A Lai
A Lai is a member of the Presidium of China Writers Association and President of Sichuan Provincial Writers Association. His publications include anthologies of poetry, short stories and novellas, novels, non-fictional works, and essay selections. Many of his works, including Dust Settled, Empty Mountain, King Gesar and The Distant Hot Spring, have been translated into over 20 languages such as English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Russian. He is the laureate of the 5th Mao Dun Literature Prize, 7th Lu Xun Literature Prize, 7th Chinese Literature Media Award, 2017 Baihua Literature and Art Fiction Prize & Essay Prize, and so on.
Year: 2019
Aakar Patel
Aakar Patel is a syndicated columnist who has edited English and Gujarati newspapers. His books include Why I Write, a translation of Saadat Hasan Manto’s Urdu non-fiction (2014), Our Hindu Rashtra: What It Is. How We Got Here, a study of majoritarianism in India and Pakistan (2020), Price of the Modi Years, a history of India after 2014 (2021), The Anarchist Cookbook, a guide on why and how to protest (2022), and the novel After Messiah (2023). His work reimagining South Asia, The Case for Akhand Bharat, is out in 2024. He is the Chair of Amnesty International India.
Aarti V. Raman
Aarti V. Raman has been a commercial editor and business journalist for the better part of a decade. She has published three contemporary romances between 2014 and 2016, and the next one is slated for release in 2019. She currently writes and self-publishes steamy contemporary romances with a global twist for the urban millennials. Sometimes, there are guns and car chases too! Her new contemporary romance series includes Geeks of Caltech and Royals of Stellangard as well as standalone romances—all of which have become bestsellers. She also dabbles in poetry, and conducts creative writing workshops.
Year: 2019, 2014-15
Abdullah Khan
Abdullah Khan, a Mumbai-based novelist, screenwriter and banker, was born in a village near Motihari, Bihar. He was initially educated in a madarsa (Islamic seminary) and an Urdu-medium school. In the mid-1990s, he discovered that George Orwell was born in Motihari. And, this Orwell-connection with his home district drew him towards literature. Abdullah’s writings have appeared in Brooklyn Rail (New York), Wasafiri (London), The Hindu (India), and Friday Times (Pakistan), among others. He is also a screenwriter and his debut film Viraam was released in 2017. His first novel Patna Blues was published in 2018.
Year: 2019
Abeer Gupta
Abeer Gupta is currently the director of the Krishnakriti Foundation, Hyderabad and Achi Association India, Leh. He has directed several documentary films and curated art, education, and community media projects. His research is based around oral histories, material cultures, and visual archives.
Year: 2021
Abhay. K
Abhay. K is an Indian poet-diplomat and author of two memoirs and six poetry collections including The Seduction of Delhi (2015), and the editor of the anthology Capitals (2015). He has been honoured with the SAARC Literary Award, nominated for the Pushcart Prize, was featured in Forbes India‘s Celebrity Authors list (2014) and has a certificate in poetry writing from International Writing Programme, the University of Iowa. His “Earth Anthem” (2013) has been translated into twenty-four languages across the globe.
Year: 2016
Abhijit Banerjee
Abhijit Banerjee teaches economics at MIT and was a recipient of the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. He co-founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT and is the author of six books, including Poor Economics (2011), Good Economics for Hard Times (2019) and a recent cookbook, Cooking to Save Your Life (2021).
Year: 2022
Adhiraj Parthasarathy
Adhiraj Parthasarathy is the author of Aah-o- Fughan aur bhi hain, a book about his experiences as a member of a team involved in collecting socio economic data in the states of Sikkim, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh for India’s first caste census after Independence. His book vividly describes encounters with government bureaucracy, individuals and non-state actors intent on subverting the caste census for their own political ends. It also talks about the challenges of data collection and the authenticity and reliability of statistical information in India, with a focus on socio-economic and caste information. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago.
Year: 2018
Adite Banerjie
Abhijeet Singh Rathore is a software engineer who currently works at Amazon. He is an enthusiast trying to revive the dormant artist within. He loves to express himself through drama and poetry.
Year: 2019
Aditi Maheshwari
Aditi Maheshwari holds master’s degrees in English literature (Hansraj College, Delhi University) and business management (Strathclyde Business School, Scotland) and an MPhil degree in social sciences (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai). She also holds a diploma in public relations and advertising. She heads the Department of Copyrights and Translation at ‘Vani Prakashan’ and is the Managing Trustee at Vani Foundation.
Year: 2014-15
Agnija Kazuša
Agnija Kazuša is a mindfulness and meditation trainer, a writer and a peace activist. Having gained a Master’s degree in Communication Science, she spent three years teaching English in Egypt, Morocco, India, and China. She is an author of several short stories (awarded by the European Institute of the Mediterranean “A Sea of Words” short story contest), and two novels Bruno and Three Cups of Egypt. In 2015, she discovered meditation practice which changed her life. Since then, she has been working with World Peace Initiative Foundation and Peace Revolution project bringing peace and organizing meditation workshops all over Europe.
Year: 2018
Ahmed Jamal
Ahmed Jamal is a film director and producer. His company First Take Ltd has produced programmes for the BBC, Channel 4, HBO, CNN, ARTE, ZDF and other international broadcasters. The feature film Rahm, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, directed by him was screened on Channel 4. His feature documentary The Journalist and the Jihadi: The Murder of Daniel Pearl (2006) for HBO received two Emmy nominations (2008) and won the Indian National Film Award for best documentary (2008). His other awards include the British Film Institute Award for Independent Cinema. Most recently, he completed work as a consultant producer on an international feature documentary, Ahimsa about Gandhi.
Year: 2022
Aishwarya Manivannan
Aishwarya Manivannan is an artist, designer, educator and Silambam practitioner. She teaches design at Loyola College, Chennai, and specialises in Art & Design Portfolio Development classes. She is an alumnus of Madras University and LASELLE College of the Arts, Singapore, and has recently completed a PG Diploma in Silambam fencing. She is the current National and Asian Silambam Champion. She has represented India in the World, Asian and National Silambam Championships and has won seven gold, six silver and four bronze medals. Her video on National Handloom Day received more than eight lakh views on social media and triggered interest in Silambam all over the world.
Year: 2017
Akram Ul-Haq
Akram Ul-Haq is an acoustic guitarist whose musical journey has traversed different genres while being firmly rooted in the rock/metal scene of Hyderabad, where he is part of a metal band. He is drawn to the beauty of Western classical music and has also begun to compose for the acoustic guitar (finger style) by implementing percussive techniques. Over the past six years, he has given over 50 live solo performances across three continents.
Year: 2019
Alejandro Palomas
Alejandro Palomas has an MA in Poetics from the New College of San Francisco. He has translated Katherine Mansfield, Françoise Sagan, and Gertrude Stein among others. He received the Spanish National Prize for Children & Young Adult Literature in 2016 for his novel Un fils (A Son), written in the Catalan language. A writer in both Catalan and Spanish, he has authored screenplays, a poetry collection and ten works of fiction, including the novels Una Madre (A Mother) and Un perro (A Dog), part of a trilogy which will be completed this year. His work has been translated into ten languages.
Year: 2018
Aleksandra Olszewska
Aleksandra Olszewska is a cultural manager, in charge of foreign cultural projects in Biuro Literackie. She has coordinated a Polish-Russian project, ‘Ambassadors of Poetry’, and the project ‘European Literary Ports’. She maintains contacts with cultural institutions in Europe and abroad, and coordinates copyright matters with authors cooperating with Biuro Literackie. She is a passionate reader and traveller.
Year: 2014-15
Amarinder Singh
Amarinder Singh, after graduating from the National Defence Academy and the Indian Military Academy, was commissioned into the 2nd Battalion of the Sikh Regiment. During the 1965 war against Pakistan, he was ADC to the GOC in-C, Western Command, where the entire war was fought. He served four terms in the Punjab Legislature, once as minister and then as chief minister of Punjab from 2002 to 2007. Currently, he is Member of Parliament, representing Amritsar. His publications include Honour and Fidelity: India’s Military Contribution to the Great War 1914–1918 (2014) and The Last Sunset: The Rise and Fall of the Lahore Durbar (2010).
Year: 2014-15
Ambujavalli
Ambuja, an IT professional-turned-story teller, mentored by the legends in the world of storytelling, is known for her unique style of blending rhythms and gestures into her stories. Among the workshops facilitated by her, 'Mudras and Rhythms' conducted as part of the FEAST international conference (2019) deserves a special mention. Featured and interviewed by national TV channels, national and community radios, she has also shared her expertise at international fests - The Chennai storytelling festival and Under the Aalamaram. The audience loves her energy, expressions, rhythms, interactions, humour and more importantly, the spontaneity!
Year: 2021
Amin Sheikh
Amin Sheikh lived on the mean streets of Bombay from the age of five—begging, eating off discarded eatables, and sleeping in fear under park benches or in the hidden corners of railway stations. He was lucky enough to be taken to an orphanage three years later where he learnt what it meant to have a ”home”, and a “family”. Although his life was far from easy, he never stopped believing in the goodness of people and the idea that it only takes one person to change the world. He dreamt of one day starting a library cafe that would support street children. The profits from the sale of his book Life is Life: I am Because of You (2013) has helped make this dream come true.
Year: 2017
Amina Kishore
Amina Kishore served for 38 years in Aligarh Muslim University as Professor of English and later as Principal, AMU Women’s College. After taking voluntary retirement from AMU, she joined Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad, in 2007 as Head, Department of English. She retired as Dean, School of Languages, Linguistics, and Indology in 2011. In 2014, she joined MANUU for a second stint as Professor, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Chair. Her interests are in social work and creative writing. She is fluent in five languages.
Year: 2014-15
Amish
Amish is an IIM (Kolkata)-educated banker-turned-author. The success of his debut book, The Immortals of Meluha (2010, Book 1 of the Shiva Trilogy), encouraged him to give up his career in financial services to focus on writing. Besides being an author, he is also an Indian-government diplomat, a host for TV documentaries, and a film producer. His books have sold more than 7 million copies and have been translated into over 20 languages. His Shiva Trilogy is the fastest-selling and his Ram Chandra Series the second-fastest-selling book series in Indian publishing history. Idols: Unearthing the Power of Murti Puja, with Bhavna Roy, is his latest publication.
Amita Talwar
Amita Talwar is a postgraduate in English Literature. She was the founder editor/publisher of the popular city magazine, Channel 6. She trained in filmmaking at the School of Professional and Continuing Studies, New York University. She now runs ‘Art for Causes’, a registered non-profit organisation which supports the education of underprivileged children.
Year: 2019
Amitava Nag
Amitava Nag is an independent film critic. He is one of the founder-members of the film magazine Silhouette and is its current editor. He has written six books on cinema including Murmurs: Silent Steals with Soumitra Chatterjee (2020), Beyond Apu: 20 Favourite Film Roles of Soumitra Chatterjee (2016), Satyajit Ray’s Heroes and Heroines (2019) and 16 Frames (2020). He also writes poetry and short fiction in Bengali and English and has published five books.
Year: 2021
Amrit Gill
Amrit Gill is Director, International Development at the Australia Council for the Arts. She has worked in the Australian arts sector in community arts and cultural development, social enterprise, and international cultural relations. At the Council, she has managed the review of international residencies programmes, and the implementation of the Council’s first international arts strategy. She worked earlier at Milk Crate Theatre, the British Council, and Information and Cultural Exchange (ICE). She holds a Bachelor of Art Theory/Arts from the University of New South Wales, and is currently undertaking a Master of Global Diplomacy through the School of Oriental and African Studies.
Year: 2019
Amrita Chowdhury
Amrita Chowdhury is the Country Head & Publishing Director of Harlequin India. She served as Associate Director-Education for Harvard Business School India Research Center and has done Board advisory and strategy consulting work with Oppeus in Australia and AT Kearney in the US. She holds seven US patents for semiconductor fabrication work done in Applied Materials at California. She holds a B. Tech from IIT Kanpur, MS from UC Berkeley and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon-Tepper Business School. Amrita is the author of Faking It (2009), a thriller about the forgery of contemporary Indian art, and Breach (2013), a cyber-crime thriller.
Year: 2014-15
Amritjit Singh
Amritjit Singh, Langston Hughes Professor of English at Ohio University, is currently a Fulbright-Nehru Professor of English at the University of Delhi. He served as Academic Associate at ASRC Hyderabad (1974–1977), and taught at the University of Hyderabad (1977–78), and the University of Rajasthan (1978–1983). His publications include The Novels of the Harlem Renaissance (1976); India: An Anthology of Contemporary Writing (1983); Conversations with Ralph Ellison (1995); Postcolonial Theory and the United States (2000); and The Circle of Illusion: Poems by Gurcharan Rampuri (2011). He received the MELUS Lifetime Achievement Award (2007) and the SALA Distinguished Achievement Award in Scholarship (2014).
Year: 2014-15
Ana Cristina Herreros
Ana Cristina Herreros has a PhD on the influence of popular poetry on the poets of the 20th Century. Her research on storytelling took her to perform in theatres, libraries, schools, hospitals, and prisons. At the time of the war in Kosovo in the 1990s, she got engaged in a project investigating Mediterranean folk sources for peace intervention that resulted in her book Folk Tales of the Mediterranean. Her The Book of Spanish Monsters, and Magical Geography received the Spanish Book of the year award in 2009 and 2011, respectively. After founding her own publishing house, Libros de las Malas Compañías, she has been collecting tales from Africa.
Year: 2018
Anahita Dhondy
Anahita Dhondy is former chef-partner SodaBottleOpenerWala, the Bombay Irani Café and Bar chain that promotes Parsi cuisine. A passionate cook since the age of ten and Le Cordon Bleu Grand Diplome holder, she has won several awards and accolades, including featuring on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list 2019. Parsi Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family (2021) is her first book.
Year: 2022
Anand Ghose
Anand Ghose has a Gold Medal in painting from MVA Rabindra Bharati University, and a BFA from Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati, Santiniketan. He is a filmmaker by profession and currently works as a consultant at talent sprint. Earlier he worked in corporate communication for Satyam, and taught Film History, History of Animation, Cinematography and Direction at the AISFM Hyderabad.
Year: 2021
Anant Maringanti
Anant Maringanti is the director of Hyderabad Urban Lab, a multi-disciplinary urban research centre based in Hyderabad. He is a geographer with a PhD from the University of Minnesota and has taught at several universities in India. He spends most of his time thinking about, teaching about, writing about cities and urbanisation in South Asia.
Year: 2019
Andaleeb Wajid
Andaleeb Wajid is a hybrid author, having published 40 novels in the past 14 years. She enjoys writing in a number of different genres such as young adult, romance, and horror.
Anik Dutta
Anik Dutta, film Director, began in the audiovisual department of an advertising agency trying to hone his skills in film making. He began making his first film Bhooter Bhabisshyat in 2008-2009 and when finally released in 2012, it became a huge big success as a social satire. He made Aschorjo Pradeep (2013) followed by Meghnad Rahasya (2017). In early 2020, he released Borun Babur Bandhu starring Soumitra Chatterjee. The film has made the rounds of International Film Festivals in Boston, Cincinnati and received several awards including awards for Soumitra Chatterjee.
Year: 2021
Aniruddha Bahal
Aniruddha Bahal is the founder and editor-in-chief of Cobrapost.com, an Indian news and views website and television production house. Previously, he worked for India Today, Down to Earth, Financial Express, and Outlook, among other publications. He also co-founded Tehelka.com in 2000. Bahal’s publications include the novels A Crack in the Mirror (1991), Bunker 13 (2003) and The Emissary (2010).
Year: 2014-15
Anirudha Bhattacharjee
Anirudha Bhattacharjee’s first book RD Burman: The Man, The Music (2011) won the National Award for best book on cinema. His second book Gaata Rahe Mera Dil: 50 Classic Hindi Film Songs (2015) was the winner of the inaugural MAMI award for excellence in writing. Kishore Kumar: The Ultimate Biography (2022) is his fourth book. He is presently working on a few more books, one of which is related to middle-of-the-road cinema. An amateur musician, he is an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and works as an SAP consultant.
Year: 2019
Anisha Dhanuka
Anisha Dhanuka left her career in marketing to pursue crafts and yoga to develop focus, stability and for stress management. She is training to be a yoga teacher under Mrs Saraswathi Vasudevan in the tradition of Sri Krishnamacarya. She has worked closely with children of different backgrounds, helping them build on mental and emotional capabilities though art, craft, stories, and now yoga. In addition, she has worked in Vidyanjali, a school for children with learning disabilities. She has also conducted various art camps for children with Down Syndrome, Autism and ADHD.
Year: 2019
Anjana Kothamachu
Anjana Kothamachu graduated from The Academy of Fine Arts and Crafts, Rachana Sansad, India with a major in sculpture. She studied animation, participated in several residency programmes including The Last Ship, Mumbai; Stiftung Futur Foundation, Switzerland; Sandarbh International Artists Association’s Residency; Khoj, and received the Inlaks Fine Art Award (2013). In 2014, she installed a large-scale outdoor sculpture at the India Art Fair. She has been part of the Creative India Public Art Intensive; the Changwon Sculpture Biennale, Korea; ISCP New York; and Prohelvetia Switzerland. Her work has been part of national and international exhibitions.
Year: 2018
Anju Khemani
Anju Khemani is the founder of the Drama Association of the Deaf (DAD). Her work has been a synthesis of sensitizing organizations and communities towards inclusion, developing content for training and capacity building of trainers, young adults with disabilities, and HIV-affected women and men. Her course material for training youth with disabilities is translated into many languages and used across India. DAD was an outcome of her theatre course at the National School of Drama, and extensive work with the Deaf community. DAD seeks to promote self-identity in a multicultural society by fostering a sense of belonging in one’s own culture, and respect for other cultures.
Speaker @ HLF 2023, 2019
Anju Makhija
Anju Makhija is a poet, playwright and translator. She has written three poetry collections; co-translated Seeking the Beloved (2005), the mystical verse of Shah Abdul Latif; co-edited three anthologies related to partition, women and young readers. Her plays have been staged in India and abroad. Her awards include the Sahitya Akademi English Translation Prize (2011). She has been on the English Advisory Board of the Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, for five years. Her book of collected plays, Mumbai Traps, will be published shortly.
Year: 2021
Anna Solding
Anna Solding is a writer, editor and publisher. Her novel, The Hum of Concrete (2012), was nominated for six awards, including the Commonwealth Book Prize. She is the founder and managing director of MidnightSun Publishing, an Adelaide-based publishing company, and the co-founder and co-director of the ‘Australian Short Story Festival’.
Year: 2019
Anne-Marie Melster
Anne-Marie Melster is an art curator, critic, and advisor focusing on social and environmental issues. As the co-founder and executive director of ARTPORT_making waves, she creates interdisciplinary projects searching for environmental and social solutions. She has curated numerous international art exhibitions and projects in collaboration with renowned institutions, organizations, and governments worldwide, including UN Climate Change Conferences. She has been working closely with artists like Tino Sehgal, BarthélémyToguo, MeschacGaba, Baptist Coelho, George Steinmann and many others. Her latest project was ARTPORT_GOOD FOOD COP23, a comprehensive art program for the UN Climate Change Conference COP23 in Bonn with the artists Tino Sehgal and Sam Hopkins.
Year: 2018
Anuja Chandramouli
Anuja Chandramouli holds a master’s degree in English. Her articles and book reviews have appeared in The Hindu, Women’s Era and The New Indian Express. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Arjuna: Saga of a Pandava Warrior-Prince, was named in a poll conducted by Amazon India as one of the top five books in the Indian Writing category for the year 2013. Her second book, Kamadeva: The God of Desire was released in August 2014. She is the mother of two little girls and lives in Sivakasi. She is currently studying classical dance, and working on her next book.
Year: 2014-15
B. S. Prakash
BS Prakash is a retired banker who is interested in reading both for himself and to others. He has been with The Little Theatre Hyderabad for more years than he cares to remember or, in fact, can remember! He also dabbles in amateur theatre.
Year: 2019
Aparna Karthikeyan
Aparna Karthikeyan is a dog mother, tree hugger and story teller. She has written for newspapers and websites about culture and livelihoods; books for big people (Nine Rupees an Hour [2019], about the disappearing livelihoods of Tamil Nadu), and for children: Kali Wants to Dance (2019) and Cat’s Egg (2019). She shares her home with her husband, daughter, plenty of books, and two very important creatures—her dogs Puchu and Shingmo. Woof! Adventures by the Sea (2020) is her latest book for children.
Year: 2021
Arathi Menon
Arathi Menon claims that she cannot sing, cook, sew or salsa but she did write Leaving Home With Half a Fridge: A Memoir (2015). To quote the blurb, “The book follows the breakdown of the marriage, her decision to get a divorce, the trauma of doing so, depression and finally overcoming it all to become a stronger, happier person. Written with much wit, wisdom and warmth, it is a memoir, which anybody who has loved and lost will relate to”. She likes dragonflies, dogs, beer, books, trees, lizards, travel, good food and tweets about none of them @unopenedbottle.
Year: 2016
Arati Kodali
Arati Kodali was a techno economic feasibility consultant. In Hyderabad she started Fast Forward Learning which conducted the NIE program for The Hindu in several schools of thecity. Later, the company conducted its own program for teaching soft skills in schools andcorporates. The FFL program had an enrolment of over 10000 students.Arati has freelanced for The Hindustan Times, The Times of India, The Hindu, The Pioneer etc. She volunteers for The All India Women’s Conference with projects for genderequality, reproductive rights of women and children’s rights .An avid traveller, foodie, film buff and music lover Arati incorporates elements of all these in her writing.
Year: 2018
Artur Burszta
Artur Burszta is the director of the publishing house ‘Biuro Literackie’ which has published over 400 books by some of the best contemporary Polish authors as well as authors from other countries. Many of the books published by him have been nominated to Polish and foreign literary prizes. He is an organiser of the literary festival, ‘Port Literacki’, which celebrates its 20th edition in 2015. Artur Burszta has directed a documentary on a Polish poet Tadeusz Różewicz and a literary TV series ‘Poezjem’. He has initiated several cultural and literary projects and has been awarded for his promotion of contemporary Polish literature, especially poetry.
Year: 2014-15
Arun Shourie
Arun Shourie, scholar, former editor and minister, is one of the most prominent voices in our country’s public life. Born in Jalandhar, Punjab, he studied at St Stephen’s College, Delhi and obtained his doctorate in Economics from Syracuse University, USA. Widely regarded as the initiator of investigative journalism in India, he has been hailed by The International Press Institute, Vienna, as one of fifty ‘World Press Freedom Heroes’. He has written twenty-five books on topics ranging from constitutional law, modern Indian history to religious fundamentalism, governance in India, and national security. Among the many honours conferred on him are the Magsaysay Award and the Padma Bhushan.
Year: 2017, 2014-15
Arundhathi Subramaniam
Arundhathi Subramaniam is a leading Indian poet and author of thirteen books of poetry and prose, most recently the poetry collection, Love Without a Story (2019), and a book of essays, Women Who Wear Only Themselves (2021). Shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize 2015, she is the winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award 2020, the Khushwant Singh Poetry Prize, Raza Award, the Il Ceppo Prize in Italy, the Homi Bhabha and Charles Wallace fellowships, among others. She has worked over the years as curator, critic, and poetry editor.
Year: 2022, 2017
Arundhati Nag
Arundhati Nag is a multi-lingual actor, theatre practitioner, and the Creative Director of ‘Ranga Shankara’, the pioneering theatre which with its ‘show-a-day’ policy has changed the way theatre is viewed and performed in Bengaluru. She was David Lean’s Assistant Director for A Passage to India and assisted Shankar Nag in the making of TV serial Malgudi Days. In 2010, she won the National Film and Filmfare Awards for the Best Supporting Actor (Female) for her role in Paa. In the same year, she was honoured with Padma Shri. Among her recent films is The Man Who Knew Infinity.
Year: 2018
Arya Dharod
Arya Dharod is a tenth-grade student at Indus International School Hyderabad.
He enjoys watching movies across genres, playing any and every sport, jamming on his drum kit, reading uninterrupted, and travelling to interesting places. He writes short stories, poetry, and prose and believes that his writing has shaped me into the person that he is today. He is an ambivert, who likes to meet and get to know new people, yet is also shy and quiet in new settings. Like most of us, even I am in search of my true calling and higher purpose in life, while thoroughly enjoying the journey I am on!
Year: 2021
Ashok Banker
Ashok Banker’s internationally acclaimed and bestselling Ramayana series is credited with having launched the genre of Indian mythological retellings in English, currently the country’s most popular category. His 42 books have sold over 2 million copies in 16 languages and 57 countries worldwide. His new novel, Ten Kings (2014), is based on a historical incident in the Rig Veda and is currently in bookstores and is available online. E-book editions of all Ashok’s work are available exclusively at www.akbebooks.com.
Year: 2014-15
Asiya Khan
Asiya Khan is a naturalist, passionate about trees. She create awareness of native and ancient heritage trees, campaigns for their protection, and promotes best conservation practices. She gives talks and conducts tree walks to help fellow nature enthusiasts identify trees and learn about them. As part of the conservation efforts by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture at the Qutb Shahi Heritage Park, she has conducted a survey to document the flora of the tomb complex. She is an active participant of Nature Lovers of Hyderabad that is engaged in the Campaign to Save the Banyans of Chevella.
Asma Zaidi
Asma Zaidi received her education in Dubai and has been teaching for 20 years. She specializes as an Early Childhood - Montessori teacher. She is also a curriculum planner and teacher trainer and has conducted hundreds of workshops over the years. She is the Vice-Principal of Focus High School and Territory Head of APER- Early Childhood Association in Telangana and Jammu and Kashmir. She has also authored a phonic book Let’s Read which is a guide for teachers and parents to guide children to read.
Year: 2022
Astha Mittal
Astha Mittal is a performance artist and a writer. She uses poetry, theatre practice and painting in her work. Her work revolves around the awareness of the self, human relationships, and the nuances of the Indian society.
Year: 2021
Astri Ghosh
Astri Ghosh is a writer, actor, and translator. She grew up in Delhi and Mussoorie and moved to Norway to study at the University of Oslo. She has translated 24 books into Hindi, English, and Norwegian, and her translations have been included in four anthologies. Some of the authors she has translated are Henrik Ibsen, Jon Fosse, Rui Zink, Qurratulain Hyder, Rabindranath Tagore, Guru Nanak, Lars Saabye Christensen, and Per Petterson. A former journalist, she also does poetry performances and has acted in two films.
Year: 2018
Atiya Amjad
Atiya Amjad, Founder-Director of Daira Centre for Arts and Culture, is an art writer and curator. She has written several articles and exhibition catalogues. In 1998, she was invited by the Alliance Francaise de Hyderabad to curate shows and promote Indo-French cultural relationship in Hyderabad. In 2001, she established the DAIRA Centre for Arts and Culture. She also worked with the renowned painter, MF Husain at the Cinema Ghar, Hyderabad. She worked for a brief while at the Palo Alto Museum of Art, San Francisco, USA. In 2010, along with her sister, Atika Amjad, she established The Children’s Fine Art Gallery.
Speaker @ HLF 2023, 2021
Avani Rao Gandra
Avani Rao Gandra has a PhD (Contemporary Andhra Painting) from Osmania University. She worked as an art critic for Indian Express and contributed articles to magazines like Marg, Art India, Art Deal, and Indian Art Journal. Founder of ICONART (Contemporary Art Gallery), she conducted nearly 70 art shows and workshops, and curated 27 art shows related to painting, printmaking, sculpture, new media, photography, and installations. As an artist and photographer, she participated in several solo and group shows. She was the recipient of the Arts Think South Asia Fellowship (2014-2015) sponsored by German Goethe Centre and British Council.
Speaker @ HLF 2023, 2017
Avinash Pasricha
Avinash Pasricha was born to a photographer father and quite literally grew up in a photo studio. He was Photo Editor of SPAN magazine for 37 years (1960–1997) during which period he produced his most celebrated body of work including four visits to the US to cover the official visits of Indian Prime Ministers. He now photographs mainly classical Indian performing arts. Over the last 50 years, he has photographed, with deep sensitivity and diligence, some of India’s legends in the world of dance and music. His collection of rare and enduring images of India’s greatest performing artistes is among the largest personal collections.
Year: 2017
Avish Juluri
Avish Juluri aka “Koosu” has been painting since the age of two. Growing up in his mother Sravanthi Juluri’s studio, he enjoys expressing his thoughts on the various topics that he learns at school on his canvas. He recently entered the world of performing arts and has donned the role of Ganesha in “Tvamevaham”, a creative performance which incorporated panting, dance and live music. From environmental issues to superheroes in battle, his childish innocence takes over when he paints; yet he creates a strong visual impact with his sense of colour. He had his first solo show at the age of six followed by group shows in London and Chicago.
Year: 2017
Avner Pariat
Avner Pariat is a Khasi Jaintia writer from Shillong. His articles have appeared in publications such as Economic and Political Weekly and Cafe Dissensus. He is a contributing editor for raiot.in, and writes a blog From Mawlai. He received an India Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (2016) to investigate the socio-cultural impact of the ‘khla’ (big cat) on the lives of the Khasi Jaintia people of Eastern Meghalaya. He was a finalist for the 2016 National Poetry Mail Award of the Raedleaf Foundation for Poetry and Allied Arts, Hyderabad. His poems have been published in the North East edition of the Neesah magazine and the indie art publication The Baroda Pamphlet.
Year: 2018
B. S. Prakash
BS Prakash is a retired banker who is interested in reading both for himself and to others. He has been with The Little Theatre Hyderabad for more years than he cares to remember or, in fact, can remember! He also dabbles in amateur theatre.
Year: 2019
Balaji Vittal
Balaji Vittal is a second generation Calcuttan with his roots to the city dating back to the 1950s. He is an Engineering Graduate from Jadavpur University Kolkata and has worked in leading banks and organizations. He is the co-author of the National Award-winning book RD Burman: The Man, The Music (2011) and the MAMI Award winning book Gaata Rahe Mera Dil - 50 Classic Hindi Film Songs (2015). Pure Evil: The Bad Men of Bollywood (2021) is his most recent, and the first single-authored book.
Year: 2022
Bandenawaz Badshah Nadaf
Bandenawaz Badshah Nadaf was born with a severe defect in both his upper limbs. However, he learnt to write and paint with his foot and soon became an accomplished foot painter and won prizes in several inter-school and national level art competitions in India. He is also a very good cook and can play the tambourine. He is an excellent swimmer and has won two gold medals in the National and International Swimming Championships for the Disabled. He is also a Yellow Belt in Karate. He has participated in the Mini Olympics for the Disabled and won several prizes in various disciplines.
Year: 2018
Barbara Kölling
Barbara Kölling is a pioneer in children’s theatre. A theatre director from Germany, she explores materials in a simplified way so that children can engage with the medium easily. She stages productions for children and young people, develops plays for the youngest theatregoers from the age of one. She is one of the artistic directors of ‘HELIOS Theatre’, one of the most important free theatre groups in Germany. The theatre has a special concept of a ‘children’s-theatre-house’.
Year: 2014-15
Bei Ta
Bei Ta serves the National Museum of Modern Chinese Literature as a professional poet, critic and translator. He is general secretary of the Chinese Shakespeare Society and vice general secretary of the World Congress of Poets. He has published around 30 books including The Rusting Hour Hands (poetry), Lightening One’s Own Abyss: A Selection of Essays on Poetics, and A Selection of Rabindranath Tagore’s Poems (translation). He has been invited to attend literary and academic activities by more than 20 countries. His poetry manuscripts are collected by the Shanghai Municipal Library.
Year: 2019
Bharath Jayaraman
Bharath Jayaraman leads Human Resources for Facebook India. Prior to Facebook, he has held Human Resource leadership roles at Amazon in the US and India. He has a graduate business degree from Cornell University, USA. He is currently based in Hyderabad.
Year: 2016
Bhavani GS
Bhavani GS has an MFA from Chithrakala Parishat Bengaluru, Karnataka (2003). Her solo shows—held in India, New Zealand, and Vietnam—include ‘Journey with the River Cauvery’ (2013), ‘Journey with the River Cauvery Part-2 (2012), ‘The Self In Nature’ (2011), ‘Whispers of The Woods’ (2008), ‘At The Crossroads’ (2004), ‘Textures from Life and Nature’ (2002), ‘Nostalgia’ (2000). She also received several grants and residencies including in Munich (2017), Colombo (2011), Jaipur (2017), Nagpur (2015), and Bangalore (2009). Her group shows include LIFETIDE festival (2017), ‘Healing Nature and Restoring Balances’ (2016), and ‘Morphology of Archives—Connected Histories of Goa’.
Year: 2018
Bhavna Roy
Bhavna Roy was educated in Mussoorie, Pune, and Mumbai. After graduating in psychology from Mumbai University, she qualified for the Indian Administrative Services. Having trained partly at the LBSNAA, she quit and then worked first as a volunteer in a school for special children in Malegaon, and then in SOS, an NGO in Nashik. Idols: Unearthing the Power of Murti Puja, co-authored with Amish, is her latest publication. Idols is a companion volume to their bestselling book, Dharma: Decoding the Epics for a Meaningful Life.
Bhudeb Chakravarti
Bhudeb Chakravarti is recognised as a technology innovator who imparts knowledge to young minds to initiate creative thinking and teach problem solving. With more than 30 years’ experience, starting as a scientist in DRDO to launching a start-up incubating in IIT Hyderabad.
Year: 2020, 2019
Bina Rao
Bina Rao has Master’s in Fine Arts from MSU, Vadodara, and stint in NID Ahmedabad. She is the Co-founder and HoD Design of ‘Creative Bee’ as well as Creative Bee dye farm in Hyderabad. She represented India at a number of global events with her ‘Walk Through the Talk’ shows. She is a member of the advisory committees for handlooms and livelihood projects, Government of India, (ex)Member NID Governing Council, Senior Consultant to United Nations East Africa Program, Team Leader, UNDP’s ‘Disha’ Pilot for Women Weavers of Telangana (2018-2020). She is a recipient of the ‘Stalwart of Handloom Award’ 2023 from FICCI and Government of Telangana.
Bishan Sahai
Bishan Sahai, a nonagenarian, is a post-graduate Business Administration diplomate from Delhi University. He is a retired corporate manager who has held senior executive, advisory, and board-level positions in engineering and pharmaceutical companies. He is an occasional writer and writes mainly on governance and management-related subjects. Known for his brevity, precision, and wit, he has in his book Our World: A Symphony of Drabbles by Three Generations interwoven anecdotes mostly from his workplace and related interactions with colleagues and friends. He is also the author of Dilemma: Management Book of Questions (2021).
Speaker @ HLF 2023, 2021
Bruno Vieira Amaral
Bruno Vieira Amaral is a writer, translator, literary critic and assistant magazine editor. He is one of the most promising and distinctive new voices in Portuguese writing today. His debut novel As Primeiras Coisas (The Former Things, 2013) is the first book to scoop up four major literary prizes: Time Out Lisboa’s Book of the Year (2013), the Fernando Namora Literary Prize, the PEN Narrative Prize, and the José Saramago Prize (2015). He is one of Literary Europe Live’s 10 New Voices from Europe 2016.
Year: 2017
C. Christine Fair
C. Christine Fair is an Associate Professor in the Security Studies Program within Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. She previously served as a senior political scientist with the RAND Corporation, a political officer with the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul, and a senior research associate at USIP’s Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention. Her research focuses on political and military affairs in South Asia (Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka). Her publications include Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War, Pakistan’s Enduring Challenges, Policing Insurgencies: Cops as Counterinsurgents; Political Islam and Governance in Bangladesh.
Year: 2016
Caren Cecilia Tuason
Caren Cecilia Tuason (Kooky Tuason) is a performance poet and educator. She has been a tireless and passionate advocate of performance poetry for over a decade, helping to popularise spoken word as an art form through various engagements such as workshops, stage performances and other mediums. She has brought the once unappreciated form of spoken word poetry into the mainstream with three studio albums: Romancing Venus Vol 1 (2005), Romancing Venus Vol 2 (2006), and Bigkas Pilipinas (2007).
Year: 2017
Carolina Floare
Carolina Floare studied law in Lisbon, Romanian Language and Literature in Bucharest, and since 2010, has lived in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She has studied interpretation with renowned film and television directors, won the Best Actress Award (2012) at the Rio de Janeiro Theater Festival, nominated as Best Actress at the same Festival (2015), and also at the Madrid International Film Festival. In 2017, she premiered her authorial show Contando Fados, in Rio de Janeiro. She has translated two Romanian novels into Portuguese: Norman Manea’s Return of the Hooligan (Întoarcerea Huliganului, 2010), and Mihai Zamfir’s Lisbon Forever (Se înnoptează. Ceaţă, 2012).
Year: 2019
Cecilia Artates
Cecilia Artates spends her time by spreading awareness of her country’s indigenous culture writing poems and singing songs with lyrics sprinkled with words she learned from her many travels among different indigenous groups she visited. When not juggling tasks as a performance artist and writer, she is ‘Inay’ or ‘mother’ to the youth of different non-government organizations—volunteering, organising and conceptualising projects in education, arts, culture and sports. She is also a consultant in a local public library and a founding member of IHIP (Initiatives and Hearts for Indigenous People).
Year: 2017
Chandan Gowda
Chandan Gowda teaches at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. He has translated UR Ananthamurthy’s Bara (2016), and edited The Way I See It: A Gauri Lankesh Reader (2017), Theatres of Democracy: Selected Essays of Shiv Visvanathan (2016), and The Post Office of Abachooru: Selected Short Stories of Purnachandra Tejasvi (Forthcoming). He directed Sahitya Sahavasa (In the Company of Literature), a series of video lectures of UR Ananthamurthy on modern Kannada writers, which was telecast on Doordarshan (2014). He is presently completing a book on the cultural politics of development in old Mysore.
Year: 2018
Chandra Shekhar Varma
Chandra Shekhar Varma is a behavioural scientist and motivational speaker. He is also the author of the book Corners of a Straight Line (2015). He has inherited the knowledge of literature from his illustrious grandfather, Padma Bhushan Shri Bhagwati Charan Varma, and from his father Shri Dhirendra Varma, who is a well-known Hindi author.
Year: 2019
Chandramohan S.
Chandramohan S. is an Indian English Dalit poet. His poems were shortlisted for the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize 2016. His second collection of poems, Letters to Namdeo Dhasal (2016), was a runner-up at M. Harish Govind memorial prize instituted by Poetry Chain. He was instrumental in organising literary meets of English-language poets of Kerala for the Ayyappa Panicker Foundation. He was a Fellow at The International Writing Program (IWP) at the University of Iowa in 2018.
Year: 2020
Chandrasekhar Rath
Chandrasekhar Rath is a doyen of Odia literature excelling in the genres of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. He is also a creative artist working with sculpture, painting, clay modelling, doodling, and carving on wood and stone. He has been conferred D. Litt. by Lucknow University (2008) and Utkal University of Culture (2012), and has received several prestigious awards including the Sarala Award (1981), Central Sahitya Akademi Award (1997), Hutch Crossword Book Award (2004). He has translated Shankara’s commentary on the Bhagvat Gita (2009) and Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingstone Seagull into Oriya.
Year: 2018
Charles Assisi
Charles Assisi is co-author of The Aadhaar Effect: Why the World’s Largest Identity Project Matters (2018) and a co-founder at Founding Fuel, a media and learning platform. He is a recipient of the Polestar and Madhu Valluri Awards for excellence in journalism, and is a contributor to the Hindustan Times. Earlier, he was managing editor at Forbes India, national business editor at the Times of India, and worked across various newsrooms in Europe with media conglomerate Vogel Burda to set up the India edition of CHIP, the group’s flagship computing magazine. He graduated in the biosciences from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai and has an MA in Economics.
Year: 2019
Cheyenne Olivier
Cheyenne Olivier is an illustrator from France. She builds her images from a visual vocabulary of elementary shapes. Squares, circles and triangles form the basic blocks of a connected universe where humans, animals, plants and minerals are made of the same matter, living adventures led by the random routine of everyday life.
Year: 2022
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning and bestselling author, poet, activist and teacher of writing. Her work has been published widely, in magazines and anthologies, and her books have been translated into twenty-nine languages. Several of her works have been made into films and plays. Her last novel The Forest of Enchantments (2019), a retelling of the Ramayana in Sita’s voice, was a bestseller. Her new novel The Last Queen (2020) has already been optioned for a movie.
Year: 2021
Chitra Viraraghavan
Chitra Viraraghavan is a freelance book editor, primary school textbook writer and novelist. She has worked in academic publishing, taught English and ESL in the US, and written poetry and short stories. The Americans (2014), her critically acclaimed and bestselling first novel, is up for a summer 2015 release in the United States. At present, she is working on her second novel, a historical murder mystery.
Year: 2014-15
Chitrita Banerji
Chitrita Banerji is a Bengali-American writer who examines the relationships between memory, history, culture, religion, and food in her works. She is the author of several books on Indian food and culture, including Eating India: An Odyssey into the Food and Culture of the Land of Spices (2007), listed among the best new food books of 2008 by Time Out, London. Her work has been included in Best American Travel Writing 2006. Her other work includes the novel Mirror City (2014), and the biography Chaitanya Mahaprabhu: The Story of Bengal’s Greatest Bhakti Saint (2018). She is a member of the board of the Culinary Historians of Boston.
Year: 2022
Chris Feik
Chris Feik is the senior publisher at Black Inc., editor of Quarterly Essay and publishing director of La Trobe University Press. He co-edited the book The Words that Made Australia (2012) and is associate editor of The Monthly magazine. He has been at Black Inc. since 2000, and before that worked as a bookseller, reviewer and university tutor, among other things.
Year: 2019
Christine F. Godinez-Ortega
Christine F. Godinez-Ortega completed her undergraduate and graduate studies in Literature and Creative Writing at Silliman University and postgraduate study in Creative Writing at the De La Salle University, Manila. She is Head of the National Literary Arts Committee, Secretary of the Sub-Commission on the Arts, Director of the Iligan National Writers Workshop, and Director of the Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology(MSU-IIT) Office of Publication and Information (OPI). She is a writer, journalist, cultural worker, and faculty at the Department of English, College of Arts & Social Sciences, MSU-IIT. She received the Umpil Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Education and the 2016 CMO Asia Award for leadership in education.
Year: 2017
Christopher C. Doyle
Christopher C. Doyle’s novels blend ancient secrets buried in legends with science and history to create a gripping story. His debut novel, The Mahabharata Secret was in the top 10 Crossword Best of 2013 list. His second novel, The Mahabharata Quest: The Alexander Secret, was released in October 2014. After graduating in economics from St Stephens College, Delhi and in business management from IIM Kolkata, Christopher has worked with leading multinational organisations as a senior executive and CEO and now runs his own consultancy firm. Christopher lives his passion for music through his band, ‘Mid-Life Crisis’ which plays classic rock.
Year: 2014-15
Colm Scully
Colm Scully is a poet and poetry filmmaker from Cork, Ireland. His debut collection, What News, Centurions?, was published in 2014. He has been selected for Poetry Ireland Introductions and won the Cúirt New Writers Prize. He won the smartphone section at the 2018 Rabbits Heart Poetry Film competition in Massachusetts with ‘A Prayer to St Anthony’. His films have been published on Atticus Review and Poetry Film Live websites, and been shortlisted at competitions in Ireland and America.
Year: 2019
Cristina Sánchez-Andrade
Cristina Sánchez-Andrade is the author of eight novels, including Ya no pisa la tierra tu rey (Your King No Longer Walks this Earth), which won the Guadalajara International Book Fair’s prestigious Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz literary prize in 2005, and Las Inviernas (The Winterlings), which was a finalist for the Herralde Novel Prize in 2013. Her work has been translated into English, Portuguese, Italian, German, Polish, and Russian. Her last novel, Alguien bajo los párpados (Someone Beneath my Eyelids) was published in 2017.
Year: 2018
Damodar
Damodar Rao K. retired as Associate Professor and Head, Department of English, Kakatiya University, Warangal. He published several co-edited and translated anthologies including Pride of Place: Selections from Telugu Poetry 1981-2000 (2011), Telangana Harvest: Telugu Short Fiction 1912-2011 (2017), A Green Garland: An Anthology of Ecopoetry (2018), and Astitva: Telugu Short Fiction from Telangana (2019). On the occasion of the Golden Jubilee of Sahitya Akademi’s bi-monthly, Indian Literature, he won a prize for translation in a national contest. His critical studies include: Indian English Fiction and Multiculturalism (2018), Bhakti Movement and Literature: Re-forming a Tradition (2016), and Postcolonial Indian English Fiction: Decentering the Nation (2016).
Year: 2020
Dariusz Sośnicki
Dariusz Sośnicki is a Polish poet, editor, occasional essayist, and translator. He has published nine poetry volumes and the translation of W.H. Auden’s famous poem ‘Thanksgiving for a Habitat’. Dariusz Sośnicki’s poems and essays on literature have been published in numerous journals and anthologies. His poetry has also been published in Romania and the US. He is the editor of Polish artzines and is the winner of many literary prizes.
Year: 2014-15
David Greenslade
David Greenslade teaches at Cardiff Metropolitan University, Wales, UK. A prize-winning essayist, he writes in Welsh and English and has many books in print, mainly poetry and one novel. He collaborates with visual artists and his latest collection of poetry responds to text in the environment. An experienced writing teacher, he has worked for the British Council and has received Welsh Arts Council support for his research and publications.
Year: 2014-15
Deepa Gahlot
Deepa Gahlot is a journalist, critic, columnist, editor, and author. She has won the National Award for Best Film Criticism (1998) and her work has appeared in several anthologies ‒ Bollywood Popular Indian Cinema, Behind the Scenes of Hindi Cinema: A Visual Journey through the Heart of Bollywood, Janani and Bollywood’s Top 20: Superstars of Indian Cinema. Her publications include The Prithviwallahs (co-authored with Shashi Kapoor), and biographies of Shah Rukh Khan (2007) and Shammi Kapoor (2008), Take 2: 50 Films that Deserve a New Audience (2015) and Sheroes: 25 Daring Women of Bollywood (2015). She currently heads the Theatre and Film Department of the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai.
Year: 2016
Deepa Kiran
Deepa Kiran is a professional storyteller and award-winning educationalist. Founder of Story Arts Foundation, she is engaged with musical storytelling inspired by oral traditions of India. She has reached over 75000 educators globally with her teaching through storytelling. Her focus area is storytelling for teaching the English language and developing empathy and resilience in multi-cultural classrooms. She has given TEDx talks and published in journals about her work. She has received awards for her acting in films and recognition at international film festivals for her documentary film. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Storytelling and English Language Teaching at IIT Madras.Year: 2017, 2014-15
Deepak Sapra
Deepak Sapra is the author of the book, The Boy who Loved Trains. He is a former Indian Railways Service official and worked at many places throughout the country. The book is a fictionalised, coming-of-age account, largely based on his experience on the railway setup. He is an alumnus of IIM Bangalore, IRIMEE Jamalpur and has also been a Chevening scholar and a Fulbright fellow. He currently works in the Healthcare sector.
Year: 2019
Des Raj Kali
Des Raj Kali is a Punjabi writer of fiction. His short story collections include Kath Kali (‘Stories of Kali’, 1996), Fakiri (‘Mendicancy’, 2006), and Yahan Chai achhi nahi banti (‘Good Tea is not served here’, 2015). Parneshwari (2008) was the first in his ‘Nar-Natak’ (the male play) series of novels followed Antheen (‘Eternal’, 2008), Pratham Pauran (First Puran, 2009), Shanti Parav (2009), and Shehar vich Sahn honn da Matlab (‘What it means to be a Bull in the Town’, 2018). His writing reinterprets Indian myths from Dalit perspective and re-presents the marginalised materialistic traditions of Charavaks, Buddhas, Siddhas, and Nath Yogis.
Year: 2022
Devdan Chaudhuri
Devdan Chaudhuri was born in Kolkata, educated in India (Fergusson College, Pune) and England (University of Essex). He returned to Kolkata and became a creative and social entrepreneur in the art and hospitality sector. Devdan is a keen traveller and photographer, and has travelled to Tibet, Borneo and Egypt, among other places. Devdan also played state-level junior cricket, wrote articles for Indian Express, and was a champion quizzer. His debut novel, Anatomy of Life, was nominated for the Tibor Jones South Asia Prize 2013.
Year: 2014-15
Devika Das
Devika Das has 15+ years of experience and has worked with several theatre groups across India. She has also acted in award-winning short films directed by Anshul Sinha and participated in AISFM projects. Some of her notable performances include Jaat Hi Pucho Sadhu Ki, Tin Tappar, Panchlight, Kamla, Sipahi Ki Maa, 9 Jakhoo Hill, Jaanch Padtaal, Comrade Godse, Khamosh Adalat Jaari Hai and Telugu plays Amma Redamma and Aata. Currently, she is a member of Nishumbita School of Drama and the Director of Navarasa, the theatre wing of the Nation’s Rock Beat. Professionally, she is a content marketer, an author, and a poet.
Year: 2022, 2021
Dinesh Prasad
Dinesh Prasad believes that life is forever brimming with great stories and our imagination, technique and creativity are just the means to capture them. East of Love, West of Desire is his first collection of novellas. He is completing his second book Pin-codes, a collection of short stories. He is inspired by the writing of Amrita Pritam, Gulzar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Haruki Murakami, Toni Morrison, Carole Martinez, Jeanette Winterson and many many others. He is an engineer and holds an MBA from IIMA. He works in the area of Analytics Consulting, though dreams of becoming a full-time writer.
Year: 2014-15
Dipankar Mukherjee
Dipankar Mukherjee is the founder of one of the fastest growing independent publishing houses in India, Readomania. A management graduate from IIT Madras, Dipankar has worked for the consulting industry for almost eight years, for organisations like IBM and Ernst & Young. He quit the corporate world in 2013 and started work on his literary venture. Within a span of 18 months, Readomania has launched 20 books, and is a Limca Record holder for publishing India’s first composite novel. Readomania has a following of over 15,000 readers and authors. He also runs a writing retreat in the Himalayas by the name of Faraway Renz.
Year: 2017
Divya Dutta
Divya Dutta is an Indian actress who has worked in over 80 feature films. She was born and raised in Ludhiana, Punjab. She has established a successful career in Bollywood and Punjabi cinema and has also appeared in other Indian-language and international productions. She is noted for playing a wide variety of roles in different genres and is one of the leading actresses of parallel cinema. She has won recognition and several awards and in the film industry including the IIFA and Zee Cine best-supporting actress awards. The Stars in My Sky (2021) is her second book.
Year: 2022
DU Saraswathi
DU Saraswathi is a Kannada Dalit feminist writer, theatre artiste, and activist. She has been associated with the Women’s Movement and the Dalit Movement for the last 25 years. She has written two poetry collections and an autobiographical account. She also writes a satirical column in Kannada called “Sanntimmi” about how Dalit women in villages relate to issues like globalization, borders, bombs, and beauty pageants. (Photo credit: The News Minute).
Year: 2018
Easterine Kire
Easterine Kire is a poet, short story writer and novelist from Nagaland. In 2003, she published the first English novel by a Naga A Naga Village Remembered. Her second novel, A Terrible Matriarchy (2007) has been translated into Norwegian, German and Marathi. Bitter Wormwood (2011) her fourth novel, was shortlisted for The Hindu Literary Prize 2013. She was awarded the Governor’s Prize for excellence in Naga Literature (2011) and the “Free Word” by Catalan PEN, Barcelona (2013). She won the Hindu Literature Prize for When the River Sleeps (2016) and Tata Litlive Book of the Year award in 2017 for Son of the Thundercloud (2016). She also has a band “Jazzpoesi” whose digital CD topped the Norwegian Jazz charts in 2013.
Year: 2018
Ekta Bahl
Ekta Bahl is a Partner at ‘Samvād: Partners’, Hyderabad. She is a recognised practitioner for Life Sciences in Chambers Asia-Pacific 2018 and is a recommended practitioner for Projects and Energy in Legal 500 2018. She has provided legal assistance to various social-sector enterprises and start-ups and is an empanelled mediator with the NCLT. She has significant experience in corporate and commercial laws, especially in the areas of healthcare and life sciences and infrastructure. Though a corporate lawyer, she has been active in providing legal aid to the members of the LGBTQ+ through pro bono legal representations and other contributions.
Year: 2019
Elahe Hiptoola
Elahé Hiptoola is a film producer and has produced all of Nagesh Kukunoor’s films. Her filmography includes films like Rockford, Teen Deewarein, Iqbal, Dor, Dhanak and the series City of Dreams and Modern Love Hyderabad. She is also the co-founder of the cultural space Lamakaan, in Hyderabad.
Year: 2019
Eluned Gramich
Eluned Gramich is a Welsh-German writer and translator. She studied English Literature at Oxford and has an MA in Creative Writing (Prose) from the University of East Anglia. Her short fiction has been published in anthologies and magazines, including New Welsh Short Stories, Stand, Rarebit, Planet, Taliesin and World Literature Online. In 2015, she translated a German short-story collection by an author shortlisted for the German Book Prize, Monique Schwitter, entitled Goldfish Memory. Her memoir of Japan, A Woman Who Brings the Rain, won the New Welsh Writing Award 2015 and was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year 2016. She currently lives and works in Germany.
Year: 2017
Emilie Camatte
Emilie Camatte discovered her passion for drawing very early. Her love of travel, particularly in India, and her passion for photography make her create journey diaries in which she articulates her feelings through pictures. In Nice, she attended the art school Thiole Villa, which led her to the school of illustration Emile Cohl in Lyon. It is here that she found the child in her, and now gives all her sensibility, her science of colours and her sympathy for naive shapes to the illustration of children’s book, tales and games.
Farah Bashir
Farah Bashir was born and raised in Kashmir. She was a former photojournalist with Reuters and currently works as a communications consultant. Rumours of Spring (2021), an unforgettable account of her adolescence spent in Srinagar in the 1990s, is her first book.
Year: 2022
Farrukh Dhondy
Farrukh Dhondy is a British-Indian writer. He studied in Pune, Cambridge, and Leicester Universities. He writes fiction, non-fiction, journalism, stage drama, and has written extensively for TV and screenplays. His latest publications are Rumi: A New Collection (2020) and a life-memoir entitled Fragments Against My Ruin (2021).
Year: 2022, 2021
G Shankar Narayan
G. Shankar Narayan is an architect with a well-respected practice in Hyderabad. He teaches, writes in the newspapers and campaigns for better urban design in our cities.
Year: 2014-15
Gauri Nori
Gauri Nori is a faculty of liberal arts at the Annapurna International School of Film and Media. She teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses including film aesthetics, adapting film to literature, comparative mythology, and fundamental concepts of political science. She has an in-depth knowledge of various movements in cinema and takes an active interest in theatre and other performance arts. She has a masters in film and literature from the University of York, UK, and a BA in English Literature from St Xavier’s College, Mumbai.
Year: 2014-15
Gautam Pemmaraju
Gautam Pemmaraju is a Mumbai-based independent filmmaker, writer and researcher working in the areas of history, literature, and art. With a special interest in the cultural history of the Deccan, he has also written extensively on sound and music production, sound art, and sonic phenomena. A Tongue Untied: The Story of Dakhani (2017) on the vernacular satire and humour poetry of the region is his first independent feature documentary film.
Year: 2021
Gautham Chintamani
Gautham Chintamani, a born cinephile, has been writing on cinema for over a decade. Besides Dark Star: The Loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna (2014), he is writing two more books with HarperCollins Publishers India, one on Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, and the other on the screenplay and dialogue writer duo, Salim–Javed.
Year: 2014-15
Ge Shuiping
Ge Shuiping is a novelist, essayist and playwright. She is the vice president of Shanxi Provincial Writers Association and professional writer of Shanxi Literature Academy. Her publications include a novel Naked Soil, selections of novellas and short stories Shouting at Mountains, Have a Life, Straw Horse in Empty Mountain, Swinging Whip, Keep Watching, and essay selections Passed by Time, Embroidered Shoes Chasing Dusts, River Takes Two Sides Away, I Walk and I Exist, etc. She also scripted the TV series A Young Red Army Man and Ordinary World. She is a laureate of the 4th Lu Xun Literature Prize and People’s Literature Award.
Year: 2019
Geetika Tondon Higgins
Geetika Tondon Higgins has a Masters in Film Direction and has been a media professional for the past fifteen years. She has worked as a writer, director, producer, and stylist for feature films, ad films, television series, music videos, short films, and corporate films. She was the Head of Student Productions at Whistling Woods International Limited (2007–2009) and the Head of Screenwriting for Balaji Telefilms’ academic venture ICE (2010–2011). She joined Annapurna International School of Film and Media, Hyderabad (2011) as the founding Head of Academics and was instrumental in the launch of Bachelors and Masters degree programmes in Filmmaking and an MBA in Media.
Year: 2017
George Abraham
George Abraham is a postgraduate in operations research and a graduate in mathematics from St Stephen’s College and a recipient of Sanskriti Award (1994). He is an inspirational speaker, motivator and a communicator. He started his career as an advertising professional, and went on to promote cricket for the blind. He set up the World Blind Cricket Council and organised the first World Cup. He co-authored Handbook of Inclusive Education for Educators, Administrators and Planners (2004), and established “Project Eyeway”, a single-stop knowledge resource on life with blindness. He produced the TV serial, Nazar ya Nazariya.
Year: 2016, 2014-15
George Hull
George Hull is a well known musician from Hyderabad. He plays the saxophone for jazz bands and also teaches woodwinds. He is a photographer. He is a self-proclaimed lover of arts and literature. Music and imagery are an important part of his life. He dedicates music to the life of his young son Jared, who is his muse.
Year: 2018
Ghazala Yasmin Faruqui
Ghazala Yasmin Faruqui is a homemaker. She studied at Aligarh Muslim University and is a connoisseur of Hindi/Urdu poetry. She is one of the earliest members of ‘Ka Se Kavita’, Hyderabad Chapter.
Year: 2019
Girish Kasaravalli
Girish Kasaravalli has made 14 feature films, five biopic documentaries, and a TV serial in a career spanning four decades. His 14 films have so far won 21 international awards, 25 national awards, and 45 state awards. He has won National Film Awards 17 times, and is the only South Indian Director to win the President’s Golden Lotus Award four times. Ghatashraddha has been voted as one of the 20 best films made in the 100 years of Indian cinema. He has served four times on international juries, three times on national, and three times on state juries. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 2011.
Year: 2018
Gita Setia
Gita Setia got her initial training in music from her mother, Sushila Kapoor, and gave her first stage performance at the age of six. She has trained in Hindustani classical music for ten years and learnt Rabindra Sangeet for four years under Ila Banerjee. Her first album Dil Hei Nagmanigar was released last year. Her second album Tumhare Pyar ka Mausam is based on Madhup Mohta’s collection of poems Tumhare Liye Bas. She has also been part of several plays at Mandi House, New Delhi, where she worked under the direction of Nadira Babbar, Rajendra Nath, etc. She is associated with ITV New York and has been a host of “Jeet Gaye Geet”.
Year: 2017
Gopala Krishna
Gopala Krishna studied Communications from MICA, Ahmedabad. After a brief stint with the Mumbai film industry, where he worked as an assistant director on a few films, including the national award winning I AM, he decided to explore other forms of narrative including Heritage Walks designed and curated as a storytelling experience. He is the founder of ‘Hyderabad Trails’, an urban community project that organises walking tours of the city, and recently launched the ‘Heritage and Culture Leadership Project’. His documentary The Bazaars of Hyderabad was screened in the ‘Agora Biennale’ in Bordeaux, France in 2017.
Year: 2019
Gopalakrishnan R
Gopalakrishnan, R is a writer, advisor, speaker, and teacher. He studied physics at Kolkata, engineering at IIT Kharagpur, and attended the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. He has been a professional manager and corporate leader for 50 years. He has served as Chairman of Unilever Arabia, as MD of Brooke Bond, Lipton, and Vice-Chairman of Hindustan Lever, as ED of Tata Sons and several Tata companies. He also serves as an independent director of listed companies, Akzo Nobel India, Castrol India, and Hemas Holdings PLC, Sri Lanka. He has authored six books and is currently Distinguished Professor of IIT Kharagpur.
Year: 2018
Gopi, N
Gopi, N. is an eminent poet and literary critic in Telugu. His over 50 books include poetry collections, anthology of essays, travelogues and translations. His poetry is translated into many Indian languages and into German, Russian and Persian. He is a recipient of more than 30 awards including the Sahitya Akademi Award (2000), award from Sri Annamacharya Project of North America, Chicago (SAPMA) (2001), and ‘Kalaratna’ Award by Govt. of Andhra Pradesh (2009). In 1998, he invented a poetic form ‘naaneelu’ (‘the little ones’; haiku-like epigrams) with his sixth poetry collection. He was formerly a professor of Telugu and a Vice-Chancellor.
Year: 2019
Gopikrishnan Kottoor
Gopikrishnan Kottoor is an award winning poet. His prizes include the All India Poetry Prize (2017), All-India Special Poetry Prize of the British Council-Poetry Society, India All India Poetry Competitions (1997). His poem sequence Father, Wake Us in Passing was translated and published in German and won him a Residency in the University of Augsburg, Germany. He was Guest Poet at the University of Vienna, Austria. He was selected for MFA (Poetry) at Texas State University, San Marcos USA. He has published widely in India and abroad. His thirteenth book of poems Reflections in Silhouette is in press. He founded the journal Poetry Chain.
Year: 2018
Gouri Mohini Kasinathuni
Gouri Mohini Kasinathuni is interested in learning about children’s perspectives on space and incorporating them into designs of child-friendly cities. A graduate of the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, she has worked with different architecture firms in Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad. She has been associated with educational and cultural institutions such as the Rishi Valley School, Vidyaranya, Goethe Zentrum as a teacher and facilitator. She is currently based at Hyderabad and is a freelance architect. Her other interests are origami and music.
Year: 2014-15
Gowri Ramnarayan
Gowri Ramnarayan is a playwright, theatre director, journalist (served in The Hindu for 23 years) and founder, JustUs Repertory. Her witty, thought-provoking, visually interesting plays make original use of music, poetry, dance and painting and present a rare amalgam of aesthetics and scholarship. She has translated Vijay Tendulkar’s plays, and served as Fipresci Jury member at international film festivals in India and Europe. She is also a very talented singer, and was vocal accompanist to Smt. MS Subbulakshmi. She is Chairperson, Rukmini Devi Arundale Trust; Senior Associate, Sruti magazine; member, Regional Advisory Committee, ICCR; and guest faculty at Asian College of Journalism and the Kalakshetra Foundation.
Year: 2017
Guan Renshan
Guan Renshan is a novelist and Member, National Committee of China Writers Association and President of Hebei Provincial Writers Association. He is also Vice-President of Painting Academy of China Writers Association. His publications include novels, reportages of literature, essays, novellas and short stories. He has also scripted films and TV series. He has won the 5th Lu Xun Literature Prize, 11th National Best Works Award, 14th China Book Award, 9th Zhuang Zhongwen Literature Award and so on. Some of his works have been translated into English, French, Korean and Japanese, and also adapted to film, TV series, play and living theatre.
Year: 2019
Gurcharan Das
Gurcharan Das is an author, commentator, and thought leader. His publications include the trilogy on life’s goals: India Unbound (2000), The Difficulty of Being Good (2009), and Kama: The Riddle of Desire (2018); India Grows at Night (2012); A Fine Family: A Novel (1990), Three Plays (2012), and a book of essays, The Elephant Paradigm (2012). Another Sort of Freedom: A Memoir (2023) is his latest publication. He is the general editor for Penguin’s multivolume Story of Indian Business series. He studied philosophy at Harvard University and was CEO, Procter & Gamble India. He writes a regular column for six Indian newspapers, including the Times of India. Year: 2019
Gurmeet S Rai
Gurmeet S Rai is an architect who specializes in heritage conservation. She has been an advisor to UNESCO in several countries in South East Asia, and was appointed as lead consultant for the preparation of the Cultural Heritage Policy for Punjab in 2011. In 2012, the World Monuments Fund, New York appointed her as project management consultant for the conservation of forty-three protected monuments in Madhya Pradesh. In 2015, she was appointed HRIDAY City Anchor for the historic cities of Amritsar and Puri, and in 2021, as heritage specialist for the conservation planning of the Parliament House in New Delhi. She received the Award of Distinction from UNESCO in 2002 and 2004.
Year: 2022
Hans Winterberg
Hans Winterberg, a doctorate in law, held positions in Goethe-Institutes in Calcutta, Hyderabad, Turin, Boston, Munich, and Lisbon. He was director of the Goethe-Institut Boston from 1984 to 1990. Early in 1990, in the tempestuous and eventful times of German reunion, the Goethe-Institut’s board of directors entrusted Hans Winterberg with heading the Department of Cultural Programs Abroad in the central offices in Munich. He always encouraged young people and became a mentor to a new generation of Goethe colleagues. He remained a passionate mountaineer and cook well into advanced years.
Year: 2014-15
Harimohan Paruvu
Harimohan Paruvu is a first class cricketer, writer, speaker and workshop facilitator based out of Hyderabad. His first novel The Men Within: A Cricketing Tale has been made into a Telugu movie Golconda High School. His other books include If You Love Someone…, a novel, and two non-fiction books, 50 Not Out: 50 Lessons from Cricket and This Way Is Easier Dad. As a newspaper columnist he has written for the New Indian Express, HANS India, The Hindu, Deccan Chronicle among others. He represented Hyderabad in the Ranji Trophy (1985-87) and is currently the Chairman of the Senior Selection Committee for the Hyderabad Cricket Association.
Harinder S. Sikka
Harinder S. Sikka is the best-selling author of Calling Sehmat (2018) and Vichhoda (2019). Calling Sehmat has been made into a successful feature film, Raazi (2018). He also produced the film Nanak Shah Fakir, which won acclaim at International Film Festivals at Cannes, Toronto and Los Angeles and won three National Awards in 2018: Best Feature Film on National Integration, Best Costume Design and Best Make-up artist. He joined the Indian Navy in 1979 and took premature retirement in 1993 as Lt. Commander. In 1999, he reported the Kargil war live for a frontline English daily as a freelance journalist. Currently, he is Group Director–Strategic Business, Piramal Group.
Year: 2020
Haripriya Bathula
Haripriya Bathula is the founder of ‘The Book Shelf’, Hyderabad’s best and award-winning library for children. She manages the library, curates the books and guides children to become independent readers. She loves telling stories and has co-founded 'Kathasagar: Stories and beyond'. She conducted several virtual programmes for children during the pandemic to keep them engaged. She strives to make the best of literature accessible to children and plans to add Manga comics collection to the library this year.
Year: 2021
Harish Singla
Harish Singla is a poet not by profession, but passion. He defines himself thus:
मुझे खुश रहने की दुआ देने वाले,
हँसी आती है तेरी सादगी पर,
हुजूर काँटा तो काँटा ही रहेगा,
लगा हो गुलाब पर, चाहे झाङी पर
Year: 2019
Harpal Singh, S
Harpal Singh, S. is born and brought up in Adilabad district in northern Telangana, which is known for an amazing range of biodiversity. He is currently working as Senior Assistant Editor with The Hindu in his home district. For the last 17 years, he has travelled across the district as part of his work and began clicking pictures in the rural areas in 2009. Over the years, with environment as the key focus, he has built a strong body of photographic work that not only draws attention to the degradation of forests, but also raises hope for reversal.
Year: 2019
Harsh Vardhan Shukla
Kuchh shaamein aisi hotin hain / Jo raat ko taaza kartin hain / Main un shaamo ka shayar hun / Kuchh raaz chhupaane laaya hun / Jo raakh tumhare dil me hai Wahan aag lagane laaya hun / Main un shaamo ka shayar hun.
Year: 2019
Harsho Mohan Chattoraj
Harsho Mohan Chattoraj is a graphic novelist and illustrator based in Kolkata.
He has worked in the comic medium for more than fifteen years and his recent graphic novels include Ghosts of Kingdoms Past, Chakrapurer Chakkare, Hyderabad Graphic Novel, Kolkata Kaleidoscope and Dhyanchand. He has also worked as a journalist, visualiser, storyboard artist, voice-over artist and promo producer.
Year: 2017
Haseeb Jafferi
Haseeb Jafferi is a descendant of Salabath Jung from the Nizam family and is professionally a Corporate Trainer and an experiential educator. He is part of Hyderabad Trails and conducts regular walks. He has deep interest in and profound knowledge of the Hyderabadi tradition, Sufisim, and art and heritage of Hyderabad. He is a witness to the adab of paan and paandaan.
Year: 2018
Heike Fiedler
Heike Fiedler is a multilingual poet, and sound and visual artist from Geneva. Since 2000, she has been collaborating with musicians and performing her poetry in international poetry and music festivals. She gives workshops in creative and performance writing. Gender and the condition of women’s creation is an important topic in her work. She has received the Fonds municipal d’art contemporain (Fmac) scholarship in Geneva and several awards from Geneva town and canton for her solo work, and collaborative projects. She has published in poetry magazines, anthologies, CDs. Her recent books are langues de meehr and sie will mehr (edition spoken skript, Luzern).
Year: 2014-15
Helena Dahms
Helena Dahms began to study social work in 2014. After going through different fields such as social service for the elderly and psychosocial counselling for families, she decided to focus on empowering processes of marginalised groups in society.
Year: 2019
Henry Noltie
Henry Noltie is a Research Associate of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, where he worked as a taxonomist and curator from 1986 to 2017. His taxonomic work focussed on the monocots of the Sino-Himalayan region, which led to an interest in the history of the Garden’s rich Indian collections. He has written extensively on the botanical drawings made by Indian artists for Scottish East India Company surgeons. Among his works on Indian botanical art are in-depth monographs on East India Company botanists Robert Wight, Hugh Cleghorn, and Alexander Gibson.
Year: 2019
Hussain Haidry
Hussain Haidry is a performance poet, lyricist and screenwriter. He writes poems and songs in Hindi-Urdu and has written lyrics for films like Qarib Qarib Singlle, Gurgaon, Mukkabaaz, and web series Chacha Vidhaayak Hai Humaare and Yeh Meri Family. His spoken-word poems ‘Hindustani Musalmaan’ and ‘Lat’ were among the first Hindi-Urdu poems to be posted in a video format on the internet. He has been featured on YouTube channels of ‘Rekhta’, ‘Kommune’, and ‘LallanTop’. He has worked with ‘The Viral Fever’ and is currently working as screenwriter of a web series and a short film, and as dialogue writer of Karan Johar’s upcoming movie, Takht.
Year: 2019
Hyderabad Harpers
Hyderabad Harpers:
Harmonica group – Spreading harmony through harmonica – is a group of enthusiastic harmonica players of all ages and from all walks of life. They meet on every Sunday morning at Indira Park, Hyderabad. They also teach harmonica free of cost.
Year: 2021
Illa Arun
Illa Arun is an actor, singer, theatre practitioner, music composer, dancer and director/producer. She is also a writer, poet, playwright and lyricist. She has written three plays and has adapted into Hindi nine plays, including those of Ibsen, Llossa, Camus, Arbuzov, Rattigan, Chappell and Fugard. She has produced these plays and acted in over 350 performances. For her sensitive adaptations of Henrik Ibsen’s plays and for successfully organising the ‘Ibsen Theatre Festivals’ for the last four years as festival director, she has been honoured with ‘The Royal Norwegian Order of Merit—Knight 1st Class’ for 2018 by King Harald V of Norway.
Year: 2019
Indira Mukherjee
Indira Mukherjee has been travelling across rural and urban India, and also to the USA, telling and retelling different genres of tales to listeners whose age ranges from three to eighty-three years, and who belong to different classes and communities. She had been on the faculty of Political Science in Nagpur University and School of Social Sciences in IGNOU, New Delhi before becoming a storyteller and a writer. Her book Who will be Ningthou has been incorporated into the NCERT English textbook Marigold. She has made short films on the rich cultural heritage of Adivasis like the Gonds and the Bhils for the website of IGNCA.
Year: 2020
Inma López Silva
Inma López Silva is a fiction writer, essayist, theatre critic and teaches at the Galician School of Drama. Her fiction writing reflects on how perceptions of evil have a gender bias and how beliefs impose constraints on our conduct. She is currently writing about sexual abuse, media misrepresentation, and lies as a political tool. She was the recipient of the Xerais Novel prize in 2002 for Concubinas (Concubines) and her most recent work, Aqueles dias en que éramos malas (Those Days When We Behaved Badly) was published in 2016.
Year: 2018
Ira Pande
Ira Pande is a writer, translator and freelance editor. Her book Diddi: My Mother’s Voice on her mother, the famous Hindi writer Shivani, was shortlisted for the Hutch-Crossword Award (2005) and her translation of Manohar Shyam Joshi’s T-ta Professor won the Vodaphone-Crossword Award (2009) and the Sahitya Akademi Award (2010). She has also translated Shivani’s Apradhini: Women without Men¸ a collection of interviews with jailed women, and Prabha Khaitan’s autobiography, Anya se Ananya as A Life Apart. She was editor of Biblio and the IIC Quarterly and also worked at the Indian Express, Seminar, Dorling-Kindersley and Roli.
Year: 2019
Ira Trivedi
Ira Trivedi is the best-selling author of What Would You Do to Save the World? (2006), The Great Indian Love Story (2009) and There Is No Love on Wall Street (2011). Her latest book and first work of non-fiction is India in Love: Marriage and Sexuality in the 21st century, a landmark book on India’s new social revolution in marriage and sexuality. Her books have been translated into several languages including Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam and Greek. Ira Trivedi has graduated in economics from Wellesley College, Massachusetts, USA and obtained her MBA from the Columbia Business School.
year: 2014-15
Irfan Ali
Irfan Ali is a banker by profession and a comedian by passion. This entertaining soul has a knack of making you laugh even at a graveyard; a believer, who still hopes that ‘acche din aayenge’. A storyteller, who believes this world still has a lot of amazing untold stories to be uncovered. The hilarious host and dost who’s going to make you smile all through the evening.
Year: 2019
Isabelle Hui Saldaña
Isabelle Hui Saldaña’s friends call them “Isa”. Isa holds many roles at once: artist, poet, teacher, lover, and learner. Isa curates Films & Conversations on Sexualities & Genders (FCSG Hyderabad) in conjunction with Anveshi Research Centre for Women’s Studies. In their happiest moments, they’re reading for pleasure and listening to music with you in a patch of soft sun.
Year: 2018
Ishika Ranjan
Ishika Ranjan is a first year undergraduate student at Ashoka University. An avid reader, she started writing essays at the age of seven on her favourite pastimes, nature, and the world around her. She graduated to writing on more elaborate themes covering genres like soft sci-fi, adventure, and humour. Her debut book Our World: A Symphony of Drabbles by Three Generations has received widespread appreciation for its vivid imagination and strong vocabulary. She has worked on a project of oral history and has also been invited to literature festivals as a resource person.
Speaker @ HLF 2023, 2021
Jai Undurti
Jai Undurti has a background in journalism and writes for leading publications on travel and popular culture. He started “Every City is a Story”—a unique city-centric graphic storytelling initiative. His current projects include The Robots of Dharma, set in a dystopian India and The Game, a tale with an occult backdrop. His other interests include chess and science-fiction.
Year: 2017
Jairam Ramesh
Jairam Ramesh is a Member of Parliament, and has held key ministerial portfolios during 2006–-2014: , rural development, drinking water and sanitation, and environment and forests, apart from commerce and power (as Minister of State). Besides, in his capacity as an economist and policy expert, he has been the adviser to the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister. He has also served in the Planning Commission of India, Ministry of Industry, and the Advisory Board on Energy.
Year: 2017
Jameela Nishat
Jameela Nishat has published three collections of poetry, and her work has been translated and featured in several notable anthologies, including Women Writing in India and In Their Own Voice. In 1999, SPARROW published a booklet on her life and work as part of its oral history project. In 2000, she edited Inkeshaf, an anthology of forty women poets from the Deccan. She is committed to promoting the cause of Dakhni, the unique Telugu-infused Hyderabadi Urdu. She is a recipient of the Indian Express’ Devi Award (2015) and the Maqdoom Award (1972). She currently runs “Shaheen: Resource Centre for Women” in the old city of Hyderabad.
Speaker @ HLF 2023, 2022, 2021, 2014-15
Jan Zabeil
Jan Zabeil is a writer, director, and cinematographer. Born in Berlin, Germany, he studied cinematography at the University of Film and Television in Potsdam (HFF/B) from 2003 to 2009. His debut feature as director, ‘The river used to be a man’ won several awards at international film festivals (‘Best new director–San Sebastian IFF 2011’, and ‘Best cinematography—German critics association 2013’) and screened at art institutions (like MoMA – NYC 2012, National Cinemateque Mexico), as well as distribution in cinemas in Germany, Spain and Mexico.
Year: 2014-15
Janani Rao
Janani Rao is a poet who loves playing with words and stringing them into metaphors. Along with occasionally sitting in dark corners and writing morbid poetry, she also loves food and sunsets. Sunsets are her food for the soul. Poetry, food and sunsets, that’s her.
Year: 2019
Javed Akhtar
Javed Akhtar needs no introduction. His films alone have gained universal recognition and his lyrics which have been sung by some of India’s most famous vocalists, are known to everyone. Although in his verse he refers to his own shortcomings and ineffectualness, his life has been one of outstanding success.
Year: 2014-15
Javier Montes
Javier Montes is a writer, translator and art critic. His first novel Los penúltimos won the José María Pereda Prize in 2007. Subsequently, he published Segunda parte (2010), Hotel Life (2012), and Stranded in Rio (2016). His stories have appeared in collections like Puros cuentos (2008) and Life in Cities. In 2010, Granta listed him among the best young authors writing in Spanish. As a translator he has published versions of Cymbeline, King Lear and Coriolanus, as well as the essay “Shakespeare y la música” (2009). He has curated exhibitions like “Beckett Films” (2011) and was a professor of Art History at the Spanish College in Malabo (Equatorial Guinea).
Year: 2017
Jayashree
Jayashree has been working as a casual Radio Jockey at All India Radio Rainbow FM 101.9 (Hyderabad) since April 2015. She worked earlier as a Radio Jockey for Tristate Radio Zindagi in New Jersey, USA. She represented Hyderabad as a member of the ‘Iryani Improv Team’ at India’s first international Improv Festival conducted by ICB-Improv Comedy at Bangalore and won second prize.
Year: 2019
Jeanine Leane
Jeanine Leane is a Wiradjuri writer and academic from New South Wales. She teaches Creative Writing and Aboriginal Literature at the University of Melbourne and has published widely in the area of Aboriginal literature. Her first volume of poetry, Dark Secrets After Dreaming: A.D. 1887-1961 (2010) won the Scanlon Prize for Indigenous Poetry and her first collection of stories, Purple Threads, won the David Unaipon Award (2010) for an unpublished indigenous writer. Her poetry has been published in Hecate: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Women’s Liberation, The Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia and The Australian Book Review. Her second volume of poetry is forthcoming.
Year: 2017
Jeena Rani Marquez
Jeena Rani Marquez is the author of Beyond Words (Pahiwatig ng Lambing), The River of Gold, and the co-author of The Night that Changed the River. She was an ASEAN fellow of the Singapore International Foundation and has undergone training in creative writing in London. She is also a recipient of the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature. She is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of the Philippines-Diliman. She teaches semantics at the Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of Philippines.
Year: 2017
Jonathan Gil Harris
Jonathan Gil Harris is the author of many books including, most recently, The First Firangis: Remarkable Stories of Heroes, Healers, Charlatans, Courtesans, and Other Foreigners Who Became Indian (2015). President of the Shakespeare Society of India, he teaches English at Ashoka University, where he is also Dean of Academic Affairs. His next book is Shakespeare Masala, about the Indianization of Shakespeare’s plays post-Independence.
Year: 2016
Joshua Pollock
Joshua Pollock is a student of Kamlesh D. Patel. After experimenting with various meditative practices, he started practising Heartfulness in the United States in 2002 and has taught it since 2007. He regularly teaches Heartfulness at universities, corporations, government institutions and at public seminars. He is an accomplished violinist and has performed and taught all over the world. He holds a Bachelor of Musical Arts from Indiana University and two Masters degrees from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. In August of 2015, he was invited by Daaji to co-author the book The Heartfulness Way (2018).
Year: 2019
Josy Joseph
Josy Joseph is the author of A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India. An award-winning investigative journalist, his exposés include the Adarsh Apartment scam, naval war room leak case, and scandals such as the conduct of the Commonwealth Games, and the 2G Spectrum allocation scam. The Ramnath Goenka Foundation awarded him the Journalist of the Year in print media (2013), and the Prem Bhatia Trust elected him India’s best political reporter (2010). He holds a master’s in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and is presently the national security editor of The Hindu.
Year: 2017
Juliet Jaques
Juliet Jacques is a writer and filmmaker based in London. She has published three books, including Trans: A Memoir (2015) and a short story collection, Variations (2021). Her essays, criticism and journalism have appeared in many publications, from The London Review of Books to Tribune, and her short films have been screened in galleries and festivals worldwide. She teaches at the Royal College of Art and elsewhere. Juliet Jacques appears at HLF 2022 with the support of the International Literature Showcase Collaboration Fund. The International Literature Showcase is a partnership between the National Centre for Writing and the British Council.
Year: 2022
K Ramachari
Komanduri Ramachary is a playback singer, music composer and music teacher who works mainly in Telugu films. His “Little Musicians’ Academy” nurtures young talent and has produced several singing stars. His first film as music director was Prema Lekha Raasa (2007). The legendary singer SP Balasubrahmanyam has been a guide and inspiration to him. He has performed all over India and abroad including in the USA, Australia, Kuwait, and Dubai. He has won many awards including Andhra Pradesh State Government’s Nandi Award, Delhi Telugu Academy Award, Vamsee International Award, and Kalaradhana Award.
Year: 2021
K. K. Muhammed
K. K. Muhammed retired from the Archaeological Survey of India as Regional Director (North) in 2012. During his distinguished career, he excavated Akbar’s ‘Ibadat Khana’ and also the first Christian Church of North India built by Akbar at Fatehpur Sikri. In Bihar, he discovered a new Buddhist stupa at Rajgir and excavated the stupa at Kesariya. He conserved Samlur temple at Dantewada (Chattisgarh), and reconstructed 80 temples in the Chambal Valley. He headed two of the four transplantations executed so far in India: Kurdi Mahadev temple, Goa (1994–97) and Chaubis Avatar temple, Omkareshwar, Madhya Pradesh (2004–07). He is a recipient of three international, seven national and one state award.
Year: 2019
Kaartikeya Bajpai
Kaartikeya Bajpai, a JN Tata Scholar and journalism graduate, was first published in Chandamama when he was 9 and his work has since appeared in many national and international magazines. He lives in New York, completing his masters in Creative Writing. He is the Editor-in-Chief of The Bombay Review, a bi-monthly literary magazine, based out of New York City and Mumbai, which has readers in 120 countries. He won the “25 Under 25 Changemakers in India” Award in writing, and has represented India as Youth Global Leader in a ten-day conference in Macedonia. He has given two TEDx talks and been a panelist and faculty in numerous institutions.
Year: 2017
Kafeel Jafri
Kafeel Jafri is a Bangalore-based theatre artist, poet and translator. He has done close to 50 shows of various plays across Bangalore. Born and brought up in Lucknow, Kafeel imbibed the Urdu language and culture from his elders and from literary gatherings—mehfils and mushairas. He has conceptualised and performed shows along with other artists on the life and works of Faiz, Ghalib and Manto. Specialising in the now revived art performance form of Urdu storytelling, Dastangoi, he has recently written and performed ‘Dastan Yusuf aur Zulekha ki’, apart from performing several shows of ‘Dastan-e-Ameer Hamza’.
Year: 2019
Kalpana Kannabiran
Kalpana Kannabiran is a sociologist and legal scholar. She has published widely in the field of interdisciplinary law, sociology, and gender studies. Recipient of the Amartya Sen Award for Distinguished Social Scientists (2012) for her writing in the field of law, she is a Distinguished Professor at the Council for Social Development, New Delhi.
Year: 2014-15, 2023
Kalpana Sharma
Kalpana Sharma is an independent journalist, columnist, and author specializing in developmental, environmental, and gender issues. She has worked with Himmat Weekly, Indian Express, Times of India, and The Hindu. Currently, she writes a media column for Newslaundry.com. Her books include The Silence and the Storm: Narratives of Violence Against Women in India” (2019), Rediscovering Dharavi: Stories from Asia’s Largest Slum (2000). She has edited Single by Choice, Happily Unmarried Women (2019), Missing: Half the Story, Journalism as if Gender Matters (2010), and co-edited Whose News? The Media and Women’s Issues (1994/2006), and Terror Counter-Terror: Women Speak Out (2003).
Kamu Iyer
Kamu Iyer graduated in architecture from the Sir J J School of Art, Mumbai, in 1957. As a practitioner since 1960 with Architects’ Combine, a firm in which he is a partner, he has built extensively in Mumbai and other parts of India. Besides teaching at various schools of architecture, he has authored Buildings That Shaped Bombay: Works of G B Mhatre, co-authored Four from the fifties—Emerging Modern Architecture in Bombay and Build a Safe House With Confined Masonry. His recent book Boombay: From Precincts to Sprawl (2014) describes his childhood spent in the areas of the Hindu and Parsee colonies in middle Mumbai. He believes that ‘a city can be judged by the way its poor live’.
Kanishka Dasgupta
Kanishka Dasgupta has an MBA in Marketing, and has worked with some stellar companies in Hyderabad.He is also a playwright, an award-winning short film maker and a theatre actor with over 40+ performances with Dramanon Hyderabad for over a decade. He picked up doodling two years ago and uses everyday objects to present his art. His has conducted workshops on doodles which he calls “Oodles of Doodles”.
Year: 2017
Kannan Sundaram
Kannan Sundaram is the Managing Director and Publisher of Kalachuvadu Publication Pvt Ltd. He is also the Editor and Publisher of Kalachuvadu, a monthly journal for culture and politics, which publishes translations of fiction and non-fiction from Indian and world languages. He co-organised ‘Tamil In 2000′, the international Tamil conference on 20th century Tamil writing. He has been on the International Visitor Program to the US (2002) and the Frankfurt Book Fair fellowship program (2007). He was invited to Australia by the Australian arts council under the Visiting International Publisher program in 2017. He has published five books consisting of critical articles on Tamil media and politics.
YEar: 2018
Karthik
Karthik is an amateur wildlife photographer. His photographs have been widely published. He has also authored The Fauna of Bangalore, Avenue Trees and Ideas for Outdoors. His writings have been published in various national and international journals and periodicals. He has been educating the young and the old alike on aspects of natural history, and is an awardee of the Carl Zeiss Wildlife Conservation Award. Prior to joining Jungle Lodges and Resorts Ltd. as their Chief Naturalist, he has worked with WWF-India for over a decade.
Year: 2019
Katarina Rasic
Katarina Rasic is a Serbian artist with a Masters in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, Serbia. She has exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions in Serbia and abroad. In 2014, she collaborated with Jeetin Rangher on the ‘Art Adda’ project in Bangalore and in 2015, she started Dream Box, an ongoing performance art series in Sri Lanka, and then continued it in Belgrade. In 2016, she was part of Colombo Art Biennale at Sri Lanka. Currently, she is working on ‘Melting Pot’, a travelling exhibition of 4 women artists, which was shown in Kochi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Belgrade and London.
Year: 2018
Kathryn Hummel
Kathryn Hummel is an Australian writer, mixed-media artist and multidisciplinary researcher. She is currently working with IIT Hyderabad as visiting faculty and with the Australian creative arts journal Verity La as associate editor. She has authored six books of poems, Lamentville (2019) being the latest. A widely-travelled performance poet and artist-in-residence, her writing across genres has been published, performed, translated and anthologised worldwide. She is a recipient of the NEC/Meanjin Essay Writing Competition prize, the Melbourne Lord Mayor’s Dorothy Porter Award and Copyright Agency Ltd’s Best Poetry prize and her work has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, among others.
Years: 2020, 2017, 2015, 2014
Katja Lanius
Katja Lanius studies literature and film in Berlin with a focus on gender and sexuality. She has been involved in different projects which aim for a greater visibility of the marginalised perspectives and experiences, especially of women and queer people.
Year: 2019
Kaveree Bamzai
Kaveree Bamzai is an independent journalist with over thirty years at India Today, The Indian Express, and The Times of India. She was the first, and is so far the only, woman editor of India Today. A member of the CII Women Empowerment Committee for several years, she is now a member of the jury for the Women Exemplar Awards of the CII and of the ISC-FICCI Sanitation Awards. She is a changemaker for ‘Save The Children’ charity and a mentor for the KARM Fellowship. The Three Khans: and the Emergence of New India (2021) is her latest publication.
Year: 2022
Kavi Yakoob
Kavi Yakoob is a Telugu poet, researcher and writer. He has MA, MPhil, and PhD degrees in Telugu from Osmania University. His publications include Pravahinchegnaapakam (1992), Sarihaddu Rekha (2002), Yedategani Prayaanam (2009), Nadeemoolam laanti Aa yillu (2016), and Teegala Chintha (2019). His poems have been translated and published in English as Arc of Unrest (2000). He has edited five books and authored three books of literary criticism. He is the founder of Kavisangamam, a Telugu poetry forum, and Rottamaku Revu Poetryspace Foundation (RRPF). Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Telugu in Hyderabad and a member of the Advisory Board of Kendra Sahitya Akademi.
Year: 2020
Kavitha Buggana
Kavitha Buggana is a writer. Her publications include a travel memoir, Walking in Clouds (HarperCollins India, 2018), short stories and essays published in One Story Magazine (Jan, 2024), Swamp Pink, The Hindu, Outlook Traveller, Tehelka, and others. A runner-up for the 2021 Calvino Prize for Speculative Fiction, she is a 2023 Yaddo Fellow. In previous avatars, she was a software engineer and a development economics scholar.
Year: 2019
Kavitha Rao
Kavitha Rao is a freelance journalist and writer. She has taught journalism at several colleges including the Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media in Bangalore, Sophia College in Mumbai, and the Times College of Journalism in Mumbai. She has been a speaker at numerous literary fests, including The Times Lit Fest in Bengaluru, the Tata Lit Fest in Mumbai, and the Kasauli Lit Fest. Lady Doctors: The Untold Stories of India’s First Women in Medicine (2021) is her most recent book.
Year: 2022
Keertana Bhoopal
Keertana Bhoopal is a singer with a range over three octaves. She sings the Blues, Jazz, R&B and funk fusion. She graduated with a degree in Vocal Popular Music Performance from Lasalle College of Arts, Singapore. She has collaborated with many well-known bands in India and Singapore including “The Good Life Project”, “Lagori” and with musicians from “Peepal Tree”.
Year: 2018
Keith St Clair Butler
Keith St Clair Butler is an award-winning Anglo-Indian novelist and teacher living in New Zealand. He writes for national newspapers, literary journals, and anthologies. The Australian Literature Board awarded grants for the manuscript of The Secret Vindaloo (2014). The novel uses food as a deep metaphor for the inscription of a particular time and place. Of his many loves, he includes India, Indians, reading, writing, and of course, food. Watching re-runs of ‘I, Claudius’, ‘The King and I’, and the history channel with a chota peg of single malt Laphroaig close by is his preferred indulgence.
Year: 2014-15
Kesav Rao
Kesav Rao has done PD Graphics from MS University, Baroda and mastered techniques in designing, painting, print making, natural dyeing, and hand block printing. He works with oil on canvas, natural dye on silk, ink and water colours, dry pastels and charcoal on paper. Since 1998, he and his wife Bina Rao have been working to revive the traditions of natural dyeing in their ‘Creative Bee Design Studio’ in Hyderabad.
Year: 2014-15
Khaja
Khaja hails from Paloncha in Khammam district of Telangana. He is a postgraduate in political science and Telugu literature, and his PhD thesis was titled ‘Portrayal of Muslim life in Telugu and Urdu Short Stories’. A pioneer of Muslim poetry in Telugu, he published a poetry anthology Fatwah (1998), and a polemic, Muslimvada Tatvikata (A Literary Philosophy of Muslimism; 2005). A social activist, he has earlier worked in various rural development projects in the AP Government, and is at present with the Telugu film industry.
Year: 2014-15
Khalid Saeed
Khalid Saeed is Professor and Head, Department of Urdu, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad. He has held several important positions including In-charge Vice-Chancellor, MANUU; Convener, Bhasa Samithi for Saraswati Samman of K.K. Birla Foundation; Chairman, Textbook Committee, Govt of Karnataka; Member, Textbook Committee, NCERT etc. He has published over a dozen books of creative and critical writing and has received several awards and prizes from Karnataka Urdu Academy; Gulbarga University; and All India Urdu Manch, Bangalore.
Year: 2014-15
Kingshuk Nag
Kingshuk Nag is a former Resident Editor of The Times of India and the author of eight best-selling non-fiction books. His latest book Mohan Influencer-in-Chief Bhagwat (2018) is based on the life of RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat and the policies and plans of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh under his leadership. Kingfizzer: The Rise and Fall of Vijay Mallya (2017), Atal Bihari Vajpayee: A Man for All Seasons (2016), Netaji: Living Dangerously (2015), The Saffron Tide (2014), The NaMo Story (2013) and The Double Life of Ramalinga Raju (2009) are among his other publications.
Year: 2019
Kiranmayee Madupu
Kiranmayee Madupu is a Bharatanatyam dancer and choreographer who trained under Guru Hemamalini Arni. She has performed extensively in India and abroad, in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, London, Birmingham, Yorkshire, Lancashire, etc. She is the founder of “Hema Arangam—The Golden Platform”, a cultural enterprise that offers Bharatanatyam lessons and promotes performing and visual arts through innovative initiatives. She is an IT engineer by education but has decided to take up Bharatanatyam as a career. She is also a vocalist, accomplished painter and a freelance graphic designer.
Year: 2017
Kirmen Uribe
Kirmen Uribe is one of the most significant writers of his generation in Spain. He won the National Prize of Literature in Spain in 2009 for his pioneering first novel Bilbao-New York-Bilbao. The novel has been translated into more than 15 languages including French, Japanese, Chinese and English. It was selected by Foyles as one of the 15 books of the year in the United Kingdom in 2014. His poetry collection Meanwhile Take My Hand (2007), translated into English by Elizabeth Macklin, was a finalist for the 2008 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. He writes in the Basque Language.
Year: 2018
Kirpal Singh
Kirpal Singh is an internationally renowned poet, fictionist and scholar. His latest book, Naked Ape: Naked Boss, also sets a new frame for writers of biography. He has so far published two collections of stories, five collections of poems, more than 100 scholarly articles, and over 20 books dealing with subjects ranging from literature to religion. He has participated in some of the world's most significant Lit/Arts festivals (Edinburgh, York, Adelaide, Toronto, Cambridge, Mexico, Hong Kong, etc.). In his other life, he directs the presidential Wee Kim Wee Centre at the Singapore Management University where he teaches.
Year: 2016
Kishalay Bhattacharjee
Kishalay Bhattacharjee is currently a Professor and Dean, Jindal School of Journalism and Communication at O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat. He is a journalist and former Resident Editor, NDTV. His books include Where the Madness Lies: Citizen Accounts of Identity and Nationalism (2023), An Unfinished Revolution: A Hostage Crisis, Adivasi Resistance and the Naxal Movement (2017), Blood on My Hands: Confessions of Staged Encounters (2015), and Che in Paona Bazaar: Tales of Exile and Belonging from India’s Northeast (2013). He is a recipient of the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award (2006-07), and the Penguin Random House Writers Residency Award (2016). Year: 2014-15
Kishwar Desai
Kishwar Desai is an award-winning author of both fiction and non-fiction. Her novel Witness the Night (2010) won the Costa First Novel Award, in the UK, and was followed by two others: Origins of Love (2012) and Sea of Innocence (2013). The trilogy has since been optioned for a web series. Her non-fiction books include Darlingji: The True Love Story of Nargis and Sunil Dutt (2007) and Jallianwala Bagh: The Real Story (2018). Her play Manto! won the TAG Omega award for Best Play in 1999. The Longest Kiss: The Life and Times of Devika Rani (2020) is her latest publication.
Year: 2021
Kobita Dass Kolli
Kobita Dass Kolli is a naturalist and independent researcher, documenting the flora and small fauna of the open natural ecosystems in and around Hyderabad, with a focus on rocky outcrops. She is happy to light the spark of curiosity and share her findings through nature walks and talks. She has been guiding an activity class along with Sadhana Ramchander at Vidyaranya School for two decades now. She is an illustrator and worked at Titan as a watch designer. She is a graduate in plant sciences and an MPhil in plant physiology.
Speaker @ HLF 2023, 2019, 2018
Koeli Mukherjee Ghose
Koeli Mukherjee Ghose is a Gold Medalist in History of Art and Director of CREA, Centre for International Arts & Crafts, Hyderabad. She is a former committee member for the physical verification and documentation of works of art in the collection of Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi. An eminent artist herself, she has been curating exhibitions for the past 17 years. Many of the artists promoted by her have received much acclaim and continue to practice professionally.
Year: 2022, 2021, 2015, 2014
Krithi Munagala
Krithi Munagala is a 10-year-old budding writer. She is a creative ball of energy, who loves to write stories and poems by observing her surroundings. Her two-year-old dog Sushi inspired her to write her first book, Super Sushi Adventures. Her stories revolve around love, hope, happiness, strength and self-confidence. She wishes to spread these values of life through her work. She is also passionate about animals and is the youngest volunteer at Blue Cross in Hyderabad. Her dream is to become a writer, an animal rights lawyer and start a pet rescue home.
Year: 2019
Ksenia Disterhof
Ksenia Disterhof is about to finish her MA in Media Studies at the university of Vienna. She has dedicated herself to the medium of photography, which she recognises as a tool to make the invisible visible and tangible. Photography, for her, has the potential to touch people and provoke reflections on political and social issues.
Year: 2019
Kuber Shah
Kuber Shah is a photographer and social media consultant. He studied Industrial Engineering with Economics at the Technical University, Berlin. He freelances as a social media consultant specialising in photographic content creation as he is convinced that Instagram is a great platform for companies to connect directly with their customers, offering added value in terms of unique content, inspiring stories, and tailored campaigns that enable creativity and lead to a win-win-situation—both for the brand and for the Instagram community. He held his first solo exhibition as an official part of the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in February 2016.
Year: 2017
Kulbhushan Jain
Kulbhushan Jain returned to India after working with the renowned architect Louis Kahn in Philadelphia, USA in the 1960s. In the last 40 years, he has worked on several architectural heritage projects including the ongoing work at the Mehrangarh and Amber Forts in Rajasthan. He was Director, School of Architecture at the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT) Ahmedabad, and has also taught in MIT, USA, and UBC, Canada. He has published several books on Indian architecture and has received, among others, the UNESCO Award for Conservation, J K Cement Award for Best Residential Building, and HUDCO Award for contribution to low cost housing.
Year: 2014-15
Kuljeet Singh
Kuljeet Singh is an academic and actor. Founder of Atelier Theatre, New Delhi, India, he is currently developing an arts residency in Himachal Pradesh. With profound interest in performing, curating, acting, directing, and writing, not necessarily in that order, he is at present spending time to develop two cinematic projects.
Year: 2022
Kuppili Padma
Kuppili Padma is a noted short story writer, columnist, social commentator and journalist in Telugu. Her writing reflects the impact of globalisation on different facets of the society and on young women and adolescents. In a writing career of 25 years, she has published nine short story collections, three novels, one poetry anthology and two collections of creative prose. Without resorting to sloganeering, her characters push the limits of freedom and triumph against all odds. In her inimitable simple, lyrical and poetic style, she nudges readers to look beyond the cliché of women’s rights.
Year: 2019
L Ravichander
L. Ravichander is a practising senior advocate of the Andhra Pradesh High Court and Supreme Court. A rank-holding economics graduate from Osmania University and a law graduate from Chennai, he has been a practising lawyer and a part-time journalist for over three decades. He has a passion for debates, Hindi films, classical music and a bit of quizzing.
Year: 2014-15
Lakshmi Iyer
Lakshmi Iyer is a banking professional in her day job. She slaves over her writing at night when her children are in bed. An MBA graduate from LeBow College of Business and an alumna of the Yale Writer’s Workshop, she writes creative non-fiction and hopes to publish a memoir of her adoption journey someday. She lives with her husband and her three daughters (two adopted and one biological) near Philadelphia, in the US. Why Is My Hair Curly? (2020), with illustrations by Niloufer Wadia is her latest book for children.
Year: 2021
Lakshmi Prabhala
Lakshmi Prabhala is an independent writer and photographer with a keen interest in culture, travel, heritage, and arts. She is widely published and contributes regularly to an array of publications that specialize in these topics. A collection of her daily-life images of Hyderabad was published as a book titled HydandSeek: A Visual Tribute to Hyderabad by BluePencil Creative. As a Nature-lover, she is equally curious and alert to the stories that unfold in green spaces.
Speaker @ HLF 2023, 2014-15
Leela Samson
Leela Samson is a virtuoso performer and a sensitive interpreter of the nuances of Bharatanatyam. “Spanda”, a body of work choreographed by her, has been enthralling audiences with its innovations in tradition for the last twenty years. “Nadhi–the river” is her latest production. Her publications include Rhythm in Joy (1987) and Rukmini Devi: A Life (2010). She was Director, Kalakshetra (2005–2012); Chairperson, Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi (2010–2014); and Chairperson, Central Board of Film Certification (2011–2015). She is a recipient of the Sanskriti Award (1982), the Padma Shri Award (1990), the Nritya Choodamani Award (1997), the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (2000) and the Natya Kala Acharya Award (2015).
Year: 2017, 2015, 2014
Lina Vincent
Lina Vincent is an art historian and curator with over 15 years experience in research, design, curation and public art programming. She is Chief Program Designer, Visual Art & Design for TFAI (Teaching for Artistic Innovation) Bangalore, and Associate Curator with ARTPORT_making waves. She has a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts and a master’s in Art History from Bangalore University. Her independent projects include MEMORABILIA, Gallery Sumukha Bangalore (2014); ‘under my skin…under your skin’ Baptist Coelho (2013); ‘Between the Lines: Identity, Place and Power—Selections from the Waswo X Waswo Collection of Indian Printmaking’ NGMA Bangalore + Mumbai (2012–13).
Year: 2019, 2018
Madavane
Madavane is a former professor of French, playwright and fiction writer. He founded the theatre group Chingari in 1983 and has since directed over 50 plays in English, French, German and Hindi. He has conducted theatre workshops in several European universities: at Brussels, Nice, Frankfurt, and Paris. His plays include The Mahabharata of Women (MOW), The Veritree or the Falsity of the Gods, and 1947: The Man from Lahore. MOW was performed in Germany, Australia, Reunion Island and several cities in India. His latest collection of stories, To Die in Benares (2018), was first published in French as Mourir à Bénarès (2010).
Year: 2019
Madhup Mohta
Madhup Mohta graduated in medicine from All India Institute of Medical Sciences and after a brief stint in the Paramilitary Forces, he joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1985. He has served in Indian Diplomatic Missions in Hong Kong, Nepal, Thailand and United Kingdom. He has also served as Director, Indian Council of Cultural Relations and Director, Foreign Service Institute, New Delhi. He knows Hindi, English, Urdu, Sanskrit, Punjabi, German, French and Chinese. He writes prolifically in Hindi and English and has edited several publications. His collection of Hindi poetry Samay, Sapana aur Tum has been awarded the “Maithili Sharan Gupt Puruskar”(2003).
Year: 2021, 2017
Mahesh Bhatt
Mahesh Bhatt is one of the best-known personalities in Indian cinema. Bhatt has directed such acclaimed films as Arth, Saaransh, Janam, Naam, Sadak and Zakhm. His early film, Lahu Ke Do Rang, bagged two Filmfare awards in 1980. Most of his films champion the cause of women and their empowerment and are autobiographical in nature. He has received Filmfare awards for the best screenplay (Arth, 1984), and for the best story (Saaransh, 1985 and Zakhm, 1999), Special Jury Award of the National Film Awards (Hum Hain Rahi Pyaar Ke, 1994), and the Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration (Zakhm, 1999).
Year: 2014-15
Mahesh Rangarajan
Mahesh Rangarajan is an independent researcher and historian. He has a BA in history from Hindu College, and an MA and doctorate in modern history from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes scholar. He has served as Professor of Modern Indian History at Delhi University and as Director of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. His publications include Fencing the Forest (1996), Nature and Nation (2015), Shifting Ground (2014), and Nature without Borders (2014). Environmental history, especially human wildlife relations in imperial times and in independent India, is his main research interest. He chaired the Elephant Task Force of the Government of India in 2010.
Year: 2016
Malini Chib
Malini Chib is Joint Secretary, ADAPT, formerly The Spastics Society of India, and Founder-Chairperson, ADAPT Rights Group. She conducts empowerment and sensitisation courses for individuals, corporates, parents, professionals and acti Mahesh Bhatt is one of the best-known personalities in Indian cinema. Bhatt has directed such acclaimed films as Arth, Saaransh, Janam, Naam, Sadak and Zakhm. His early film, Lahu Ke Do Rang, bagged two Filmfare awards in 1980. Most of his films champion the cause of women and their empowerment and are autobiographical in nature. He has received Filmfare awards for the best screenplay (Arth, 1984), and for the best story (Saaransh, 1985 and Zakhm, 1999), Special Jury Award of the National Film Awards (Hum Hain Rahi Pyaar Ke, 1994), and the Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration (Zakhm, 1999).
Year: 2014-15
Mallika Sarabhai
Mallika Sarabhai has been one of India’s leading choreographers and dancers for over three decades. She has been creating and performing both classical and contemporary works. She has a PhD in Organisational Behaviour and has been honorary Director of ‘Darpana Academy of Performing Arts’ for 40 years. She played the role of Draupadi in Peter Brook’s ‘The Mahabharata’ for five years, in French and English, performing in France, North America, Australia, Japan and Scotland. In 1989, she created the first of her hard-hitting solo theatrical works, ‘Shakti: The Power of Women’. Since the mid-1990s, she has been developing her own contemporary dance vocabulary.
Year: 2019
Malvika Maheshwari
Malvika Maheshwari is the author of Art Attacks: Violence and Offence-Taking in India (2018). She teaches political science at Ashoka University. She holds degrees in the discipline from the University of Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and earned her doctorate from Sciences Po, Paris in 2011. She had taught courses on Indian and South Asian politics at Sciences Po, Paris and Le Havre, and was a research associate at the Centre for Policy Research. Her research interests include interrelations between art and politics, violence and the workings of the Indian democracy. Her articles have been published in journals such as Studies in Indian Politics, Economic and Political Weekly and Raisons Politiques.
Year: 2019
Mamidi Harikrishna
Mamidi Harikrishna is a prominent Telugu poet. A government employee by profession, he is a poet, painter, writer, translator, essayist, historian, film maker and film critic by predilection. He is influenced by world literature as well as world cinema. His poetry tries to portray human agony and ecstasy in their myriad forms. His style is deeply rooted in the local dialect and lifestyles and incorporates into the blend the “native roots of naturalism” and the changing times of “cosmopolitan ultra modernism”. He has master’s degrees in Psychology and Education, and his poetry tries to unravel and explore the unexplored plains of the human psyche.
Years: 2022, 2020
Mamta Sagar
Mamta Sagar is a Kannada poet, playwright, and translator. She collections of poems and plays include Hiige HaaLeya Maile HaaDu (2007), Hide & Seek (2014), and The Swing of Desire (translation of her play Mayye Bhaara Manave Bhaara, 2004). She has edited and translated Beyond Barriers: Slovenian-Kannada Literature Interactions, a trilingual compilation of poems and stories (2011). She has recently translated into Kannada Elif Shafak’s Forty Rules of Love. She has collaborated on her poetry performances with visual artists, musicians, and poets from other languages in India and outside. She was a recipient of the Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship in 2015.
Year: 2018
Mangala Bhatt
Mangala Bhatt initially trained under the late Shri Kundanlal Gangani of Jaipur Gharana at Kathak Kendra, New Delhi and took advanced training under the Kathak maestro late Pandit Durga Lal. She completed the post diploma course of the Kathak Kendra and Visharada from Gandharva Mahavidyalaya, New Delhi. In 1992, Mangala and her husband Raghav established ‘Aakruti Kathak Kendra’ in Hyderabad, a first of its kind institute in South India. From 1996 to 1999, she worked as a teacher-cum-performer at the Indian Cultural Centre, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, under the auspices of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, New Delhi.
Mani Rao
Mani Rao a member of the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize jury, is the author of twelve poetry books including Love Me in a Hurry, New & Selected Poems, and three books in translation from Sanskrit including Saundarya Lahari—Wave of Beauty (2022). Her writing has appeared in such journals and anthologies as Poetry Magazine, Wasafiri, Fulcrum, Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets, and Penguin Book of the Prose Poem. She has an MFA in creative writing and a PhD in religious studies. She held writing residencies at Iowa International Writing Program, Omi Ledig House, and IPSI Canberra.
Speaker @ HLF 2023
Manisha Bangar
Manisha Bangar is prominent hepatologist and liver transplant specialist from Hyderabad. She is an Urduphile and is actively engaged in promoting Urdu language, literature, and culture. She has authored many articles on the Dakhini origins of Urdu and women’s poetry in Urdu. She has also participated in several reading sessions, musical (ghazal) evenings, and panel discussions on Urdu. Her efforts in promoting communal harmony through the cultural medium, and spreading awareness about liver health as a public educator have been widely recognised.
Year: 2014-15
Manjiri Prabhu
Manjiri Prabhu has a Doctorate in Communication Science, and is an independent film-maker for television, a novelist in English and also the Founder and Director of Pune International Literary Festival. She has directed over 200 children’s TV programmes, more than 50 short fiction and travel films, and has authored nine books. A pioneer in India among women writers of mystery fiction, she is also the first female mystery author to be published outside India. Her novel The Cosmic Clues was selected as a “Killer Book”by Independent Mystery Booksellers of America and The Astral Alibi was named a “Notable Book” by the Kiriyama Prize.
Year: 2017
Manoranjan Byapari
Manoranjan Byapari writes in Bengali. Till his recent appointment as chairman of the newly instituted Dalit Sahitya Akademi in Bengal, he was working as a cook at the Hellen Keller Institute for the Deaf and Blind in West Bengal. Interrogating My Chandal Life, the English translation of his memoir, won the Hindu Prize for non-fiction (2018), and There’s Gunpowder in the Air, the translation of his novel, was shortlisted for several prizes in 2019, including the JCB Prize for Literature. He received the Suprabha Majumdar Prize (2014), the Sharmila Ghosh Smriti Literary Prize (2015). The Runaway Boy (2020) is the first book of his Chandal Jibon trilogy.
Year: 2021
Marcos Guardiola
Marcos Guardiola (Maguma) is an architect by training. His foray into illustrations began with a three year stint at El País, one of Spain’s major newspapers, conveying through illustrations political, economic, and social issues. His writing took a major turn in 2015 with a residency at Tara Books in Chennai which resulted in the book The God of Money that illustrates the early texts of Karl Marx. In 2016, he was awarded the Colibrí (humming bird) medal by the Chilean section of the IBBY for his book La Pobre Viejecita (Poor Old Granny), which was also selected in 2017 by the prestigious Bratislava Biennale.
Year: 2018
Marieke Hardy
Marieke Hardy is a curator, screenwriter, artist, author and immersive theatre-maker. She has penned regular columns for The Age, The Drum, and Frankie magazine, and written for many television shows, including ‘Laid’, ‘The Family Law’ and ‘Seven Types of Ambiguity’. She is co-curator of international literary salon ‘Women of Letters’ and was a regular panellist on the ABC’s ‘Book Club’. A collection of her essays was released through Allen and Unwin in 2011. She is a recipient of the 2015 Sidney Myer Fellowship and the current artistic director of the ‘Melbourne Writers Festival’.
Year: 2019
Mario Vincent
Mario Vincent (aka Botch) is a techie who lives and works in Bangalore. An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Science, he spent the first several years of his career working in various places around the globe before deciding to settle in Bangalore. He is passionate about traveling, about eating and drinking, about reading and writing, and possibly doing all the above at the same time! It puzzles him that life has surrounded him with more than his fair share of eccentric characters. They do make his life interesting, though.
Year: 2021
Marion Molteno
Marion Molteno is a prize-winning novelist. She grew up in South Africa but left it after opposing apartheid. She has worked with multi-ethnic communities in the UK, and internationally for Save the Children. Her novel Uncertain Light, described by a Man Booker judge as ‘a moving and necessary novel,’ is set among humanitarian workers in India and Central Asia. If you can walk, you can dance won a Commonwealth Writers Prize, and A Shield of Coolest Air the David Thomas Award. She edits Ralph Russell’s work on Urdu literature; the latest, The Famous Ghalib, introduces ghazals to those who do not know Urdu.
Year: 2016
Medha Bhaskaran
Medha Bhaskaran is a microbiologist and has worked for food and pharmaceutical companies in Germany, India and the United Arab Emirates. She has written articles on ‘health & medicine’ in a leading Marathi newspaper and was also a freelance health columnist for a leading English newspaper in the Gulf. Now back in India, she is a full-time writer and pursues farming as a hobby. Her first novel in the historical trilogy, Frontiers of Karma–the Counterstroke (2014), deals with the Shivaji–Aurangzeb conflict. It is the first novel in English to deal with the theme.
Year: 2014-15
Meena Alexander
Meena Alexander, described as “undoubtedly one of the finest poets in contemporary times” (The Statesman), has a brilliant new collection of poems called Atmospheric Embroidery (2015). The poems evoke themes of migration, war, dislocation, conflict, love and divinity in lines of precise grace. The poem, “Bright Passage”, from this book was featured on the wall of the Smithsonian for the 2014 exhibition “Beyond Bollywood: Indian Americans Remake the Nation”. Alexander’s Illiterate Heart won the PEN Open Book Award and she has received awards from the Guggenheim, Fulbright and Rockefeller Foundations as well as the Arts Council of England.
Year: 2016
Meena Kandasamy
Meena Kandasamy is an activist, poet, novelist, and translator. Her books of poetry include Touch (2006) and Ms Militancy (2010), and her three acclaimed novels are The Gypsy Goddess (2014), When I Hit You (2018), and Exquisite Cadavers (2019). In 2022, she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL) and also awarded PEN Germany's Hermann Kesten Prize for her writing and work as a ‘fearless fighter for democracy, human rights and the free word.’ Her latest published work is Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You (2023), a collection of political poetry.
Meena Menon
Meena Menon is an independent journalist and former deputy editor of The Hindu. She has also worked for Bombay Magazine, United News of India, Mid-Day, and the Times of India. She has written extensively on environment, development, politics, and her publications include Riots and After in Mumbai (2012), Organic Cotton: Reinventing the Wheel (2004), and co-author of The Unseen Worker: On the Trail of the Girl Child (1998) and A Frayed History: The Journey of Cotton in India (2017).
Year: 2018
Meena Subramaniam
Meena Subramaniam is a self-taught artist whose paintings of a botanical nature depict the regional biodiversity of avian species and regional flora. Her works feature the entire range of hill and mountain flora in biodiversity ‘hotspots’ such as the Western Ghats and the Northeast. Her life-size paintings rely on close observation and naturalistic portrayal of the floral world, and focus on the identifiable botanical species in their natural habitat. She works with acrylic on canvas because it is flexible and lends well to the signature trompe–l’œil effects that have come to characterise her works.
Year: 2019
Megh Risaldar
Megh Risaldar is a passionate, new age HR Leader with a knack for winning hearts and adding value to business. The business leaders he has worked with value his passion for people, creativity, employee experience management and change management. After a brief entrepreneurial stint, futuristic business model and founder’s passion drove him to join Screen MagicMobile Media in Jan 2021 as Head - Human Resources.
Year: 2022
Meghana Bommatanahalli
Meghana Bommatanahalli has been telling stories to children at schools, NGOs, and community centres. She also trains teachers across India on bringing stories into classrooms and has worked as an associate editor and content writer for children’s magazines. She has participated in popular storytelling festivals like the Chennai International Storytelling Festival, Old City Literary Festival, Jharkhand Storytelling Festival, and Vijayawada Book Fair. She and her three colleagues represent ‘Katha Konnections’ which aims to connect people with themselves and with the world, to entertain, and to promote empathy.
Year: 2021
Mehul Manjeshwar
Mehul Manjeshwar: A firm believer in the impact of communication, raising awareness, and education being the foundation of change, he has always been passionate about sustainability. He completed his MBA in the field to learn about the life cycle of products and how every process has an impact on the environment. He is a Climate Reality Leader with 5+ years of experience in the startup space while being actively involved in curating educational courses, marketing and business development for Bare Necessities. He is the CMO at Bare Necessities and takes care of Marketing and Sustainability Communications.
Year: 2022
Menaka Rodriguez
Menaka Rodriguez is Head, Resource Moblisation and Outreach at India Foundation for the Arts. She is responsible for the growth strategy of IFA along with the Executive Director, and has been instrumental in building and developing the Individual Donors initiative at IFA. She was an ARThinkSouthAsia (ATSA) Fellow in 2012–13 and was awarded ‘Fundraiser of the Year’ at the India NGO Awards 2016 instituted by the Resource Alliance, India and Rockefeller Foundation. She has been one of the International Participants of the Arts Leaders Programme supported by the Australia Council for the Arts for 2017–18.
Year: 2019
Mercedes Cebrián
Mercedes Cebrián writes fiction, journalistic essays and poetry and has translated George Perec, Alan Silitoe and Miranda July. Her literary universe explores, among other aspects of reality, the emotional ties that humans develop with objects. Always the ironic observer, critics have remarked on her ability to uncover the intensity of what at first appears light and simple. She holds MAs in Spanish and Latin American Studies from Birkbeck College and from the University of Pennsylvania. Her last novel El genuino sabor (The genuine flavour) was published in June 2014 and her last collection of short essays, Burp, appeared in 2016.
Year: 2018
Meti Mallikarjun
Meti Mallikarjun, Associate Professor of Linguistics, Sahyadri Arts College, Kuvempu University, Shivamogga, has published 70 research papers in Kannada and English on language, linguistics, literary criticism and cultural studies. He served as planning editor for Karnataka Subaltern Studies (6 Volumes) and Karnataka Sahitya Academy, Bangalore; edited and published books for Kuvempu Bhasha Bharathi Pradhikar, Bangalore, and Prasaranga, Kuvempu University on Language Endangerment, Subaltern Studies, English, and Dravidian Languages. He held an Associate Fellowship at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla during 2010-13, and has also completed six research projects on language, linguistics, and culture for various academies/funding agencies including UGC.
Year: 2018
Michelle Cahill
Michelle Cahill is an Australian author of Indian heritage who was born in Kenya and has lived in the UK. She has received awards in poetry and fiction notably the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Letter to Pessoa (2016), the Kingston Writing School Hilary Mantel International Short Story Competition, the Arts Queensland Val Vallis Award and the Red Room Poetry Fellowship. Vishvarupa (2019) was shortlisted in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. Her other publications include The Herring Lass (2016) and the forthcoming Daisy and Woolf (2022). Michelle Cahill appears at HLF 2022 with the support of the International Literature Showcase Collaboration Fund. The International Literature Showcase is a partnership between the National Centre for Writing and the British Council.
Year: 2022
Miguel Manso
Miguel Manso, a leading Portuguese poet, lives in Lisbon. He has published eight books of poetry since his debut Contra a manha burra (2008), followed by Quando escreve descalça-se in the same year. His other collections are Santo subito (2010), Ensinar o caminho ao diabo (2012), Um lugar a menos and Aqui podia viver gente (2012), Tojo: Poemas escolhidos and Supremo 16/70 (2013). He has collaborated with the theatre company Cão Solteiro, and produced and directed, with João Manso, the feature film Bibliografia (2013) – a journey on a raft down two Portuguese rivers and through five hundred years of literature.
Year: 2014-15
Mitra Phukan
Mitra Phukan is a writer, translator, columnist, and classical vocalist. Her publications include children’s books, a biography, novels The Collector’s Wife (2005), A Monsoon of Music (2011), a collection of short stories A Full Night’s Thievery (2016), and a collection of newspaper columns Guwahati Gaze (2013). She has recently translated a novel Blossoms in the Graveyard (2016). Her fortnightly column “All Things Considered” in The Assam Tribune is widely read. She is an active member of “Aradhana”, an organisation that takes music to the underprivileged sections of society, and a founder member of the North East Writers’ Forum.
Year: 2017
MK Raghavendra
M K Raghavendra is a film scholar and critic. He received the National Best Film Critic Award (the Swarna Kamal) for the year 1997. His publications include Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema (2008), Bipolar Identity: Region, Nation and the Kannada Language Film (2011), The Politics of Hindi Cinema in the New Millennium: Bollywood and the Anglophone Indian Nation (2014), 50 Indian Film Classics (2009) and Director’s Cut: 50 Major Directors of the Modern Era (2013). 50 Indian Film Classics and Seduced by the Familiar have been named as among the best books on cinema from around the world by FIPRESCI.
Year: 2014-15
Mohammed Abdul Khadar Mohiudeen
Mohammed Abdul Khadar Mohiudeen was born in a remote village called Cheemulapadu in Krishna district. His family spoke Urdu, Arabic, Hindi, and Persian besides Telugu. He was forced to leave school due to poverty and studied privately. He began writing in 1975 while working with the political weekly, Soujanya. His poem ‘Puttumaccha’ (Birthmark) took the Telugu literary world by storm in 1990, much before the Muslimvaada (Muslim identity movement) took hold in Andhra Pradesh. He helped form the Muslim Representation Movement to fight for minority rights in the 90s, and has undertaken several translations from Hindi, English and Urdu into Telugu.
Year: 2014-15
Mohan Guruswamy
Mohan Guruswamy is a Distinguished Fellow at The United Service Institution of India (USI), New Delhi and a Visiting Professor at the Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI), Hyderabad. He has held senior positions in the industry and government. He has also been on the ASCI faculty. He is the author of several books on policy issues, the latest being Chasing the Dragon: Will India Catch-up with China? A Harvard graduate, he is a frequent commentator on matters of current interest in print and electronic media. He is also a participant in several ongoing Track II dialogues with China and Pakistan.
Year: 2019
Mohan Ramanan
Mohan Ramanan is a retired Professor of English, a widely published academician, and the winner of several awards. He is the author of two volumes of poems, Grills and My Son's Father Confessor. Apart from his academic pursuits, he is a practicing Carnatic vocalist and has written on music and spiritual subjects.
Speaker @ HLF 2023, 2014-15
Mrinal Kumar
Mrinal Kumar is a poet and storyteller. He has been writing and performing poetry for the last 5-6 years and is now exploring storytelling. His pieces revolve around nostalgia and are greatly influenced by the flavours of the small town he hails from. He has performed at various events, including at ‘Kommume’ and ‘YourQuote’. He was also a part of ‘Anjuman-e-Fannan’ and organised ‘Shaam-e-Rekhta, Hyderabad’ in October 2019.
Year: 2020
Mrinalini Harchandrai
Mrinalini Harchandrai’s poems have appeared in literary journals like The Bombay Review, The Bangalore Review, Earthen Lamp Journal, The Joao Roque Literary Review, The Quill Magazine, Vayavya, and in Sahitya’s Akademi’s anthology Modern English Poetry by Younger Indians. Her poems have also been featured in a visual art show titled “Breaking Ranks” at the Headlands Centre for the Arts, San Francisco. Her poem “The Slippers” won first prize at “The Barre, for The Ballet Festival of India 2017”. Her first collection of poetry A Bombay in My Beat that explores the soundtracks of the city has been released recently.
Year: 2018
Nadi Palshikar
Nadi Palshikar is an MBBS doctor and she worked with women patients from the lower socioeconomic group for ten years. She then went to Pune University for a course in women’s studies, where her ‘The Health Patterns of Indian Muslim Women’ won the prize for the best essay. Subsequently, she did a course in screenplay writing at the FTII, and is currently pursuing an MA in gender, culture and development at the Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule Women’s Studies Centre, Pune University.
Year: 2014-15
Namrata Sadhvani
Namrata Sadhvani is an award-winning blogger, social media influencer, editor, workshop facilitator, architect, and educationist based in Hyderabad. Mother of twin boys, she has been a volunteer with Sayfty Trust and facilitates their Safe-Unsafe Touch workshop for kids. She strongly advocates equal and shared parenting to raise boys as responsible human beings with a healthy respect for women. As an organization, Sayfty Trust aims to educate and empower women and girls against all forms of violence. The initiative aims at creating awareness about laws and legal rights and dialogue around women’s safety.
Year: 2022
Nandana Dev Sen
Nandana Dev Sen is an award-winning actor, child-rights activist, author of six children’s books which have been translated into 15 languages globally. She grew up in India, England and America, and has starred in 20 feature films from four continents (and in multiple languages). Her first book Kangaroo Kisses was selected by 320 UK nurseries as a “Book of Excellence,” and her interactive workshops have been loved by more than 30,000 young people across the world. She is Brand Ambassador, Child Protection, for Save the Children India. Her latest publication Acrobat (2021) is a translation of her mother Nabaneeta Dev Sen’s poems.
Year: 2022
Nandita Haksar
Nandita Haksar is a pioneering human rights lawyer, campaigner, teacher and writer. She is the author of over 15 books including: Framing Geelani, Hanging Afzal: Patriotism in the Time of Terror (2009); The Judgement That Never Came: Army Rule in North East India (with Sebastian Hongray, 2011); ABC of Naga Culture and Civilization (2011); Across the Chicken Neck: Travels in North East India (2013); The Many Faces of Kashmiri Nationalism from the Cold War to the Present Day (2015), and Framed as a Terrorist (with Mohammad Aamir Khan) (2016) and the Exodus is Not Over: Migrations from Ruptured Homelands of Northeast India (forthcoming).
Year: 2017
Nayantara Sahgal
Nayantara Sahgal is a celebrated Indian author of fiction and non-fiction. She has received the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Sinclair Fiction Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and has held Fellowships in the United States at the Bunting Institute, the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, and the National Humanities Center. She has served as Chair (Eurasia) on the jury of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Leeds (1997), and received the Distinguished Alumna Award from Wellesley College, Massachusetts, and Woodstock School, Mussoorie.
Year: 2016
Nazia Akhtar
Nazia Akhtar completed her doctorate from the University of Western Ontario in 2013. She has written and presented extensively on literary representations of the transfer of power in Hyderabad. She has taught courses in language, literature, feminism and feminist theory at the University of Western Ontario, the University of Hyderabad and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad campus. She was awarded a New India Fellowship in 2017 to write her book on Urdu literature produced by Hyderabadi women in the mid-twentieth century.
Year: 2020
Neal Hall, M.D.
Neal Hall, M.D. is a graduate of Cornell and Harvard Universities. He is a physician/surgeon and an internationally acclaimed poet. His award-winning books include Nigger For Life (2009), sharing his painful discovery that in an ‘unspoken America’, race is the one thing by which he is first judged; and Winter’s A’ Coming Still (2012), reflecting that the more things are said to change, the more things are made to stay the same. Dr Hall has read his poetry throughout the US and in Kenya, Indonesia, France, Jamaica, Morocco, Italy, Nepal and Canada.
Neer Kanwal Mani
Neer Kanwal Mani, Associate Professor of English, has translated a variety of literary and non-literary texts. Her 12 books in translation include the comic Du-Rex ke Jalwe (for UNDP), four books from The Chronicles of Narnia series by CS Lewis, two novels by Paulo Coelho, Krishna Sobti’s Zindiginama, and folk narratives and oral epics for IGNCA, New Delhi. She has translated Kerstin Ekman’s Blackwater as a part of Indo-Swedish Writers Union Project in 2001-02. She has been engaging students in literature, critical theory, and translation for over 28 years. Translation remains her passion, and reflects and integrates her many identities and interests.
Year: 2018
Neha Khaitan
Neha Khaitan is a Bharatanatyam artist, illustrator, storyteller, writer, and theatre actor. She has held storytelling sessions for NGOs and schools and also at the Kalaghoda Arts Festival. She worked in the IT industry, published Everyday Maths (2021), and currently works with branding and communications projects. ‘A Flower Child’ founded by her engages in visual arts, children’s books, and storytelling. Its initiative, ‘Anekdotes - many stories’ sources stories that offer children a unique insight into the art of storytelling and develop their emotive skills. The stories are embellished with elements of Indian classical dance—mudras and abhinaya as the stories demand.
Year: 2020
Neha Parikh
Neha Parikh is an independent artist from Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai, with a Bachelor’s degree in Legal Sciences from the Government Law College, Mumbai. Her paintings are grounded in personal experience and express rugged individual freedom, social sense and political consciousness. She holds workshops in Warli and Chinese painting, cartooning, modular origami and illustrated idioms as well as figurative language. She teaches creative writing and is a passionate educationist with a deep love for science and literature.
Year: 2017
Neyaz Farooquee
Neyaz Farooquee is the author of An Ordinary Man’s Guide to Radicalism (2018), a memoir of growing up Muslim in India. The book deals with the fear and uncertainty that religious minorities face when the State and media treat them as the ‘other’. He works with the editorial and opinion section of Hindustan Times, New Delhi. He was a fellow at the New India Foundation and a non-fiction fellow at the Sarai-CSDS. He has also contributed to the New York Times, Al Jazeera and Tehelka, among other publications.
Year: 2019
Nia Davies
Nia Davies is a poet and editor. She has published two pamphlets, Then Spree (2012) and Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmısınız or Long Words (2016). England is forthcoming, and All fours, her first full length book, was published in June 2017. She has curated several international literature projects and collaborations and edits Poetry Wales. She is undertaking research at Salford University on ritual and transcultural poetic practice
Year: 2018
Nikhil Sharma
Nikhil Sharma is General Secretary/Administration Head of ‘The Writers Hub’, a platform for young and talented storytellers in Lucknow. He is a freelance software engineer and creative content writer. He uses mainly sarcasm to write about political and social issues.
Year: 2019
Nikhila Henry
Nikhila Henry is a Special Correspondent with The Hindu. She has reported on youth, student affairs, social welfare and gender struggles for over a decade. In 2016, she compiled and edited Rohith Vemula’s Facebook posts into a book, Caste is Not a Rumour. In her recent book, The Ferment: Youth Unrest in India (2018) she defines youth unrest as a challenge to India as a nation and its collective conscience. The book is a trip through the lives of young leaders and protesters who live in a divided India. She was a fellow of the United States International Visitor Leadership Programme.
Year: 2019
Nilanjan Choudhury
Nilanjan Choudhury’s most recent novel, Shillong Times (2018), is a coming-of-age- story set in the troubled hills of Shillong in the 1980s. His debut novel, Bali and the Ocean of Milk (2011), a mythological thriller, was a (very) brief bestseller. His subsequent writings include The Case of the Secretive Sister (2014), a contemporary detective caper, and The Square Root of a Sonnet (2016), a landmark play on the history of black holes, both of which received wide critical acclaim. He confesses to having studied at IIM Ahmedabad and IIT Kanpur and hopes that this will not be held against him.
Year: 2019
Nina McConigley
Nina McConigley’s collection of stories, Cowboys and East Indians, won the 2014 PEN Open Book Award. She was born in Singapore and grew up in Wyoming. She holds an MA from the University of Wyoming (where she now teaches) and an MFA from the University of Houston. She has received scholarships to the Bread Loaf and the Sewanee Writers’ Conferences, and a full fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for ‘The Best New American Voices’. Her work has appeared, among others, in The New York Times, Salon, The Virginia Quarterly Review, American Short Fiction, Slice, Asian American Literary Review, Puerto del Sol.
Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee
Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee is currently the Editorial Director of Niyogi Books. Earlier, he taught at Gauhati and Jadavpur Universities; worked as Secretary, Sahitya Akademi’s Eastern Regional Office at Kolkata; Director, National Book Trust; editor, Indian Literature; and Director, KK Birla Foundation, New Delhi. He has translated into English the fiction of Mahasweta Devi, Sunil Gangopadhyay, and Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay. He has also translated a short story collection of UR Ananthamurthy and a novel by Viswas Patil into Bengali.
Year: 2018
Nishikant Kolge
Nishikant Kolge is currently an associate professor at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi. He holds a PhD in History from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras. His articles have appeared in leading journals such as Gandhi Marg, Dialogue Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary Thought and Economic and Political Weekly (EPW). He is the author of Gandhi Against Caste (2017). He has been selected for Fulbright–Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, 2018–19. He is also a member of the Council of Advisers for the Vichar Trust.
Year: 2020
Nitu Bhattacharya
Nitu Bhattacharya is one of the first women officers to join the armed forces. An officer of the 1991 batch of the CRPF, she received the Police Medal for Meritorious Service, Antrik Suraksha Padak and Kathin Seva Padak. Her anthology of poems, Resurrection: A Woman Reborn (2016), has been translated into Chinese and was displayed at the Beijing International Book Fair 2016 and 2017. Her book of Hindi poetry, Mera Apna Kshitij, was released recently at the Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi. Her other books, Half Life (2017) and Portraits of Strength and My Life My Horizon, explore themes of women empowerment and women’s lives in conflict areas.
Year: 2019
Nuggehalli Jayasimha
Nuggehalli Jayasimha is the Director of Humane Society International, managing HSI’s programs in India related to farm animal welfare, wildlife, and animals used in research. He is a Member-at-Large of the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI), and is a member of the editorial, legal and farm animal welfare subcommittee of the Board. He served as a member of a Drafting Committee of the AWBI to suggest amendments to the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of 1960. He received a law degree from Bangalore University and is enrolled as an advocate in the Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa.
Year: 2016
Nupur Saraswat
Nupur Saraswat is a theatrical poet and a content consultant from Singapore/India. To break out of the restriction of genres like spoken word and theatre, and in pursuit of revolutionising stage performances, she quit her job and created a new art form called Theatrical Poetry and currently tours the world with her performances. She has performed in cities like Berlin, Colombo, Singapore, Mumbai and Paris, among others. She also hosts workshops on theatrical poetry and writing.
Year: 2020
Nuril Basri
Nuril Basri was born in Indonesia and raised in a staunchly Islamic community. His writing spans tragicomedy and bildungsroman, with themes around loneliness, insecurity, friendship, dysfunctional family, and LGBT. His works have been translated into English and Malay. Published works include Not a Virgin (2017) and Love, Lies, and Indomee (2019). He was awarded a grant by the National Book Committee of Indonesia to complete a residency in the UK in 2017, and recently received a grant from Robert Bosch Stiftung & Literarisches Colloquium Berlin ‘Crossing Borders’ to conduct research in Germany for his next novel. Nuril Basri appears at HLF 2022 with the support of the International Literature Showcase Collaboration Fund. The International Literature Showcase is a partnership between the National Centre for Writing and the British Council.
Year: 2022
Oneyeka Nwelue
Onyeka Nwelue is a filmmaker, publisher, talk-show host, bookseller, author and currently an Academic Visitor at the African Studies Centre, University of Oxford. He has won several awards for both his books and films including the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) Prize for Fiction (2021), Creative Non-Fiction Book of the Year award (2015), and Best Feature Film by a Director at the Newark International Film Festival (2018). He is the founder of La Cave Musik, a record label based in Paris, and co-founded the London-based publishing house Abibiman Publishing. An Angel on the Piano (2020) and The Strangers of Braamfontein (2021) are his recent publications.
Year: 2022
Ornit Shani
Ornit Shani is a scholar of the politics and modern history of India. Her latest book How India Became Democratic: Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise (2018) uncovers the greatest experiment in democratic history: the creation of the electoral roll on the basis of universal adult franchise in India. Her previous book is Communalism, Caste and Hindu Nationalism: The Violence in Gujarat (2007), and she is currently working on a social history of India’s first elections. She is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Asian Studies at the University of Haifa.
Year: 2018
Pankaj Rishi Kumar
Pankaj is a one-man crew producing, directing, shooting, and editing his own films. Since 2012, he has been actively documenting Pondicherry in films such as Two Flags (2019), Janani’s Juliet (India’s official entry to the Oscars), and To Die a Frenchman (in post-production). The films engage with the Tamil French community, its people, and reflect on the historical past. His films have been screened at film festivals all over the world. He is a visiting faculty at Whistling Woods International, and also lectures at FTII and SRFTI.
Year: 2022
Paranjoy Guha Thakurta
Paranjoy Guha Thakurta is an independent journalist, media critic, author and documentary film maker with long experience in investigative journalism as well as media commentary. His most recent book, Gas Wars: Crony Capitalism and the Ambanis (2014), takes a hard look at the nexus between politics and business and its impact on the management of natural resources.
Year: 2014-15
Paresh Naik
Paresh Naik is a writer, and a theatre and film personality. He was Assistant Director for Ketan Mehta’s Bhavni Bhavai (1980), Associate Director for Holi (1984) and Mirch Masala (1986–87). In the late 1980s, he founded Nandi Theatre Group and produced and directed several plays. Between 2001 and 2005, he also wrote many plays. He started a Film Foundation with Kirti Khatri in Bhuj with the idea to produce films based on the local literatures of the different regions of Gujarat. The feature film Dhaad (2018) was the first of them. He also made a Radio Serial produced by the United Nations Development Project.
Year: 2019
Paro Anand
Paro Anand is, as she says, “a fearlessly truthful writer and performance storyteller with a big heart”. She headed the National Centre for Children’s Literature and her books have received recognition both at home and abroad. She currently runs a programme called “Literature in Action” and is working on a screenplay based on her book. Her book, No Guns at my Son’s Funeral, was on the IBBY Honor List and has been translated into German and Spanish. The Little Bird who Held the Sky Up with his Feet was included in 1001 Books to Read Before You Grow Up, an international gold standard of the world’s best children’s literature.
Year : 2016
Paromita Vohra
Paromita Vohra is a filmmaker, writer and dedicated antakshari player whose work explores feminism, love and desire, urban life and popular culture. She is the founder and Creative Director of Agents of Ishq, India’s best-loved website about sex, love and desire. Her documentaries include Unlimited Girls, Q2P, Morality TV Aur Loving, Jehad: Ek Manohar Kahani and Partners in Crime among others. She is the writer of the film Khamosh Pani (Silent Waters), the comic Priya’s Mirror. She wrote the popular column ‘How to Find Indian Love’ in Mumbai Mirror and writes a weekly column “Paro-Normal Activity” in Sunday Midday. Her fiction and non-fiction have been widely published.
Year: 2020
Patruni Chidananda Sastry
Patruni Chidananda Sastry is a classical dancer, intrapreneur and customer-service expert. He started dancing at the age of seven and his unique style, called ‘Expressionism’, is a new way to tell stories and raise awareness in the society. He believes in the concept of ‘Gender Fluidity’ and contributes his dance to many organisations like Mist, Namma Pride and the Humsafar Trust. He’s been a human book at Human Library Hyderabad, a speaker at TEDx and Josh Talks. A constant fight for right to identity made him use art as a medium to create awareness about gender and sexuality.
Year: 2019
Paul Sharrad
Paul Sharrad is Honorary Senior Fellow in English at University of Wollongong, Australia. He also had short teaching stints at National University Singapore and the University of Hawai’i. He is the founder-editor of the CRNLE Reviews Journal and was the editor of New Literatures Review. He has published widely across the postcolonial field. His recent co-edited volumes include Of Indian Origin (2018), writing by Australians of Indian heritage and The Oxford History of the Novel in English, Vol 12 (2017).
Year: 2019
Pedro Jun Cruz Reyes
Pedro Jun Cruz Reyes is an award-winning Filipino writer, painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. He is called “Amang” (literally, father) by many writers and artists because of his untiring support to budding artists. He is currently Senior Advisor of the Center for Creative Writing of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines and a writing fellow of the Institute of Creative Writing of the University of the Philippines, Diliman.
Year: 2017
Perumal Murugan
Perumal Murugan is one of India’s most reputed contemporary writers. He has published ten novels, five collections of short stories, five anthologies of poetry, and ten non-fiction books. His Tamil novels in English translation include Seasons of the Palm (2004), Current Show (2004), One Part Woman (2013), and Pyre (2016). His poetry, short story, and essay collections have been translated into English as Songs of a Coward, The Goat Thief, and Black Coffee in a Coconut Shell. He has received awards from the Tamil Nadu government and Katha Books. Seasons of the Palm was shortlisted for the international Kiriyama Award (2005), and the English translation of Madhorubagan won the Sahitya Akademi Translation Prize (2017).
Year: 2018
Pervin Saket
Pervin Saket, a Pune-based writer and poet, is the winner of the 2021 Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize. She is the author of the novel Urmila (2016) and of a collection of poems A Tinge of Turmeric (2009). Her short fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have been featured in The Indian Quarterly, Paris Lit Up, Singapore Unbound, Usawa Literary Review, Tiferet Journal, Borderless Journal, The Joao-Roque Literary Journal, The Madras Courier, and others. She co-founded the annual Dum Pukht Writers’ Workshop in 2016. She is also the Poetry Editor at The Bombay Literary Magazine and Managing Editor at The Quarantine Train, a Writing Collective.
Year: 2022
Phillipa McGuinness
Phillipa McGuinness is the Executive Publisher at NewSouth Publishing. An experienced non-fiction publisher and editor, he worked previously at Cambridge University Press and has been the industry representative on the Humanities and Creative Arts panel of the Australian Research Council.
Year: 2019
Poosapati Parmeshwar Raju
Poosapati Parameshwar Raju, Design Director, is a Double MFA in Typography and Visualisation from Dr. Baba Saheb Ambedkar Marathwada University. He is a legendary pictorial calligrapher in depicting iconography, symbolism, epic narratives in his stylized work. He is a master of branding and logo designing and an exponent of traditional grid in modern design. He is the President of Shobha Memorial Educational Trust and Crea International Centre for Arts and Crafts.
Year: 2021
Pradnya Daya Pawar
Pradnya Daya Pawar is a leading Marathi Dalit-feminist poet. Her publications include five volumes of poetry, a play, an anthology of short stories, and a collection of columns. She has also co-edited a selection of Namdeo Dhasal’s poetry. Her poetry has been translated into several Indian and foreign languages including Urdu, Kannada, Gujarati, Hindi, Pahadi, Malayalam, Tamil, English, and Russian. She is the recipient of the Maharashtra Foundation Award (2009), Birsa Munda Sanman Puraskar (2009), Bodhivardhan Puraskar (2010) among others. In 2009, she attended the World Book Fair at Moscow as a member of the NBT (National Book Trust) authors’ delegation.
Year: 2016
Pranay Lal
Pranay Lal is a biochemist and an artist who works in public health and environment. He has extensive publications in the areas of public health, global trade, ecology and mysterious fevers. He has been a caricaturist for newspapers, an animator for an advertising agency and an environmental campaigner. His award-winning first book, Indica: A Deep Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent (2016), was named among the top 10 memorable books of the year by Amazon.
Year: 2019
Pranesh Prasad
Pranesh Prasad is a Canberra-based novelist, legal scholar and columnist for The Huffington Post. His new novel The Hidden Imam which explores gender, religious and caste inequalities will be released in late 2017. His published work include the novels The Ultimate Laugh (2010) and A Half-Baked Life (2013) which deal with issues such as identity, terrorism, freedom of speech and genocide. He has been a speaker at numerous literary festivals, seminars and conferences in India and elsewhere. He also develops and teaches courses in creative writing and the law, and was a panel member at the 2016 IIigan National Writers’ Workshop in the Philippines.
Year: 2017
Prashant Rao
Prashant Rao learnt hand shadowgraphy – the art of making shadows with one’s hands – by watching his father, Prasanna Rao, perform to small and large audiences of all ages around the world. Prasanna Rao performed for over six decades and was known as the ‘Prince of Shadows’. He would sing songs of Tagore to create a series of playful sketches with the shadow shows. In this session, Prashant will recreate his father’s show and follow it up by talking about how his father started creating hand shadows and demonstrate how some of the figures can be made easily.
Year: 2022
Prathibha Nandakumar
Prathibha Nandakumar is a leading Kannada poet, journalist, film maker, columnist, and translator. Her publications include 14 collections of poems, two collections of short stories, three biographies, and one autobiography. She has also published poems in English and has translated from English and Dogri. She has received several awards including the Karnataka Sahitya Academy Book Award (2014), Mahadevi Verma Kavya Samman (2003), and Hoogar Memorial Award for Journalism (2006). She was a Sahitya Akademi delegate to China (2009), a member of the writers’ delegation to Sweden (1997), and was invited to present her work at Asian Writers’ Conference, Helisinki, Finland (1998)
Year: 2018
Priya Sarukkai Chabria
Priya Sarukkai Chabria is an award winning translator, writer, and poet nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize. Her books include speculative fiction, cross-genre non-fiction, a novel, two poetry collections, and translations of Tamil mystic Andal: The Autobiography of a Goddess (2016; in collaboration with Ravi Shankar). Awarded for Outstanding Contribution to Literature by the Indian Government, her work has been widely translated and anthologized, including in Another English: Anglophone Poems from Around the World (2014), The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry (2012), Eating God: A Book of Bhakti Poetry (2014), Drunken Boat, The Literary Review (USA), South Asian Review, PEN International, and The British Journal of Literary Translation.
Year: 2018
Priyajit Debsarkar
Priyajit Debsarkar is an independent political analyst with special interest in the geo-political history of Bangladesh. The Last Raja of West Pakistan is his first publication based on a penetrating and insightful analysis of the relationships between leading political figures in West and East Pakistan in the three decades leading up to Bangladesh’s war of independence and her emergence as a sovereign nation. He also works as a clinical pharmacy application software analyst at a reputed Central London Hospital. He holds an MSc in pharmacy from the University of London and a BPharm degree from India.
Year: 2016
Pushpesh Kumar
Pushpesh Kumar teaches sociology at the University of Hyderabad. He edited Sexuality, Abjection and Queer Existence in Contemporary India (Routledge, 2022) and co-edited a forthcoming special volume on Queer and Trans Community Building in post-NALSA and post-377 India for the Community Development Journal (OUP). He was a British Academy Visiting Fellow at the Department of Anthropology, LSE, London in 2009. As a pro-feminist thinker, he has contributed to a special volume on Men and Feminism in India (Economic and Political Weekly, 2015). He is co-editing Sociology of Gender: Contemporary Perspectives. He was a recipient of M.N. Sreenivas Memorial Prize for young sociologists in 2007.
Year: 2019
R. Raj Rao
R. Raj Rao is the author of three novels, four collections of poetry, a collection of short stories, a collection of plays, a biography of the poet Nissim Ezekiel, and writing on queer theory, including Whistling in the Dark: Twenty One Queer Interviews (2009). His iconic novel, The Boyfriend (2003), long-listed for the Crossword Book award, and translated into Italian and French, is soon to be made into an international film. His recent publications include the novel, Lady Lolita’s Lover (2015) and the co-translation of transgender activist Laxmi Narayan Tripathi’s autobiography, Me Hijra, Me Laxmi (2015). He is Professor of English at S P Pune University.
Year: 2016
Rachel Bari
Rachel Bari is a Professor of English and Director of Prasaranga, the publication division of Kuvempu University, Karnataka. She is an author, editor, and creative writer and finds her niche in poetry and short stories which have been widely published. She loves to travel in search of good food and hopes to write about it soon. Her latest publication is Body, Mind and Other Poems (2019). Her poems have been published in international anthologies like Paradise on Earth and For You My Love.
Year: 2022
Rafeef Ziadah
Rafeef Ziadah is a Palestinian spoken word artist, academic and human rights activist based in London, UK. Her performance of poems like “We Teach Life, Sir” and “Shades of Anger” went viral within days of their release. Her live readings offer a moving blend of poetry and music. Her latest album Three Generations, a selection of spoken word poems with original music compositions, is a deeply moving, powerful, personal remembrance of Palestine, Al-Nakba, exile, defiance, and survival. It is also a beautiful testament to the human spirit, to ‘love and joy against skies of steel’. She regularly conducts spoken word workshops to empower expression through writing and performance. Rafeef Ziadah appears at HLF 2022 with the support of the International Literature Showcase Collaboration Fund. The International Literature Showcase is a partnership between the National Centre for Writing and the British Council.
Year: 2022
Raghavendra Satish Peri
Raghavendra Satish Peri is a ‘digital accessibility and digital marketing’ consultant, trainer, speaker and entrepreneur. He is associated with Deque Software where he engages with various stakeholders in their accessibility audits and consulting needs for both web and mobile platforms. He was invited to be a speaker at various national and international events like Click Asia Summit, Search Summit, Search Marketing Summit, bar camps, The Goa Project, TEDX Youth Chennai etc. He helps various entrepreneurs and authors in building their digital marketing strategy.
Year: 2014-15
Raghu Rai
Raghu Rai, the only living photographer to receive the Académie Des Beaux Art Photography Award-William Klein (2019), was also the first photographer to receive Padma Shri (1972). His photo-essays have appeared in TIME, Life, GEO, The New York Times, The Sunday Times, Newsweek and The New Yorker. He has also produced more than fifty books including Raghu Rai’s Delhi (2009), Bombay/Mumbai: Where Dreams Don’t Die (2010), Calcutta (2008), Khajuraho (2016), Taj Mahal (1986), The Sikhs (2001), and Tibet in Exile (1990). He received the ‘Photographer of the Year’ award (USA, 1992), the Officier des Arts et des Letters (France, 2009), and Lifetime Achievement Award (India, 2016).
Year: 2022
Ragini Siruguri
Ragini Siruguri is a visual communication designer. She is passionate about design culture and education, street photography, and music. She spends her time experimenting with the smell of colours, the taste of words and thinking between the lines. Over the last couple of years, she has designed books for Tara Books, a Chennai-based independent publishing collective of artists, writers and designers. These books include Hic!, Where has the Tiger Gone? and Frida Folk.
Year: 2019
Rahul Singh
Rahul Singh has covered defence and military affairs at the Hindustan Times for over a decade in a career spanning 18 years. Apart from extensive and deep reporting from the world of the Indian military, including several newsbreaks that have set the national news agenda over the years, he has reported from conflict zones including Kashmir, the North-east and war-torn Congo. He is the co-author (with Shiv Aroor) of India’s Most Fearless: True Stories of Modern Military Heroes (2017).
Year: 2018
Raj Malik
Raj Malik currently heads the Production Arm of the Rhiti Group, a leading Sports Management Company. He started his career with Columbia TriStar (Sony Pictures), and while at Warner Bros (2000–07), he represented franchise films like The Matrix trilogy, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the Harry Potter series. At Eros International, he represented films like Om Shanti Om (2007) and Partner (2007). At the Walt Disney Company, he launched Pirates of the Caribbean (2011) and Toy Story 3 (2010). He has produced Laal Rang (2016), Mirzya (2016), and Kaalakaandi (2018), released Bahubali: The Conclusion (2017) and Sachin: A Billion Dollar Dreams (2017) in overseas markets while working for the Mahindra Group.
Year: 2019
Rajdeep Sardesai
Rajdeep Sardesai is senior journalist, author, and TV news presenter. His 2014: The Election That Changed India (2014) has been translated into half a dozen languages and his Democracy’s XI: The Great Indian Cricket Story (2017) has been a bestseller. He is the only Indian to win the Asian Television Award for talk show and news presentation, and has won more than 50 awards in his long career in print and television journalism, including the International Broadcasters Award, the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award (2007), and Padma Shri (2008). A graduate of St Xaviers College, he has completed his Masters and LLB from Oxford University and played first class cricket at Oxford.
Year: 2018
Rajendra Chenni
Rajendra Chenni, Professor of English at Kuvempu University, Shimoga, Karnataka, writes in Kannada and English. He has authored 12 books in Kannada and four in English. He has received several honours including the Karnataka State Sahitya Akademi Life time Achievement Award (2012), Karnataka State Sahitya Akademi Award (1987 & 2003), GSS Award (2009), and BA Sridhara Award (2012), and Vardamana Udayonmukha Award (1992). He has actively participated in several people’s movements in Karnataka—to protect the Baba Budan Giri shrine, against mining at Kudremukha, and for saving the Tunga River. Presently, he is convenor of Dakshinayana Karnataka, a collective of writers and artists against fascism.
Year: 2018
Rajendra Dengle
Rajendra Dengle has been teaching at the Centre of German Studies, JNU since 1979. While his doctoral dissertation was on the work of Ödön von Horváth (1901–1938), his research interests are in the areas of philosophy of language and the work of Fritz Mauthner, Martin Buber and, more recently, the philosophy of communication of Vilèm Flusser. He has translated literary texts from Marathi and Hindi into German (D.B. Mokashi, Vishram Bedekar, Uday Prakash) and vice versa (Herta Müller). He has been Secretary and Editor of the Yearbook of the Goethe Society of India.
Year: 2014-15
Ramu Ramanathan
Ramu Ramanathan is a Mumbai-based playwright. His book, 3 Sakina Manzil and Other Plays, is a collection of eight Indian plays in English. Plays not included in the collection are: “Cotton 56, Polyester 84”; “Comrade Kumbhakarna”; and “Postcards from Bardoli”.
Year: 2016
Rana Pratap Sengar
Rana Pratap Sengar is a trained theatre and mime artist. He was part of IPTA, Habib Tanvir theatre, Dastangoi with Mehmood Farooqui, and Avneesh Mishra; and trained with international trainers like Tim Sapal, and Simon Mckburney of England. He has acted in several commercials; films such as Khoya Khoya Chand, Kshitij, Peepli Live, Rowdy Rathore, and Krissh 3; and plays like Charan Das Chor, Agra Bazar, Lahore, and Mid Summer Night’s Dream.
Year: 2014-15
Ranjani Sivakumar
Ranjani Sivakumar is a classical musician whose music captures the audience's attention with its aesthetics, quality of voice, finely calibrated style, and a truthful expression. She has sung soulful melodies for films like Pelli Choopulu, Mental Madilo, Needi Naadi Okke Katha and Thippara Meesam. She engages with children musically by being a part of an outdoor camp called “Cast Away.” She also teaches at the Jiddu Krishnamurti school, “Shibumi, and Amar Chitra Katha. A former techie from TCS, she also has had the opportunity to combine her software skills and music to work with Apple Music.
Year: 2022
Rasana Atreya
Rasana Atreya is the author of the Amazon bestseller, Tell A Thousand Lies, which was also shortlisted for the 2012 Tibor Jones South Asia Award. UK’s Glam magazine calls this novel one of their ‘five favourite tales from India’. Her other works are The Temple is Not My Father and 28 Years a Bachelor. Rasana declined a traditional publishing contract in order to self-publish. She has been interviewed on self-publishing by many major publications in India. She was invited to New Delhi for Amazon India‘s launch in February 2014. She has been a panelist at the Hyderabad and Jaipur Literary Festivals.
Year: 2014-15
Rashmi Bansal
Rashmi Bansal is a writer, entrepreneur and youth expert. Her five books on entrepreneurship – Stay Hungry Stay Foolish, Connect the Dots, I Have a Dream, Follow Every Rainbow and Poor Little Rich Slum have sold over 7,50,000 copies and been translated into ten languages. Rashmi is a motivational speaker and mentor to students and young entrepreneurs. She is an economics graduate of Sophia College, Mumbai, and an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad.
Year: 2014-15
Rashmi Saksena
Rashmi Saksena is the author of She Goes to War: Women Militants of India (2018). She is veteran journalist and a pioneer amongst women newspersons in India. She joined the Hindustan Times (Delhi) in 1971, and from being the first crime reporter, she moved on to cover politics, foreign affairs and gender issues. She has covered surrender of dacoits, elections, insurgencies and international events. She has reported for the Telegraph from Sri Lanka and worked in the Delhi bureau of Sunday, Sunday Mail and The Week. Currently, she is the Consulting Editor of The Hitavada.
Year: 2019
Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar is author/editor of a dozen books, including most recently The Golden Shovel: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks and Autobiography of a Goddess, translations of the 9th century Tamil poet/saint, Andal. He founded the online journal of arts Drunken Boat, has won a Pushcart Prize and a RISCA artist grant, appeared on Radio NPR, the BBC and PBS, in The New York Times, The Paris Review, Caravan, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, and been interviewed and translated into over 10 languages. He currently holds a research fellowship from the University of Sydney.
Year: 2018
Rebekah David
Rebekah David is a zero-waste enthusiast with a Bachelor’s degree in Botany, Chemistry, and Zoology. She has spent time doing wildlife conservation research in and out of the field, and has diverse experience coordinating projects with entrepreneurs, designers and wildlife experts. She currently works at Bare Necessities as an Executive Assistant where her role includes coordinating between teams, managing operations and writing reports.
Year: 2022
Remo Fernandes
Remo Fernandes was born and grew up in Goa, studied architecture in Bombay, busked and hitch-hiked his way through Europe and North Africa, and returned to Goa in his mid-twenties, to pursue only the things he loved: music, art, and writing. His success with his first home-produced albums led to widespread fame and stardom. His chartbusting film songs and his albums were landmark hits for a generation of listeners. His innovative musical journey continues to this day: he recently composed and recorded a full-fledged opera on Mother Teresa. Remo (2021) is the autobiography of this music legend.
Year: 2022
Reshma K. Barshikar
Reshma K. Barshikar is an author and features writer. She is an erstwhile Investment Banker who, as she says, ‘fell down a rabbit hole and discovered a world outside a fluorescent cubicle’. She contributes to National Geographic Traveller, Harper’s Bazaar, The Sunday Guardian, Mint Lounge and The Hindu. Her debut novel, Fade Into Red (2014), featured in Amazon Top 10 Bestsellers while her latest young adult novel, The Hidden Children (2018), is the only book by an Indian author to figure in the Amazon top 50 Children’s Bestsellers list. Her creative writing workshops are well-regarded by participants.
Year: 2019
Riasath Ali Asrar
Riasath Ali Asrar is an Urdu poet who is pursuing his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. Growing up in an environment of literarians and scholars, he developed an avid interest in Urdu literature. He conducts workshops on Urdu literature and has been a
part of different theological, scientific, social, and literary
activities and organizations in Hyderabad, Jeddah, and other cities. He is currently working on his book on Urdu prosody.
Speaker @ HLF 2023, 2022
Rita Chowdhury
Rita Chowdhury is an award-winning Assamese poet and writer. A former associate professor at Cotton University, she is currently the director of the National Book Trust, India. She is an important voice in contemporary Assamese literature and has written 15 novels that portray a vivid picture of her strife-torn state. Chinatown Days (2018) is a searing account of the Chinese Indians, a community condemned by intolerance to obscurity and untold sorrow.
Year: 2019
Ritu Menon
Ritu Menon is a publisher and the author of, among others, the ground-breaking Borders & Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition (1998), the critically acclaimed Out of Line: A Literary and Political Biography of Nayantara Sahgal (2014); and the quirky Loitering With Intent: Diary of a Happy Traveller (2016). Zohra! A Biography in Four Acts (2021) is her latest publication.
Year: 2022
Rizio Yohannan
Rizio Yohannan is a writer, educationist, translator and governance thinker whose broad professional experience spans two decades of work in journalism, book publishing, academics and institution-building. She is currently Chief Executive Officer at The Marg Foundation, Mumbai, and Founder and Patron of LILA Foundation for Translocal Initiatives. She was earlier affiliated to the Malayala Manorama Group, Macmillan India, Navneet Publications and Katha, and the Universities of Madras, Mumbai and Kerala, and Shiv Nadar University. She has published collections of poetry, novels, critical and edited volumes, research papers and translations with reputed publishers, journals and magazines across the world.
Year: 2019
Robyn Andrews
Robyn Andrews wrote Christmas in Calcutta: Anglo-Indian Stories and Essays (2014), based on her lengthy research relationship with the Anglo-Indian community in Kolkata. As a social anthropologist she writes for both academic and general audiences in the form of chapters in books, articles, magazines. She is the recipient of a number of research grants – from her university (Massey University, New Zealand) as well as from the New Zealand India Research Institute, and from the Asia–New Zealand Foundation. She is a regular visitor to India, which she likes to think of as her second homeland.
Year: 2014-15
Rochelle Potkar
Rochelle Potkar is the author of The Arithmetic of Breasts and Other Stories, Four Degrees of Separation and Paper Asylum, and is alumna of Iowa’s International Writing Program and Charles Wallace Writer’s fellowship, Stirling. Her ‘The Leaves of the Deodar’ won the Open Road Review story contest (2016), and ‘Chit Mahal’ appeared in The Best of Asian Short Stories. ‘Ground up’ won third place at the David Burland Poetry Prize (2017) and ‘Cellular: P.O.W.’ was shortlisted for the Hungry Hill Competition (2017). She is the co-editor of Goa: A Garland of Poems and is the co-founder of the ‘Arcs-of-a-Circle’ artists’ residency supported by the US Consulate General, Mumbai.
Year: 2019, 2018
Rodolfo Garcia Vasquez
Rodolfo García Vázquez is a theatre and film director, writer, and pedagogue. He founded Os Satyros Theatre Company in 1989, directed over 100 productions, performing in 30 countries, and received many awards, both in Brazil and abroad. He has also been researching cyborg theatre since 2009. He is one of the founders of the largest drama school in Latin America, SP Escola de Teatro. A visiting professor in many different institutions in Europe and the Americas, he has directed over 18 digital plays since the beginning of the pandemic with artists from all continents.
Year: 2022
Rohini Chintha
Rohini Chintha is passionate about everything Life and Science. She experiments with methods to communicate science both in the classroom and on various storytelling platforms like popular children’s magazines, the Hyderabad Literary Festival (HLF), and the British Council, Hyderabad. She dons many hats—science teacher, science communicator, children’s writer, storyteller, and YouTuber.
Year: 2021
Rong Rong
Rong Rong is a poet. She now serves as the chief editor of the magazine Literary Port, vice president of the Zhejiang Provincial Writers Association and president of the Ningbo Principal Writers Association. Her representative works are poem selections Relatives Resemble Me, Seeing, Bits and Pieces, Wounded by Time, Face the Fire across the River, etc. She has won the fourth Lu Xun Literature Prize, and the Annual Excellent Works Awards of People’s Literature, Poetry Periodical and Beijing Literature.
Year: 2019
Rosemarie Somaiah
Rosemarie Somaiah, storyteller, author and educator, runs “Asian Storytelling Network”, Singapore’s first professional storytelling company. Published locally and internationally, Rosemarie writes for all ages. Her books for children include Indian Children’s Favourite Stories and The Never Mind Girl and Other Stories. She has led workshops for students at all levels, teachers, community organisations, corporations and government bodies. Rosemarie has led The Storytellers’ Circle of the Society for Reading and Literacy for over ten years, is a Founder-Member of the Storytelling Association (Singapore) and a member of the Singapore Drama Educators Association.
Year: 2016
Ruchi Ranjan
Ruchi Ranjan lives in Hyderabad, the city of Nizams. Born and brought up in New Delhi, she holds a doctorate in psychology from the University of Delhi and is a trained counsellor as well. She has taught psychology at the university level and has to her credit several published research papers. Her book of drabbles (Our World: A Symphony of Drabbles by Three Generations) is a national bestseller and has received praise from renowned authors like Ruskin Bond and Shashi Tharoor. It has been translated into Hindi as Hamari Duniya Drabbles Ki Teen Peedhiyon Dwara.
Speaker @ HLF 2023, 2021
Rui Cóias
Rui Cóias is a poet and essayist from Portugal. He has published The Role of the Geographer, The World’s Order. The French‒Portuguese bilingual edition of his third book, La Nature de La Vie (The Nature of Life), was presented at the “Transpoesie Festival 2014” in Brussels. More recently, his book L‘Ordre du Monde (The World`s Order), was published in a French‒Portuguese bilingual edition. He has participated in several international poetry festivals, like Struga Poetry Evenings in Macedonia and at Voix Vives de la Mediterranée, in Sète (France). He is a featured poet in the web communities, “Poetry International Web” (Holland) and “Poems from the Portuguese” (Portugal).
Year: 2016
Ruth Vanita
Ruth Vanita taught at Delhi University and at the University of Montana. She co-founded Manushi, India’s first nationwide feminist magazine. Her many books include Sappho and the Virgin Mary: Same-Sex Love and the English Literary Imagination (1996); Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India (2005); Gender, Sex and the City: Urdu Rekhti Poetry (2012); and Dancing with the Nation: Courtesans in Bombay Cinema (2017). She co-edited Same-Sex Love in India (2000). She recently published a translation of Mahadevi Varma’s My Family, and a novel Memory of Light (2020). The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics: Debates on Gender, Varna and Species and A Hidden Player, her second book of poems, will appear in 2022.
Year: 2022
Sadanand Menon
Sadanand Menon is an arts editor, arts curator, photographer, teacher of cultural journalism, and writer on politics, ecology and the arts. Currently Adjunct Faculty at the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai, and the IIT, Madras, he has taught at several institutions in India and abroad. He is member, Advisory Boards of National Museum, Delhi; NGMA, Bengaluru; Intangible Cultural Heritage, Delhi; Governing Council, IIAS, Shimla; and Managing Trustee, SPACES Arts Foundation, Chennai. He has curated several exhibitions including a retrospective of Dashrath Patel for the NGMA, in New Delhi and Mumbai. A long-time collaborator with Chandralekha, he is currently putting together her archive in Chennai.
Year: 2016
Sadhana Ramchander
Sadhana Ramchander edits and designs books at her consultancy – BluePencil Infodesign. She has been working in the field of nature education, teaching children at Vidyaranya High School, and leading nature walks in and around Hyderabad, along with Kobita Dass Kolli. In 2023, she taught a credit course in ‘Nature Appreciation’ at NALSAR, Hyderabad. She has been actively involved in the Campaign to Save the Banyans of Chevella since 2019. She has written a book titled, Just look up…to see the magic in the trees around you (2014), to share the simple joy she derives from trees.
Sagarika Ghose
Sagarika Ghose has been a journalist and media personality for over 25 years. She started her career in the Times of India, and is currently its Consulting Editor. She was also part of the start up team of Outlook, worked for The Indian Express, and was deputy editor and prime time news anchor on the CNNIBN news network. Her publications include two novels, The Gin Drinkers (1999) and Blind Faith (2005), and the latest Indira: India’s Most Powerful Prime Minister (2017). She is a Rhodes Scholar and completed her post graduate studies in Modern History from Oxford University, UK.
Year: 2018
Saima Afreen
Saima Afreen is a poet and a journalist with The New Indian Express. Her poems have appeared in several journals including Indian Literature, The McNeese Review, The Nassau Review, The Oklahoma Review, Staghill Literary Journal, The Notre Dame Review, Honest Ulsterman and Existere. She has participated in the Sahitya Akademi Poets’ Meet, Goa Arts and Literary Festival, TEDx VNR-VJIET, Prakriti Poetry Festival, Hyderabad Literary Festival, Betty June Silconas Poetry Festival (New Jersey) and Helsinki Poetry Jam (Finland), among others. She was awarded the Villa Sarkia Writers Residency (Finland) for autumn 2017, where she completed the manuscript of her debut poetry book, Sin of Semantics.
Year: 2019, 2018
Salil Tripathi
Salil Tripathi is a contributing editor at Mint and Caravan. He has been a foreign correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review. His books include Offence: The Hindu Case (2009), The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and its Unquiet Legacy (2014), and Detours: Songs of the Open Road (2015). His book about Gujaratis is forthcoming. His awards include the Red Ink Award for human rights journalism; third prize at the Bastiat Awards for Journalism about free societies (2011), and the Citibank Pan Asia Journalism Award for economic journalism in Hong Kong (1994). He chairs PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee.
Year: 2019
Samer Soni
Samir Soni is an award-winning film, television, and theatre actor. He graduated in business economics from the University of California, Los Angeles. He worked for Merrill Lynch as a financial analyst and after two years on Wall Street, he moved back to India to pursue his true passion, acting. After winning recognition and several awards as an actor, he turned writer/director in 2018 with his critically acclaimed film My Birthday Song, a psychological thriller. He has been vocal about the importance of mental health and made a debut as an author with My Experiments with Silence: The Diary of an Introvert (2021).
Year: 2022
Samrat Choudhury
Samrat Choudhury is a journalist and author. He currently edits the Mumbai edition of The Asian Age. He has earlier edited daily broadsheet newspapers in Delhi, Bengaluru and Chandigarh, and his journalistic writings have appeared in most major newspapers and news magazines in India. He is co-editor (with Preeti Gill) of Insider/Outsider: Belonging and Unbelonging in North-East India (2018), and The Urban Jungle (2011) was his first novel. He grew up in Shillong during the troubled 1980s, and has remained engaged with the Northeast’s issues as a journalist throughout his professional life.
Year: 2019
Sandeep Raina
Sandeep Raina was born and raised in Kashmir, where he graduated as an engineer. He has spent much of his life in Delhi, Istanbul, and London. He now lives in Surrey, England. His short stories have been published in The Times of India, The Hindu, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Wire, and Khaleej Times. A Bit of Everything (2020) is his first novel.
Year: 2022
Sandhya Menon
Sandhya Menon is a journalist and writer. Having worked across national newspapers, she now focuses on writing about women and the internet, mental health, and parenting. A single mother of two kids, she currently works on raising awareness of safe workplaces and sexual harassment policies. Her other interests are cars, photography, crochet and water colouring.
Year: 2019
Sanjay Jha
Sanjay Jha is a former National Spokesperson of the Indian National Congress party, and ex-President of All India Professionals Congress. He is Executive Director, Dale Carnegie. He is also a columnist and author. The Great Unravelling: India After 2014 (2020) is his third book.
Year: 2021
Sanjeev Siva
Sanjeev Siva is a wildlife photographer who clicks terrestrial mammals and is interested predominantly in big cat photography and conservation. He worked in the field of finance, consulting and information technology for more than a decade before embarking into the world of wildlife photography. A proponent of harmonious cohabitation of both humans and wild animals, he interacts with people about conservation, teaches them and learns from them. One of his goals is to educate the rural populace and help the urban audience inculcate an interest in wildlife. He believes that photography, along with powerful storytelling, will help him achieve his goal.
Year: 2019
Santasree Chaudhuri
Santasree Chaudhuri is an entrepreneur, High Buddhist practitioner, writer and artist. She contributes actively to women’s rights movements as an activist and legal consultant. Her debut poetry film, If They All Met at Pushkin Café (2018), got wide recognition and many accolades. Her poem, ‘Nameless Girls Hazir Ho’, is included in Muffled Moans: Unleashed (an anthology on abuse/gender violence). Her poems deal with societal issues with hopes for a better world.
Year: 2019
Santosh Mohan Veeranki
Santosh Mohan Veeranki is an Indian-born, British Aerospace engineer-turned-storyteller. He is the founder of Tale Tellers Troupe India (India’s second-largest storytelling club) and also the founder of Cinephiles Film Club (a world cinema screening club, which aims to promote film appreciation amongst Telugu cinephiles). Currently, he is working on his directorial feature film with which he aims to set a new benchmark in the coming-of-age genre of Telugu films.
Year: 2020
Sarada Chiruvolu
Sarada Chiruvolu is the author of Home at Last: A Journey toward Higher Consciousness (2015). She left India when she was 12 and made the US her permanent residence. After completing her education, she worked for many years with various pharmaceutical companies. Her interest in Reiki healing led her to meditation, and she left her career to pursue a spiritual calling. Her journey toward attaining realisation of Self or Enlightenment took her many years of deep meditation. Her mission now is to tell the extraordinary story of her journey by relaying authentic information and detailed descriptions of the evolutionary process of consciousness that she experienced.
Year: 2019
Saravana Kumar
Saravana Kumar is a Chennai-based wildlife and environment film maker. The fascinating rocks of Hyderabad grew on him during the shoot, almost becoming as alive as the usual subjects of his documentaries.
Year: 2020
Satyanarayana Y.
Satyanarayana Y. is a student of Urdu poetry. He taught English at Anwarul Uloom College for 33 years and has a PhD on American Comedy of the 1920s and 30s. He was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1991–92).
Year: 2020
Seema Mustafa
Seema Mustafa has been a journalist since the age of 19. She has worked in almost all major Indian newspapers and written for many others—The Pioneer, The Patriot, The Indian Express, The Telegraph, Economic Times, Asian Age. She has covered conflict in Assam, Punjab and Kashmir; communal violence in different states of India; and was the first Indian journalist to cover the first war in Beirut. She has also worked as the National Affairs Editor for the News X television channel. She is presently the Founder-Editor of The Citizen, an online initiative. Her memoir is titled Azadi’s Daughter: Being a Secular Muslim in India (2017).
Year: 2018
Seetha Anand Vaidyam
Seetha Anand Vaidyam works as a Teacher Trainer and Remedial Therapist across India, Nepal, and Dubai. Founder of Ananda Foundation for Holisitic and Healthy Learning & Living, she works in health, education, and environment. She has conducted over 700 workshops and talks at national and international forums, and has authored many articles on early childhood education, parenting and learning difficulties in leading newspapers. She is passionate about storytelling and advocates daily storytelling to children below seven years. Her first book Good Food - A Guide to Healthy Cooking and Eating (2018) ran into three editions and has a foreword by Vandana Shiva.
Year: 2021
Semeen Ali
Semeen Ali is the author of four books of poetry: Broken Barriers (2008), Rose & Ashes (2009), Origins (2012), Transitions (2014). Rose & Ashes was nominated for the Young Writers Award at HLF 2012 and received the Jury’s Commendation Award. Her poems have appeared in A Hudson View Poetry Digest, Muse India and The Four Quarterly Magazine, and also in The Dance of the Peacock: An Anthology of English Poetry from India (2013) and Suvarnarekha: An Anthology of Indian Women Poets Writing in English (2014). She has recently edited Dilli: An Anthology of English Poetry by Women Poets from New Delhi (2014).
Year: 2014-15
Shabana Azmi
Shabana Azmi is an internationally celebrated actor and social activist. Since her entry into films with Shyam Benegal’s classic, Ankur (1974), she has won five National and five International Awards for Best Actress. She is a recipient of the Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan Awards and was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1997. The International Gandhi Peace Prize, The Martin Luther King Rosa Parks Chavez award, the International Human Rights Award, The Crystal Award are among the international awards she has received. She heads the Mijwan Welfare Society, an NGO working for the empowerment of the girl child in rural India.
Year: 2019
Shagufta K Iqbal
Shagufta K Iqbal is an award-winning writer, workshop facilitator, and Tedx Speaker. She is the co-founder of Kiota Bristol and the Yoniverse Collective. She is one of Asiana Magazine's favourite British Asian poets, and her poetry collection Jam Is For Girls, Girls Get Jam (2017) has been described as “a social political masterclass.” Her poetry film Borders (2015) has won several awards, and has been screened across international film festivals, including London Short Film Festival, Glasgow Short Film Festival, and Athena Film Festival. She is currently writing her second poetry collection and debut novel.
Year: 2022
Shahid Siddiqui
Shahid Siddiqui published the path-breaking magazines, Waqiat and Nai Duniya, and taught political science at Deshbandhu College. He was founder-member of the Student Federation of India in Delhi University, and joined the Congress Party in 1991, then the Samajwadi Party in 1999. He was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2002.
Year: 2014-15
Shankar Melkote
Shankar Melkote, founder of The Little Theatre, Hyderabad, loves books. He does theatre, feature films, and dramatized readings and has retired after long stints in industry and business organisations.
Year: 2019
Shankar Mothe (and troupe)
Mothe Shankar, the 35-year-old puppeteer is one among the two troupes who are actively involved in keeping the art form of ‘Chekka Bommalata’ alive. He is a sixth-generation performer having learnt the art in the family. However, as keeping the tradition alive does not provide for a sustainable livelihood, he relies on a photo studio and earns his livelihood doing wedding photography.
Year: 2021
Shanta Acharya
Shanta Acharya was born and educated in Cuttack, Odisha, and won a scholarship to Oxford, where she was awarded her doctoral degree. Subsequently, she was appointed a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University. Her eleven books range from poetry, fiction and literary criticism, to finance. Her poems, articles and reviews have appeared in major publications worldwide. Founder of “Poetry in the House”, she has hosted a series of monthly poetry readings at Lauderdale House in London from 1996–2015. She served twice on the board of trustees of the Poetry Society in the UK. Her forthcoming publication is Imagine: New and Selected Poems (2017).
Year: 2017
Shashi Deshpande
Shashi Deshpande is a novelist and short story writer. Her publications include 11 novels, two crime novellas, a number of short story collections, a book of essays and four children’s books. Three of her novels have received awards, including the Sahitya Akademi award in 1990 for That Long Silence. She has done translations from Kannada and Marathi into English and her own work has been translated into various Indian and European languages. Her latest work is a book of memoirs, Listen to Me (2018). She was awarded the Padma Shri in 2009.
Year: 2019
Shashvat Shukla ‘Dev’
Shashvat Shukla ‘Dev’ is the Vice-President of ‘The Writers’ Hub’, Lucknow. Well-known for his mesmerising ‘Nazms’, he has created three songs which are very popular on YouTube. He has shared the stage as a poet with Dr Kumar Vishwas, Dr Rahat Indori, Manoj Muntashir, Munawwar Rana and many others.
Year: 2019
Shi Yifeng
Shivani Gupta is an artist, author, disability rights advocate and accessibility consultant of international acclaim. She is the recipient of several awards, including the National Role Model Award given by the President of India. No Looking Back (2014), an autobiographical account of her life, is highly inspiring for the manner in which she looked adversity in the eye when survival itself was a challenge. Currently a PhD scholar at Maastricht University, she lives by the dictum that there’s ‘no looking back’.
Year: 2019
Shivani Gupta
Shivendra Singh is an engineering graduate, Urdu poet and theatre artist from Lucknow. He started as a poet with short, protest poems for street plays in college. He directed and acted in many college plays and through this found his first love, Urdu poetry. His ghazals have been published on various online platforms. He has performed with many renowned Urdu poets like Abhishek Shukla, Manish Shukla, Shahid Kamal, Bharat Bhushan Pant, etc. He is co-founder/secretary of ‘Dhaam Cultural Society’, a non-profit organisation working for the promotion of performing arts.
Year: 2019
Shivendra Singh
Shivendra Singh is an engineering graduate, Urdu poet and theatre artist from Lucknow. He started as a poet with short, protest poems for street plays in college. He directed and acted in many college plays and through this found his first love, Urdu poetry. His ghazals have been published on various online platforms. He has performed with many renowned Urdu poets like Abhishek Shukla, Manish Shukla, Shahid Kamal, Bharat Bhushan Pant, etc. He is co-founder/secretary of ‘Dhaam Cultural Society’, a non-profit organisation working for the promotion of performing arts.
Year: 2019
Shravya Kanithi
Shravya Kanithi was diagnosed as visually impaired when she was 21-days-old. Undeterred, she completed her schooling and a bachelor’s degree in commerce. After working for UBER India as Professional Skill Trainer, she is currently pursuing MBA from ISB, Hyderabad. As State Icon for the 2018 Telangana State Elections, she promoted the theme of accessible elections among the differently-abled youth. She received the “Junior Excellence Award 2013”, the “Child Prodigy” award, the ETV-Black-3 singing competition (2013), and was invited by NATA (North American Telugu Association) to their annual convention.
Year: 2020
Shreekumar Varma
Shreekumar Varma is an author, playwright, poet, newspaper columnist and translator, known for the novels Lament of Mohini (2000), Maria's Room (2010), Devil's Garden (2006), The Magic Store of Nu-Cham-Vu (2009) and the historical book Pazhassi Raja: The Royal Rebel (1997). He is a recipient of the RK Narayan Award (2015), the Charles Wallace Fellowship (2004), and was Writer-in-Residence at Stirling University, Scotland. His plays include The Dark Lord (1986), Bow of Rama (1993), Platform (2005), Midnight Hotel (2009), Five (2010) and Cast Party (2012).
Year: 2017
Shruti Mahajan
Shruti Mahajan is a visual artist whose most recent exhibition was with Gallery Shrine Empire, New Delhi at the India Art Fair 2020. As part of her ongoing work on memory identity and visual archives, she was invited as artist in residence by Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florenz, the Max Planck Institut in 2019. She engages with books as objects, as form, as repositories of knowledge and delight, and regularly illustrates book covers.
Year: 2021
Shubhashree
Shubhashree is an illustrator–writer who is currently educating herself on living a low-impact life. Based on her learnings, she seeks to use her art to inspire introspection about the impact of our everyday lives on our planet. As part of the ‘Let’s Talk Trash’ project, she has produced illustrated books for adults and children to get the conversation started about our waste footprint and ways to reduce it. Given that the children of today will inherit a planet that will need to be cleaned up, she conducts interactive workshops for children to engage, educate and get educated on the global garbage crisis.
Year: 2019
Shutapa Paul
Shutapa Paul has been a journalist for over 12 years, having worked across print and electronic media. Currently, she is founder-editor of NewCrop, a video-first, digital media platform for start-ups and entrepreneurs, and founder of a media consultancy, Dharma Media Consultants. A columnist, anchor and panel discussion moderator, she was selected as one of the 15 Indians to lead the Australia India Youth Dialogue in 2017. In 2018, she was recognised as one of the ‘100 Women Faces’ by the Confederation of Women Entrepreneurs.
Year: 2019
Siân Melangell Dafydd
Siân Melangell Dafydd is a fiction writer, poet and translator. Her first novel, Y Trydydd Peth (The Third Thing; 2009), won her the coveted 2009 National Eisteddfod Literature medal. She writes in both Welsh and English and collaborates with artists of other disciplines. She is the co-editor of the literary review, Taliesin and yneuadd.com which nurtures new voices. Her story ‘Hospital Field’ was published in The Best British Short Stories 2014, and her poem, ‘Big Cats’, has been selected for The Best British Poetry 2015. She currently teaches creative writing at the American University of Paris. She is also a yoga teacher.
Year: 2014-15
Siddhartha Mallya
Sidhartha Mallya is an actor and model. In 2016, he was awarded a diploma supplement for a Master of Arts degree in Acting for Screen from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. He has also worked as director of the IPL cricket team Royal Challengers Bangalore, then owned by his father. Besides acting, his main focus has been on the promotion of mental health amongst the youth. If I’m Honest: A Memoir of My Mental Health Journey (2021) is his first foray into writing.
Year: 2022
Sita Reddy
Sita Reddy is a writer, scholar and museum curator based in Hyderabad. She has been Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution and visiting professor at the University of Hyderabad. A social historian of medicine with a doctorate from UPenn, she has written on the visual history of Ayurveda and Yoga and decolonisation of museum collections, and curated exhibitions in established and alternative galleries. Her current project on Indian botanical art grows out of grants from IFA and Wellcome Trust, and one resulting publication has been the guest-edited special issue of Marg: ‘The Weight of a Petal: Ars Botanica’ (December 2018).
Year: 2019
Sitanshu Yashaschandra
Sitanshu Yashaschandra is a much-celebrated Gujarati poet and playwright, critical theorist, translator and academic whose work has received wide critical acclaim in India and abroad. He has presented his work in many countries including Germany, France, Russia, South Korea and the USA. He has received several awards and honours including the Sarasvati Samman (2017), Gujarat Gaurav Award (2014) and Sahitya Akademi Award (1987). He has been the Vice-Chancellor of Saurashtra University, Professor and Chair of Gujarati at M. S. University, Baroda, and a visiting Professor at the Sorbonne University, University of Pennsylvania, the Loyola Marymount University, and Jadavpur University.
Year: 2019
Snehanshu Mukherjee
Snehanshu Mukherjee is one of the select architects to win the National Competition to design the New Wing of the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. A graduate in architecture from the Delhi School of Planning and Architecture (1982), he did his master’s in architecture from MIT, Boston (1988). He is one of the founding partners of TEAM, an organisation formed by exceptionally creative professionals from the fields of architecture, urban design, planning, building, engineering and management. He teaches in many prestigious colleges of architecture across the country and has been on the Academic Council of SPA, New Delhi.
Year: 2014-15
Snigdha Munipally
Snigdha Munipally is a strong voice for mental health awareness and a master of the singing bowl.
Year: 2020
Sofia Ashraf
Sofia Ashraf is an activist, digital content creator, rapper and writer with over 10 years of experience in the fields of advertising and communication. In 2015, Vettiver Collective along with Sofia produced “Kodaikanal Won’t”—a video addressing the mercury poisoning caused by a thermometer factory owned by Unilever. The video garnered over 4 million views and resulted in the company compensating 591 ex-employees. She currently shuttles between Chennai, Mumbai and Hyderabad to perform at shows and to conduct workshops on writing and content creation. She recently performed at the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa.
Year: 2020
Sravanthi Talluri
Sravanthi Talluri pens tales of compassion, empathy and life. Art moves her and curiosity makes her write. A categorical introvert, she yearns to make conversations ‘the thing’. She is the founder of the largest community for and by writers in the city, ‘Write Club Hyderabad’. The mission of this 24-year-old was to build the support group that she wished she had when she started writing. 4 years later, she stands as the leader of an eclectic and successful meet-up group, one that every writer in the city wants to be a part of as they wade through the craft.
Year: 2020
Sridala Swami
Sridala Swami is the author of three collections of poetry, including the Run for the Shadows(2021, reprinted 2022). She has served on the Jury of the Montreal International Poetry Prize (2019) and the Rayaprol Poetry Prize (2023).
Speaker @ HLF 2023, 2022
Sridhar Gowda
Sridhar Gowda, a literary agent at ‘Kadalu Literary and Media Agency’, represents many award-winning Indian language writers in the world market, and international publishers and agencies in the Indian subcontinent market. Kadalu has also published translations in English and Kannada. Sridhar started his career in the book trade in the UK as a bookseller and co-founded an internet bookshop in 1997 and Peak Literary Festival in 2005. In 2014, he has initiated ‘Global Festival of iDeas’, which was launched in Athens (Dec 22), Bengaluru (Dec 28) and will be happening in over twenty countries.
Year: 2014-15
Srilekha Mandalapalli
Srilekha Mandalapalli was born with Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita (a rare congenital disorder characterised by multiple joint contractures) due to which both her limbs are paralysed. She is a commerce graduate and started painting in 2007 under the guidance of SIRI Institute of Painting and became a member of the Indian Mouth and Foot Painting Artists Association (IMFPA) in 2013. Four of her paintings are now featured on the calendars and greeting cards of IMFPA. In 2013, she received the Naveena Mahila Award from TV9 in the “Different Ability” category. She participates actively in organisational events and motivational sessions inspiring people, sharing happiness and spreading colours of joy.
Year: 2017
Srinivas Reddy
Srinivas Reddy is a scholar, translator and musician. He trained in classical South Asian languages and literatures at Brown University and the University of California, Berkeley. His translations from Telugu and Sanskrit include Krishnadevaraya’s Telugu epic Amuktamalyada: The Giver of the Worn Garland and Kalidasa’s play Malavikagnimitram: The Dancer and the King. He is also a concert sitarist and has given numerous recitals around the world. He now lives in Gujarat and teaches at IIT, Gandhinagar.
Year: 2017, 2015
Subashree Krishnaswamy
Subashree Krishnaswamy is an editor, translator and writer. She edited the Indian Review of Books, and at Manas, East-West Books, she was the editor of several award-winning titles—both translations and original writings in English. She translated an anthology of Tamil short stories The Tamil Story: Through the Times, Through the Tides (2016, ed. Dilip Kumar), and an anthology of Tamil poetry Rapids of a Great River (2009, with Lakshmi Holmström and K Srilata). Her other publications include The Babel Guide to South Indian Fiction in Translation (2012) and Short Fiction from South India (2008, with K Srilata). She is an adjunct professor at the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai.
Year: 2017
Sudeep Nagarkar
Sudeep Nagarkar is the author of eight bestselling novels including Few Things Left Unsaid (2011), It Started with a Friend Request (2013), Sorry, You’re Not My Type (2014), You’re Trending in My Dreams (2015), She Swiped Right into My Heart (2016), and All Rights Reserved for You (2016). He is the recipient of Youth Achievers Award and has been featured on the Forbes India longlist of the most influential celebrities for three consecutive years. He also writes for television and has been a speaker at IITs and TEDx. His books have been translated into Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and Telugu.
Year: 2018
Sudha Balagopal
Sudha Balagopal’s fiction straddles continents, melding cultures and blending thoughts, and representing ideas and desires from the east and the west. Her work delves into the everyday lives of ordinary people to reveal larger, universal truths. She is the author of two short-story collections: There are Seven Notes (2011) and Missing and Other Stories (2013). Her debut novel, A New Dawn, was released on November 1, 2016. When she is not writing, she teaches yoga.
Year: 2017
Suniti Namjoshi
Suniti Namjoshi is an internationally acclaimed writer of fables, poetry and fiction. She was known for many years for her writing for adults, the most recent being The Fabulous Feminist and Suki. She began writing for children a couple of decades ago with the popular Aditi Adventures series, followed by Blue and Other Stories that was illustrated by eminent painter Nilima Sheikh. With over 30 titles, she has been published in several countries and appeared in a range of anthologies, in English and in translation. Her work is characterised by lyricism, irony, gentle questioning and an imagination which constantly surprises.
Year: 2014-15
Suresh Jindal
Suresh Jindal has BSEE from UCLA and spent four years as an engineer in the Aerospace/Electronics Industry in California. He has produced films such as Basu Chatterjee’s Rajnigandha, Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj Ke Khilari, Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi and Mani Kaul’s Naukar Ki Kameej. His films have won three National Awards, four Filmfare Awards and eight Oscars. He has written several articles on cinema and Buddhism, and a book, My Adventures with Satyajit Ray: The Making of Shatranj Ke Khilari (2017). He has been honoured with the ‘Chevalier des Ordre des Arts et des Lettres’ by the French government.
Year: 2019
Suresh Kohli
Suresh Kohli is a poet, writer, translator, editor, literary critic and film historian with more than twenty-five published works. He is also a short documentary film-maker, with over a hundred films to his credit. He lives in Delhi.
year: 2014-15
Surjo Sengupta
Surjo Sengupta is pursuing his B. Tech at KIIT University, Bhubaneswar. He started learning Western classical music at the age of five but at twelve he shifted to Indian classical music. During his tutelage under Sri Indradeep Ghosh he performed at prestigious places like Sangeet Research Academy, Birla Academy, Kala Kunj, and Ryan Manch. He has won state and national level awards like Maya Mitra Memorial Competition and Murari Smriti Sangeet Sammilani All India Competition, and has performed in South Korea and Japan. Besides pursuing music, he is setting up his business.
Year: 2018
Tom Alter
Tom Alter is an Indian actor who has worked for noted filmmakers such as Satyajit Ray (Shatranj Ke Khilari) and has portrayed some memorable roles in films like Kranti, Sardar, and television serials like Junoon. He has also acted in the Hollywood movie, One Night with the King, with Peter O’Toole. His stage productions based on the life and work of Maulana Azad and Sahir Ludhianvi have won critical acclaim. He has published The Longest Race (2005), Rerun at Rialto (2001), The Best in the World (2003). He was awarded the Padma Shri by the Indian government in 2008.
Year: 2014-15
Toral Shah
Toral Shah is an educator, children’s author and storyteller. An MBA who has left her corporate job to find her passion in education now heads Ahilya Primary School (A.E.S.) – a school for underprivileged children and is a creative head at St. Domnics Primary School. Discovery through imagination while solving problems; and learning through collaboration by expressing ideas through different forms of art are core principles followed at her school.
She is on a mission to transform A.E.S. from a cliched academic oriented school to a school where children are empowered to be creative thinkers and makers.
Year: 2018
Tsead Bruinja
Tsead Bruinja, a poet from Amsterdam, made his debut in 2000 with the Frisian language collection, De wizers yn it read (The meters in red). His debut in the Dutch language, Dat het zo hoorde (The way it should sound; 2003) was nominated for the Jo Peters Poetry Prize in 2004. Bruinja’s publications include anthologies—Kutgedichten (Twat Poems) and Droom in Blauwe regenjas: nieuwe Friese dichters (Dream in a Blue Raincoat: New Frisian poets)—and poetry collections—Overwoekerd (Overgrown; 2010), and Angel (Hook; 2008). He also performs in the Netherlands and abroad, with musician Jaap van Keulen and the flamenco dancer, Tanja van Susteren.
Year: 2014-15
Ulrike Syha
Ulrike Syha is a playwright and translator based in Hamburg, Germany. She has won a number of awards and stipends, including “Kleistförderpreis für junge Dramatiker" (2002), Hamburger Förderpreis für Literatur (2010 and 2019), “Walter-Serner-Preis” (2015), and the playwright’s award at the Heidelberger Stückemarkt (2018). Her plays, radio dramas and translations are published by Rowohlt Theater Verlag, Germany.
Year: 2022
V. Ramnarayan
V. Ramnarayan is a Hyderabad off-spinner of the 1970s. He is a cricket columnist, author, translator and editor of Sruti, a leading monthly on the performing arts. An adviser to the business house, “The Sanmar Group”, he also teaches as adjunct faculty at the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. His works include the histories of Tamil Nadu cricket and the Madras Cricket Club, a business biography, two books relating to Carnatic music, and Third Man: Recollections from a Life in Cricket (2015), a first-person account of domestic cricket in India. He now lives in Chennai, but still likes to be identified as an honorary Hyderabadi.
Year: 2016
Vaidehi Subhash
Vaidehi Subhash is a trained Bharatanatyam dancer and guru. She undertook her BFA academic training in Bharatanatyam from Shastra University under the guidance of legendary dancer, Guru Sri Padma Subramaniam. She is the founder of Mayuri Dance Academy, a premier school of dance ,where she teaches the aesthetics of Bharatanatyam to students of all age groups. Her innovative way of telling stories in the format of Bharatanatyam is a very different approach towards storytelling.
Year: 2020
Vaishali Bisht
Vaasanthi is a writer, journalist and columnist. She writes in Tamil and English and has published 30 novels, six short story collections, four volumes of journalistic articles and four travelogues. Her work has been translated into Malayalam, Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, English, Norwegian, Czech and Dutch. Two of her novels have been made into films in Malayalam. Her books Cut-outs, Caste and Cine Stars: The World of Tamil Politics (2006), and Amma: Jayalalithaa’s Journey from Movie Star to Political Queen (2016) draw on her keen observation of the political scene in Tamil Nadu as the Editor of the Tamil edition of India Today for nearly ten years.
Year: 2017
Vaishnavi Sai
Vaishnavi Sai is a pharmacy student, writer, poet and theatre artist. She believes that poetry is her true voice, one that helps her react to everything that happens in this world. She won the first place in state and third in nationals in the Verba Maximus slam 2018 hosted by BITS Pilani, Hyderabad. Her work is mainly focused around women and modern-day relationships. She also acted in India’s first interactive short film, Lemonade.
Years: 2020, 2019
Vanamala Viswanatha
Vanamala Viswanatha is currently Visiting Professor, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. She is an award-winning translator and has translated into English the works of major Kannada writers such as U R Ananthamurthy, P Lankesh, Tejaswi, Vaidehi, and Sara Aboobakkar. Her recent publications include the translation of Raghavanka’s medieval epic Harishchandra Kavyam (2017) and (with Shivarama Padikkal) of Indira Bai, the first social novel in Kannada (forthcoming). She has worked as Honorary Director, Centre for Translation, Sahitya Akademi, Bangalore and as a member of the Advisory Committee, National Translation Mission.
Year: 2018
Victor Sugbo
Victor Sugbo taught as Professor of Communication and Literature at the University of the Philippines-Visayas. He was National Fellow for Regional Literature of the UP Institute of Creative Writing (2003), and was awarded the Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas (2016), Taboan Literary Award (2013), El Gouna Writers Residency in Red Sea, Egypt (2011) and the Sangyaw Award of the City of Tacloban (2009). He writes poetry in English and Waray, his mother tongue. He has published two books of poetry, edited five books for the NCCA, and won the first prize in an international poetry competition in 1997.
Year: 2017
Vidya Rao
Vidya Rao is a performer of thumri-dadra and ghazal. A disciple of the legendary singers Vidushi Naina Devi, Vidushi Shanti Hiranand, and Vidushi Girija Devi, her initial training in khayal was under Prof. B.N. Datta and Pandit Mani Prasad. She has performed at national and international forums, lectured at many institutions, and conducted workshops and lecture-demonstrations with school and college students, and also with underprivileged children. Her book, Heart to Heart: Remembering Nainaji (2011), is a memoir of her life with her guru Naina Devi. She is a recipient of several awards including most recently the International Tara Award (2017) for her work towards fostering peace through music.
Year: 2018
Vikram Sridhar
Vikram Sridhar combines various interests—nursing wounded puppies, working with theatre groups—and over 20 years of work in storytelling as a performance storyteller and theatre practitioner. Through folktales, he is trying to rediscover our rich heritage of oral literature and tradition which is getting lost or remains confined to books. He believes in storytelling as a strong medium of conservation: from nature to human relationships. He strongly believes that ‘A story, not an apple, a day keeps the doctor away!’
Year: 2021
Vinay Dharwadker
Vinay Dharwadker teaches Indian languages and literatures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also serves as the director of the Centre for South Asia. He is the author of a book of poems, Sunday at the Lodi Gardens (1994), and an editor of The Oxford Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry (1994), a co-editor of The Collected Poems of A.K. Ramanujan (1995), and the general editor of The Collected Essays of A.K. Ramanujan (1999). He has published translations of modern Hindi, Marathi, Urdu, and Punjabi poetry, as well as essays on literary theory, translation studies and Indian English literature.
Year: 2022
Vivek Reddy
Vivek Reddy worked as a trainer for 13 years, beginning with corporate training and going on to teaching students in government schools under CSR initiatives and training teachers to enhance their pedagogical methodologies. In 2014, he walked from Kanyakumari to Delhi to talk, discuss and collect opinions on the virtue of honesty in nation building. He is now the founder of Coffee in a Chai Cup, a digital media channel which produces original urban content on celebrities, food and books catering to the audiences of the Telugu states.
Year: 2020
Vividha
Vividha, who used to work as a full-time storyteller in a primary school, now independently practices her art working with schools, festivals, publishers, teachers, parents and children for whom she is “Story Didi”. She conducts workshops for corporates and schools on the power and pedagogy of storytelling. She has made a presentation at UNESCO TECH 2018 about ‘Storytelling as Pedagogy to Transform Primary Education’, and is now compiling and researching stories.
Year: 2020
VK Karthika
Karthika, VK is Publisher and Chief Editor at Harper Collins India. She started her career in publishing with Penguin Books India in 1996 and moved to HarperCollins in 2006.
Year: 2014-15
Wendell Rodricks
Wendell Rodricks spent his childhood in Mumbai and started his working life in Muscat. He then moved to Los Angeles and Paris to study fashion design and couture. He returned to India in 1988 and established his own label in 1990, and moved base to Goa in 1993. A pioneer in the world of Indian fashion, he has received international acclaim for his work. While his Moda Goa: History and Style (2012) is on the history of Goan costume, The Green Room (2012) traces the evolution of the Indian fashion industry over twenty-five years. He has been awarded the Padma Shri in 2014.
Year: 2014-15
Will Dawson
Will Dawson is a Melbourne-based producer and arts manager, and is currently the Executive Director of the ‘Emerging Writers’ Festival’. Previously, he has worked for a range of festivals in Australia and internationally, including ‘Melbourne Festival’, ‘Melbourne International Comedy Festival’, ‘Brisbane Festival’ and ‘Assembly Festival’ at the Edinburgh Fringe. He has also managed events for Museums Victoria and Brisbane City Council, and is the co-director of ‘Happenstance’, an interactive community arts festival held along the Merri Creek in Melbourne.
Year: 2019
Yaga Venugopal Reddy
Yaga Venugopal Reddy is an IAS officer who served as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (2003–2008), and is Chairman of the 14th Finance Commission. He is credited with saving the Indian banking system from the sub-prime and liquidity crisis of 2008. He was Executive Director, International Monetary Fund; Chairman, Bank for International Settlements, Asian Consultative Council (ACC); Chairperson of SAARC FINANCE; Secretary (Banking) in the Union Ministry of Finance, and Principal Secretary to the Government of Andhra Pradesh. His publications include India and The Global Financial Crisis: Managing Money and Finance (2009), and its sequel Global Crisis, Recession and Uneven Recovery (2011). In 2010, he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan.
Year: 2017
Yashoda Thakore
Yashoda Thakore is an accomplished dancer of Kuchipudi and Vilasini Natyam. Founder of the Rinda Saranya Dance Academy, she is Adjunct Faculty of Dance at BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad. She has performed in the UK, USA, Greece, Dhaka and Dubai. She is also a qualified teacher of the theory and practice of Yoga and was Guest Faculty at the Study in India Program, University of Hyderabad. She has conducted workshops on Yoga and Dance in Russia in 2012 and 2013. Her publications include a translation into English (with Dr Pappu Venugopala Rao) of the 13th century Sanskrit treatise on dance NṛttaRatnāvali (2013) and Kaivalya: Joy in Yoga and Dance (2014).
Year: 2016
Zafar Anjum
Zafar Anjum is a Singapore-based journalist, writer and filmmaker. He is the author of six fiction and non-fiction titles, including the best-selling The Resurgence of Satyam (2012), Startup Capitals: Discovering the Global Hotspots of Innovation (2014), and Iqbal: The Life of a Poet, Philosopher and Politician (2014). His first collection of short stories, The Singapore Decalogue, had received the Arts Creation Fund grant from Singapore’s National Arts Council. Kafka in Ayodhya and Other Stories is his latest collection of short stories. He is the founder-editor of Kitaab.org.
Year: 2016
Zaka D Cruze
Zaka D Cruze is an engineering student. He writes poetry and occasionally performs his raps. He has performed at India’s largest youth festival, the Under 25 Summit.
Year: 2019
Zoran Anchevski
Zoran Anchevski is a university professor, poet, translator and essayist. He has published eight books of poetry, edited several poetry and short story anthologies in English, and translated major British and American poets and prose writers into Macedonian. His poetry has been translated into twenty languages and has won several awards including the international “Giacomo Leopardi” award (2004) in Italy. He has also published a number of essays, reviews, and a book-length study in literary theory and criticism. He is a member of the Macedonian Writers’ Union, twice secretary of the Macedonian P.E.N., and former president of the Organizing Board of the renowned Struga International Poetry Festival (2002‒2007).
Year: 2016
