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
Akhil Katyal
Akhil Katyal is a writer, translator and scholar. He has published four books of poems: The Last Time I Saw You: Poems (2024), Like Blood on the Bitten Tongue: Delhi Poems (2020), How Many Countries Does the Indus Cross (2018), and Night Charge Extra (2015), and he co-edited The World that Belongs to Us: An Anthology of Queer Poetry from South Asia (2020). He is the Associate Professor of Literature at BITS Law School in Mumbai. Years: 2025, 2021.
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 Sahitya Akademi Award-winning poet, playwright, and translator. She has published poetry volumes View from the Web (1995), Pickling Season (2012), Changing, Unchanging: New and Selected Poems (1995-2023); a collection of plays Mumbai Traps (2022); and co-translated Freedom and Fissures (1998), Seeking the Beloved: The Mystical Verse of Shah Abdul Latif (2005). She has won several awards including the Sahitya Akademi English Translation Prize, The All India Poetry Competition, the BBC World Regional Poetry Prize, and the Charles Wallace Trust Fellowship. She was on the Sahitya Akademi’s English Advisory Board and is the co-founder of the Pondicherry/Auroville Poetry Festival. Years: 2025, 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 Mander
Harsh Mander is a writer, columnist, researcher, Chairperson, Centre for Equity Studies, Delhi, and visiting faculty at IIM Ahmedabad; Vrije University, Amsterdam; Heidelberg University; and FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg. His 25 books include Burning Pyres, Mass Graves and a State That Failed its People: India’s Covid Tragedy (2023), Partitions of the Heart: Unmaking the Idea of India (2018), Looking Away: Inequality, Prejudice and Indifference in New India (2015), Ash in the Belly: India’s Unfinished Battle against Hunger (2012). He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of York, the inaugural Human Rights Award by the FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg University, and was shortlisted for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022. Years: 2025, 2021, 2016.
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