5 - 7 December 2019 , Thu - Sat.
GALF 2019 : Speakers | Programme | Partners | Performances | Artwork | Videos
Photo Gallery: Inaugural Day | Day 1 | Day 2
Vincy Quadros
Vincy Quadros is a Konkani author, recipient of Bal Sahitya Puraskar of National Sahitya Akademi and Goa Konkani Akademi. He is also recipient of literary awards from Konkani Bhasha Mandal, Thomas Stephens Konkani Kendra and Dalgado Konknni Akademi. In all, he has penned down 30 books n different genres. He is versatile with Roman & Devnagri scripts of Konkani. Presently he is a Honorary Secretary of Dalgado Konknni Akademi (funded by Government of Goa). He has served Goa Konkani Akademi as Vice President and Konkani Bhasha Mandal as Secretary. He was also an Advisory Board Member for National Sahitya Akademi. He has presented several Research Papers at State & National level. In his home village of Raia, he actively participates in the field of education, sports & social fronts. He writes for Konkani newspapers & magazines besides All India Radio and TV channels. He is the Editor of Konkani Monthly Divine Voice from Kerala and Editorial Board member for For Mhoineachi Rotti (monthly magazine). He also takes part in debates on social and Konkani language issues and does the cover stories for Gulab, a monthly magazine in Konkani. He is an organiser, compere, translator and transliterator.
Aruna Ganu
Aruna Ganu is a retired teacher, Department of Marathi, from St. Xavier’s College, Mapusa. She is also involved in translation of poems from Hindi to Marathi and has also written weekly columns for a Marathi daily, ‘Goan Varta.’
Masood Hussain
Masood Hussain, a prolific water colourist from Kashmir, collaborated in 2019 with the haikuist Gabriel Rosenstock from Ireland to publish "Walk with Mahatma," celebrating the sesquicentenary of Gandhi's birth. Masood honed his skills at Sir J.J. Institute of Applied Arts, Mumbai. He teaches at the Institute of Music & Fine Arts in Srinagar, Kashmir, where he was born and raised. “Kashmir draws us to imagine ourselves,” Masood says, “amidst her lush shades of green, crystal clear lakes, gushing streams, snow-capped peaks—a paradise that has sadly been in pathos now for over a generation. We need a Mahatma.”
Alfred Almeida a.k.a. Pogoat
Pogoat is a Goan writer, wrecked by the resource curse upon Goa. Nonetheless, he has never participated in a protest march, nor filed a complaint or even donated money for any environmental restoration.
Pogoat finds it disgusting to live in a society where on a regular basis we need to brutally protest and protect our basic human necessities. Immersed in a world building project of an equal world with the guiding light of Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Kerouac, Hemingway, Dr. Thompson and Bob Marley. He's regularly tormented by his own characters, their deceptions, their lies, their truth and their lust for everything.
Rochelle Potkar
Rochelle Potkar is an alumna of Iowa’s International Writing Program (2015) and a Charles Wallace Writer’s fellow, University of Stirling (2017). Her individual poems To Daraza won the 2018 Norton Girault Literary Prize UK, and The girl from Lal Bazaar was shortlisted at the Gregory O' Donoghue International Poetry Prize, 2018. She is the author of The Arithmetic of breasts and other stories, Four Degrees of Separation, and Paper Asylum.
As critic, her reviews have appeared in Wasafiri, Indian Literature, Asian Cha, and Chandrabhaga. Her upcoming book The Inglorious Coins of the Counting House was longlisted at the Eyewear Publishing, Beverly Prize 2019, UK and shortlisted at the 2nd Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize 2019, NY. Her poetry film Skirt was showcased on Shonda Rhimes' Shondaland.
She has read her poetry in India, Bali, Iowa, Stirling, Glasgow, Hongkong, Ukraine, Hungary, Bangladesh, and the Gold Coast. She conducts poetry & haibun workshops across India.
https://rochellepotkar.com.
Hemant Divate
Hemant Divate is a poet, editor, publisher and translator. He is the founder-editor of the Marathi little magazine Abhidhanantar, which was published uninterruptedly for 18 years. Abhidhanantar has been credited for providing a solid platform to new poets and for enriching the post-nineties Marathi literary scene. Divate is credited with changing the Marathi literary scene through Abhidhanantar and the Indian English poetry scene through his imprint Poetrywala. He is the author of six poetry collections in Marathi. Divate’s poems have been translated into French, Italian, Slovak, Japanese, Persian, Maltese, Serbian, Turkish, Slovenian, Greek, Galician, Hindi and many Indian languages. In translation, he has a book each in Spanish, Irish, Arabic, German and Estonian apart from four in English. His poems figure in numerous anthologies in Marathi and English. Divate has participated in numerous international poetry and literature festivals across the globe. His publishing house, Paperwall Media & Publishing, has published (under its imprint Poetrywala) more than 100 poetry collections. Hemant lives and works in Mumbai.
Sandesh Prabhudesai
Sandesh Prabhudesai is an author, a journalist and a cultural activist, based in Goa. He has been writing for the last four decades, since 1979, street plays, radio plays, columns, articles as well as literary and cultural reviews in Konkani, Marathi and English, besides his journalistic writing. He has published five books of his ‘original writings’ ??????, ???, ????? ?????? ? ?????? ?????? (Konkani); ????? (Marathi) and Clear Cut (English). He has also translated Bhagat Singh’s ‘Why I am an Atheist’ in Konkani, for the National Book Trust. Since 1978, he has worked in the Student, Youth and Workers’ movements. He initiated the Street Play movement in Goa, in 80s, writing over 20 scripts and songs. He edited and wrote for Student and Youth magazines. He has been actively participating in organising cultural and literary festivals, especially for the students and youth. Sandesh joined professional journalism in 1987, and has since worked in local Konkani, Marathi and English dailies in different positions, from Reporter to Editor. He has also worked for national and international media, including rediff.com, The Sunday Observer, The Pioneer, BBC etc in Print, Radio and Internet. He has also headed Goan TV channels, anchoring debates, election analysis as well as interviews. He edits Goa’s first news website goanews.com, since 1999. He writes opinion columns throughout his career for several newspapers, periodicals as well as Internet portals in Konkani, Marathi and English. He sometimes also plays with Poetry. He has bagged several awards in Journalism as well as Literature, besides Theatre. Presently, he is the Consulting Editor of Goan TV Channel Goa365.
Tony Joseph
Tony Joseph is the author of the best-selling book “Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From” published by Juggernaut last year and received well by the academic and scientific community. Tony has been a journalist for over three decades and has worked with The Economic Times as Features Editor, Business Standard as Associate Editor and BusinessWorld as Editor. His articles on Indian prehistory have appeared in The Hindu, BBC, The Quint and Scroll.in. He lives near New Delhi and is now working on his next book, which will deal with periods subsequent to the one that ‘Early Indians’ covers.
R. Benedito Ferrão
R. Benedito Ferrão has lived and worked in Asia, Europe, N. America, and Oceania. He is an Assistant Professor of English and Asian & Pacific Islander American Studies at The College of William and Mary and currently a Fulbright-Nehru Fellow at the Xavier Center of Historical Research. Curator of the 2017-18 exhibition Goa, Portugal, Mozambique: The Many Lives of Vamona Navelcar, he edited a book of the same title (Fundação Oriente 2017) to accompany this retrospective of the artist’s work. His scholarly writing appears in various international journals and edited books, including Research in African Literatures and Places of Nature in Ecologies of Urbanism (HKU Press 2017); his fiction and creative non-fiction can be read in Riksha, The Good Men Project, Mizna, The João Roque Literary Journal, and other publications.
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.
