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
Victor Rangel-Ribeiro
Victor Rangel-Ribeiro (b. in Goa, 1925), first broke into print in Mumbai in 1946. Having lived under and survived the British and the Portuguese colonial empires, the 92-year-old author regards himself as one of the last of a dying breed: a pre-postcolonial writer. Victor left his heart behind in India when he migrated to the US in 1956: his stories almost always include Indian characters, either here at home, or in the diaspora, with interracial preconceptions driving the plots.
Victor’s fiction and books on music can be found in some of the major libraries of the West, including Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge. A career that began 71 years ago is still ongoing. His latest collection, The Miscreant: Selected Stories, 1949-2016, published this year, will be followed next April by his biography of the artist Francis Newton Souza; a second novel is nearing completion
Carlo Pizzati
Carlo Pizzati has published the novels Criminà l (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.
K.R. Meera
K R Meera is a multi-award-winning writer and columnist with more than a dozen books including short stories, novels and essays which have won her prestigious literary prizes including the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Awards, the Vayalar Award, and the Odakkuzhal Award. In 2015 she won the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award for Aarachar (2012), widely hailed as a contemporary classic. It is published in English as Hangwoman (2016) and was shortlisted for the DSC Literary Prize. Her other translated works include And Slowly Forgetting That Tree (2015); Yellow Is The Colour Of Longing (2016), which was shortlisted for the Crossword Prize for Translation; The Gospel of Yudas (2016); and The Poison Of Love (2017), shortlisted for the Atta Ghalatta Literary Prize. Meera lives in Kottayam with her husband Dileep and daughter Shruthi.
Edwin Thumboo
Emeritus Professor and Professorial Fellow (National University of Singapore), Edwin Thumboo has been involved in Singapore’s literary developments since 1951 as poet, critic, anthologiser, and arts administrator. His initiatives include the Creative Arts Programme, National Poetry Festival, and what has become the Singapore Writers Festival. Word-Gate, his seventh book of poems, was published in 2013.
http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/poetry/words.html
http://shop.epigrambooks.sg/blogs/news/18436355-interview-with-prof-edwin-thumboo
https://kitaab.org/2014/02/09/interview-edwin-thumboo-in-conversation-with-g-s-p-rao/
Tarun Bhartiya
Tarun Bhartiya is a political activist based in Shillong. He is also a documentary filmmaker, photographer, and Hindi poet. His ‘cycle’ of six documentary shorts collectively titled Songs to Live By (2016), shot in the Khasi, Garo, and Jaintia Hills in Meghalaya, in places inhabited by communities that share a largely oral culture, explore what folk music means to a particular village or community. He also made The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (part of the BBC series Indian Hill Railways, which won a Royal Television Society Award); edited In Camera by Ranjan Palit (for which he won a National Award); Jashn-e-Azadi by Sanjay Kak; and Girl Song and Songlines by Vasudha Joshi.
Mustansir Dalvi
Mustansir Dalvi is a poet and translator, and teaches architecture. Brouhahas of Cocks (2013) is his first book of poems in English. Dalvi's poems are translated into French, Croatian, and Marathi. His 2012 English translation of Muhammad Iqbal's Shikwa and Jawaab-e-Shikwa from the Urdu, Taking Issue and Allah's Answer, is described as 'insolent and heretical'. The book was Runner-Up for Best Translation for 2012 at the Muse India National Literary Awards. His translations of the Sufi mystic poet Rahim are included in Arundhati Subramanium edited Eating God: An Anthology of Bhakti Poetry (2014). In Struggles with Imagined Gods (2014), Dalvi translated poems of the noted Marathi poet Hemant Divate. He is currently editing (with Sampurna Chattarji) a book of the collected translations (by Dilip Chitre, Sarabjeet Garcha and Mustansir Dalvi) of Hemant Divate’s Marathi poetry.
Prashant Jha
Prashant Jha is a journalist and author. He is currently an associate editor with Hindustan Times in New Delhi, covering national politics. He has earlier worked with The Hindu in both its National Bureau in Delhi and as its Nepal correspondent in Kathmandu. Jha has written two critically-acclaimed books - How the BJP Wins: Inside India's Greatest Election Machine (2017) and Battles of the New Republic: A Contemporary History of Nepal (2014). His work has appeared in the New Yorker, New York Times and a range of international, Indian and Nepali publications. He is also a frequent commentator for the international media and a regular speaker at universities and think tanks on South Asian affairs.
Mayank Singh
Mayank Singh is Joint Registrar with the Banaras Hindu University (BHU), also his alma mater, from where he completed his Master’s degree in Chemistry. His novella Mumbai 26/11: The Untold Story was published in 2009. Singh’s novel Wolf’s Lair (2017) is India’s first military thriller set in a contemporary milieu. He blogs actively and is a regular contributor for The Times of India and Fair Observer, a Washington-based online magazine, where his articles on contemporary political and strategic issues have earned him wide acclaim. Political violence, terrorism and its impact on socio-political landscape across the world are critically analysed in his writings. His views and opinions have also been published by leading dailies/magazines like First Post, Swarajya, Governance Now and Central Chronicle.
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.
Sachin C. Ketkar
Sachin C. Ketkar (b.1972) is a bilingual writer, translator, editor, blogger and researcher based in Baroda, Gujarat. His most recent book is Changlya Kavitevarchi Statutory Warning: Samkaleen Marathi Kavita, Jagatikikaran ani Bhashantar (Sept 2016) is a collection of Marathi articles on contemporary Marathi poetry, globalization and translation. His books in English include Skin, Spam and Other Fake Encounters: Selected Marathi Poems in translation, (2011), (Trans) Migrating Words: Refractions on Indian Translation Studies (2010) and A Dirge for the Dead Dog and Other Incantations (2003). His collections of Marathi poetry are Jarasandhachya Blogvarche Kahi Ansh (2010) and Bhintishivaicya Khidkitun Dokavtana, (2004). He has extensively translated present-day Marathi poetry, most of which is collected in the anthology Live Update: An Anthology of Recent Marathi Poetry, 2005 edited by him. He has translated fiction by Jorge Luis Borges, Ted Hughes and Adam Thopre into Marathi. He won ‘Indian Literature Poetry Translation Prize’, given by Indian Literature Journal, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi for translation of modern Gujarati poetry in 2000. Apart from rendering the fifteenth century Gujarati poet Narsinh Mehta for his doctoral research, he has also translated numerous modern Gujarati writers like Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh, Bhupen Khakkar, Jayant Khatri, Rajendra Patel, Nazir Mansuri and Mona Patrawala into English. He works as Professor in English, Faculty of Arts, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara.
Several of his publications are available at Academia.edu . His books are available at Amazon.in and Paperwall.in He blogs at: Cosmic Joke
