Australian and New Zealand Studies Centre at Himachal Pradesh University, India. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Communication from the University of Technology, Sydney, and a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College, New York.
Chador Wangmo
Chador Wangmo is the celebrated author of Dema, the first superhero character in Bhutan. She has written ten illustrated books for children,  including The Flea and The Louse; Abhi, Memey and The Mosquito; Abhi, Memey and The Monkey, and The Three Friends; two novels for adults; and two chapter books for intermediate level. Although Chador’s work is mostly prose, she likes writing poems which have been well received in literary festivals conducted by FOSWAL at Delhi and Jaipur in India. Her poems have been translated into Nepali and published in various papers in Nepal. She has been awarded an honorary Doctorate in Literature by the Vikram Sheela Vidyapeeth, Sidharth Nagar, UP. She has also been awarded Sidhartha Tathagat Sansthan Sahitya award in recognition of her love for literature.
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