Poets | Art Mantram

Swati Bhise

Swati initially made her mark as a reputed Bharatanatyam Dancer by synthesizing key elements of classical dramaturgy into both traditional and contemporary choreography in the performing arts. In 1977, Swati was the first disciple of Padma Vibhushan Dr. Sonal Mansingh. Since her debut performance at The Center of Indian Classical Dances in New Delhi, she has performed extensively around the world at venues including the National Centre for the Performing Arts (India), Lincoln Center, Asia Society, Symphony Space, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, SPIC MACAY, and the House of Soviet Culture, among others.

Swati Bhise is the Director, Writer & Producer of a period drama film, The Warrior Queen of Jhansi, based on the life of the iconic Rani of Jhansi. The film released in November 2019 in theatres across America, India, and Canada and VOD release in 2020 and further global release in Australia, New Zealand, UK & Middle East in 2020. The film was the first Hollywood action film in history with a female Indian lead and received the Film of Impact Award at the Vancouver International Women in Film Festival and the prestigious Reframe Stamp for gender parity in film. The Warrior Queen of Jhansi is a salute to the iconic Indian Queen, Rani Lakshmibai, whose empowered spirit continues to stay relevant 180 years after her demise. To celebrate this spirit, she awarded 11 incredible women across India & USA with the “Spirit of the Rani” award for their pathbreaking work to bring in social transformation.

Inspired by the film, she also the founder of Making Herstory Project, a bi-partisan advocacy organization aimed at closing the gender gap and promoting the economic empowerment of women. Making Herstory is dedicated to a civic, activist and legislative agenda crafted and driven by women in pursuit of dignity and empowerment for women.

Prior to this, she served as Executive Producer and Indian cultural consultant
on The Man Who Knew Infinity, an Ed Pressman Film starring Dev Patel and
Jeremy Irons. The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and went on to
screen at The White House to critical acclaim and open festivals in Zurich, India,
Dubai, and Singapore, among others. She has served on numerous panels including the five-member grand jury at the 9th annual Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards (META).

In 2012, Swati founded The Sadir Theater Festival, a three-day festival focused on thought provoking content that takes place annually in Goa. Critically acclaimed theater stars have participated over the years, and she is still the festival’s artistic director. Swati brought the UNESCO heritage art form KunQu opera, one of the oldest styles of Chinese theatre, to India for the first time with performances at The National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai, and at Siri Fort Auditorium in New Delhi.

She served as a virtual ambassador of Indian culture and classical arts in New York for 35 years and founded Sanskriti Centre, a nonprofit organization that promoted Indian artists and introduced Indian classical arts to a generation of American children. In addition to a deep study of music, dance and theatre, she has a Masters in Indian and Chinese history that has led her to combine different artistic mediums: North and South Indian music with western classical Jazz. In 2017 she was invited to open the renowned Newport Jazz Festival with her original Carnatic-Jazz fusion composition. In 2015, she conducted her first Jazz and Carnatic music symphony at Jazz at Lincoln Centre to a full house, winning her wide acclaim in the Wall Street Journal.

A multifaceted performer, Swati has worked as a choreographer, actress, scriptwriter, TV show host with “Spotlight on Culture”, New York correspondent for Sruti magazine, and curator of art festivals in New York and India. Swati’s contributions range from performances at the U.N. General Assembly, choreography of Broadway shows including The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Transposed Heads and acting in operas such as Daddy meets Durga.

She was an artist in residence at The Brearley School for 22 years and remains an artist in residence at Lincoln Centre Institute and Symphony Space with an
emphasis on arts in education.

She is also an outspoken advocate for women’s empowerment with a focus on
South East Asia and The Warrior Queen of Jhansi was the culmination of many years of work in this sphere. She is a Lotus Circle advisor for The Asia Foundation, which serves to empower women and girls in Asia through education.

Swati Bhise

Swati Bhise is the Director, Writer & Producer of a period drama film, The Warrior Queen of Jhansi, based on the life of the iconic Rani of Jhansi. The film released in November 2019 in theatres across America, India, and Canada and VOD release in 2020 and further global release in Australia, New Zealand, UK & Middle East in 2020. The film was the first Hollywood action film in history with a female Indian lead and received the Film of Impact Award at the Vancouver International Women in Film Festival and the prestigious Reframe Stamp for gender parity in film. The Warrior Queen of Jhansi is a salute to the iconic Indian Queen, Rani Lakshmibai, whose empowered spirit continues to stay relevant 180 years after her demise. To celebrate this spirit, she awarded 11 incredible women across India & USA with the “Spirit of the Rani” award for their pathbreaking work to bring in social transformation.

A multifaceted performer, Swati has worked as a choreographer, actress, scriptwriter, TV show host with “Spotlight on Culture”, New York correspondent for Sruti magazine, and curator of art festivals in New York and India. She is also an outspoken advocate for women’s empowerment with a focus on South East Asia and The Warrior Queen of Jhansi was the culmination of many years of work in this sphere. She is a Lotus Circle advisor for The Asia Foundation, which serves to empower women and girls in Asia through education.

Nationality: American

Email id: cedarsigo@gmail.com

Facebook: Cedar Sigo (https://m.facebook.com/pages/Cedar-Sigo/135951213113702)

DRIK-DWARAKA

The DRIK- DWARAKA Foundations initiated by the Ramanarpanam trust established the Jeevanotsava platform bringing art and performing arts to the door step of children living in remote villages and urban poor communities. For almost two decades now children who were taught of Indian culture and heritage began to revel in learning dances like dollu kunitha, kamsale, patta kunitha, suggi etc. Support from Rashmee Hegde of Shankara Foundation helped hone their skills. Dances with thematic relevance to bring change in the lives of children has today resulted in a vast change in communities where art , music and dance have transformed the lives of a few thousands over the years. Jeevanotsava, meaning celebration of life is a tool healing our nation.

Nationality: American

Email id: cedarsigo@gmail.com

Facebook: Cedar Sigo (https://m.facebook.com/pages/Cedar-Sigo/135951213113702)

Rukmini Varma

Rukmini Varma is a leading Indian artist who paints in the classical tradition.
Born in 1940 as Princess Bharani Tirunal Rukmini Bayi Tampuran of
Travancore State, Rukmini is a great-great granddaughter of the master
painter Ravi Varma and custodian of his artistic legacy through the Raja Ravi
Varma Heritage Foundation. Tutored at Satelmond Palace in Trivandrum and
in Bangalore at Mount Carmel College, she is a self-taught artist, whose skill
and technique have evolved over a lifetime of painting into a singular school
and style that she describes as Academic Realism.
Growing up amidst exquisite works of beauty in an environment populated by
court painters and artistes, Rukmini’s work is heavily influenced by the
creations of baroque masters like Rembrandt, Rubens, and Caravaggio, as
well as by the opulence of her royal heritage and nostalgia for an India that
once was. Her paintings come alive with splendour and metaphor, marrying
legend with history, and mythology with drama. Drawing from Ravi Varma’s
palette, using a minimum of colours and mixing her own unique shades,
allegorical imagination is the hallmark of Rukmini’s work, where attractive
qualities of her human figures are highlighted, their defects
underplayed—often eliminated—and beauty celebrated as eternal in its
divinity. There is exaggeration, but never distortion, of the human form in her
velvety canvases even as she shines a striking focus on to shades of skin
contrasted against exquisite gem-set jewels and shimmering gold.

The Foundation
Raja Ravi Varma Heritage Foundation was established in 2015 to uphold the
values and traditional expressions which the great artist sought to promote
and delineate through his works, a rich cultural heritage that is not confined
within geographical borders of just our country but the world in general.
The Foundation is the brainchild of his great great granddaughter Princess
Bharani Thirunal Rukmini Bayi Thampuran of Travancore State, Gitanjali
Maini, art connoisseur, promoter and curator, and Jay Varma an artist
extraordinaire who is carrying on the rich legacy of academic art.
With an intense passion for art and preserving the heritage of Raja Ravi
Varma, the founders have embarked on a journey to promote his rich legacy,
whose works continue to influence every walk of life — be it art and culture,
theatre, education, religion, personal beliefs, attire and adornment and even
films.
The Foundation works to sustain Varma’s heritage and engage with relevant
stakeholders and the public, as do other foundations in Europe and elsewhere
for masters such as Rembrandt and Picasso.
The Foundation is firmly rooted in three principles that governed Varma's life:
 To Educate
 To Appreciate

 To Preserve
Princess Bharani Thirunal Rukmini Bayi Thampuran of Travancore State is
the great-great granddaughter of the master painter Raja Ravi Varma and
custodian of his artistic legacy through The Raja Ravi Varma Heritage
Foundation.
In accordance with the Marumakkathayam tradition and the matrilineal
method of devolution, Rukmini, 76, is the titular Maharani of Travancore. Her
grandmother Pooradam Thirunal Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, was Raja Ravi Varma's
granddaughter.
Born to Mahaprabha, she was adopted into the Travancore Royal Family

Vladimir Lucien

Vladimir Lucien is a writer, critic and actor from St. Lucia. His first collection of poetry, Sounding Ground, won the Caribbean region’s major literary prize for anglophone literature, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, making Lucien the youngest ever winner of the prize.

Umar Teekay

Umar Teekay is the founder of Teekays Group, which is the pioneer in turnkey fit-out solutions for corporate work places across India. Teekay is an Engineering graduate from NIT-K, Surathkal, with a postgraduate diploma in Management. He has also done his executive education program at the Harvard Business School in 2002-2004.

Teekay is one of the founders of the Bearys’ revival movement going back to the eighties. He has been the President of the Bearys’ Association in Bangalore which is the de facto parent organization to all Beary forums. He was the Secretary General of the first ever Beary Convention in 1997 and has been an active member of the movement ever since. He is currently the Honorary President of the Muslim Educational Institutions’ Federation- Udupi and Dakshina Kannada District.

Teekay is an amateur writer, a consummate orator and a globetrotter. He is passionate about wildlife and adventure sports.

Sonia Sanchez

Sonia Sanchez (born Wilsonia Benita Driver; September 9, 1934) is an American poet, writer, and professor. She was a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement and has authored over a dozen books of poetry, as well as short stories, critical essays, plays, and children’s books. In the 1960s, Sanchez released poems in periodicals targeted towards African American audiences, and published her debut collection, Homecoming, in 1969. In 1993, she received Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and in 2001 was awarded the Robert Frost Medal for her contributions to the canon of American poetry. She has been influential to other African-American poets, including Krista Franklin.

Ramesh Karthik Nayak

Ramesh Karthik Nayak is a poet, who is based in Jakranpally thanda, Telangana state, India. He published a poetry collection
named BALDER BANDY (2018) in telugu. One of his poem had prescribed in degree syllabus of Telugu literature. CHAKMAK (FLINTSTONES) is his forthcoming book in English. He is from BANJARA (lambadi) a tribal community known as schedule tribe in Telangana and Andhrapradesh States.

Rajendra Chenni

Literary and cultural critic, Rajendra Chenni was Professor of English at Kuvempu University, Shivamogga, and is presently Director, Manasa Centre for Cultural Studies, Shivamogga. He writes in Kannada and English. He has authored 12 books in Kannada and four in English. He has received several honours including the Karnataka State Sahitya Akademi Lifetime Achievement Award (2012), Karnataka State Sahitya Akademi Award (1987 & 2003), V M Inamdar Award (2019), D S Max Sahitya Sri Award (2016) GSS Award (2009), BA Sridhara Award (2012) and Vardamana Udayonmukha Award (1992). He was part of the prestigious delegation which discussed the repercussions of the Holocaust at Yad Vashem in Israel in 2012.
He has actively participated in several people’s movements in Karnataka − to protect the Baba Budan Giri shrine, against mining at Kudremukha, and for saving the Tunga River. Presently, he is convenor of Dakshinayana Karnataka, a collective of writers and artists against fascism.

Prof. BA Viveka Rai

Prof. BA Viveka Rai has been the Vice Chancellor of two universities, Karnataka State Open University in Mysore and Kannada University, Hampi, He was Professor of Kannada and Dean of Arts Faculty at Mangalore University, and Guest Professor and Chair of Indology at the University of Wurzburg in Germany.

He has been doing research on Tulu since 1970, for 50 years, and this is also his 50th year of university teaching. He has written 30 books and edited another 20 books on the subject of Tulu. Among them are The Siri Epic as Performed by Gopala Naika in collaboration with Laurie Honko which is a translation of this oral epic and The Tübingen Tulu Manuscript with Heidrun Bruckner where they edited and translated two South Indian oral epics collected in the 19th century. His PhD dissertation was published as Tulu Janapada Sahitya and is widely read. He has also been involved in several oral history research projects in Tulu in Dakshina Kannada and the Western Ghats and the preservation and publication of manuscripts.

Riyas Komu

A multimedia artist, curator based in Mumbai. Completed his Bachelors and Masters in painting from Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai in 1999. He is the ideator of Kochi-Muziris Biennale and Co-Founder of Kochi Biennale Foundation (est. 2010). He co-curated the first edition of Kochi-Muziris Biennale in 2012 and has been the Director of Programmes of the Kochi Biennale Foundation (2012, 2014, 2016) and in this capacity, he has initiated the Students’ Biennale, Children’s Biennale (ABC, Art by Children), Artists Cinema, Video Lab, Let’s Talk series and History Now (Talks and Seminars), Pepper House Residency and Exhibition.

He has been the Advisor and Visual Arts Curator for Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa in 2016 and 2017 and has conceptualised and curated the ‘Young Sub-Continent’ project since 2016, 17 and 18.

In 2016, he started URU Art Harbour a cultural hub in Mattancherry, Kochi, (Kerala) which promotes artists from the region focusing on research on Local Culture and Maritime History. Uru Art Harbour also provides a well supported artist in residency and engages with international artists.

Co-curated first International Football Film Festival in India at Goa International Film Festival and Trivandrum International Film Festival in 2012. As an artist, his works have been exhibited globally including Brazil, France, Germany, UK, Italy, Korea, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, USA, China, UAE, Belgium, The Netherlands, Iran, South Africa among others. He often responds to the time and thematically explores the political and cultural history of India especially Kerala.

Prathibha Nandakumar

Prathibha Nandakumar is a leading Kannada poet, journalist, filmmaker, columnist and translator. Her publications include 16 collections of poems, two collections of short stories, three biographies, one collection of essays, one autobiography, and three translations into Kannada, including Anand Neelakanthan’s novel The Saga of Sivagami. She has also translated Agni Sreedhar’s Kannada novel into English, The Gangster’s Gita. Her poems have been translated into English, Swedish, Chinese, Finnish, Danish, Spanish and other Indian languages. She has presented her poems at international gatherings, such as the Göteborg Book Fair, Sweden, Asian Writers’ Meet, Helsinki, Finland, SAARC Poets’ Meet, Kathmandu etc. She was one among the delegation of five Indian writers to China. Her awards include the Infosys Foundation Award for Literature, Bangalore Literary Festival Award, Dr. Shivarama Karanth Award, Karnataka Sahitya Academy Book Award, Mahadevi Verma Kavya Samman and Hoogar Memorial Award for Journalism.

Michelle Cahill

Michelle Cahill is a Goan-Anglo-Indian writer who lives in Sydney. She writes poetry, fiction and essays. Her second collection Vishvarūpa was shortlisted in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. She received the Val Vallis Award and was highly commended in the Blake Poetry Prize.

Her poems are anthologised in 30 Australian Poets, Ed. Felicity Plunkett (UQP) the HarperCollins Anthology of Modern English Poetry Ed. Sudeep Sen, Contemporary Australian Poets (Turnrow) Ed. John Kinsella and The Yellow Nib Anthology of Modern English Poetry by Indians (QUP, Belfast) Ed. Sudeep Sen and Ciaran Carson. She was a fellow at Hawthornden Castle and Sanskriti Kendra International Retreat.

Tacey Atsitty

Tacey Atsitty is Diné, Tsénahabiłnii (Sleep Rock People) and born for Ta’neeszahnii (Tangle People). Her maternal grandfather is Tábąąhí (Water Edge People) and her paternal grandfather is Hashk’ áánhadzóhí (Yucca Fruit Strung-Out-In-ALine People). Atsitty earned her MFA from Cornell University. Her awards and fellowships include a Truman Capote creative writing fellowship and the Philip Freund Prize. Her first poetry collection is Rain Scald.

LeAnne Howe

LeAnne Howe, Choctaw, writes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and screenplays. She is the Edison
Distinguished Professor at the University of Georgia. Howe is a United States Artists (USA) Ford Fellow as well as the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas, an American Book Award, and an Oklahoma Book Award. She was also a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar to Jordan. Her most recent collection of poetry is Savage Conversations (2019).

Roberta Hill

Roberta Hill is an Oneida poet, fiction writer, essayist, and scholar. Her poetry collections include Star Quilt (1984, 2001), Her Fierce Resistance (1993), Philadelphia Flowers (1996), and Cicadas: New and Selected Poetry (2013). She edited an issue of About Place (2014); “Reading the Streets” (fiction) appeared in Narrative Witness: Indigenous People Australia–United States (2016). She is a professor of English and American Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and is an affiliated faculty member of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.

Kamal Kumar Tanti

Kamal Kumar Tanti is a well-known young voice in the contemporary world of Assamese Poetry. Kamal is a bilingual poet, critic, writer and translator; and writes both in Assamese and English languages. He is a nominated Member of Assamese Language Advisory Board of Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi

Prof John H. Bracey, Jr

Professor John H. Bracey, Jr., has taught in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst since 1972. He is now serving a second stint as department chair, and is co-director of the department’s graduate certificate in African Diaspora Studies. His major academic interests are in African American social history, radical ideologies and movements, and the history of African American Women and more recently the interactions between Native Americans and African Americans, and Afro-Latinos in the United States. During the 1960s, Professor Bracey was active in the Civil Rights, Black Liberation, and other radical movements in Chicago. Since his arrival at UMass he has maintained those interests and commitments both on campus and in the wider world. His publications include several co-edited volumes, include Black Nationalism in America (1970); the prize winning African American Women and the Vote: 1837-1965 (1997); Strangers and Neighbors: Relations between Blacks and Jews in the United States (with Maurianne Adams, 1999); and, African American Mosaic: A Documentary History from the Slave Trade to the Twenty-First Century (with Manisha Sinha, 2004).

Professor Bracey’s scholarship also includes editorial work on the microfilm series Black Studies Research Sources (LexisNexis), which includes the Papers of the NAACP, Amiri Baraka, the Revolutionary Action Movement, A. Phillip Randolph, Mary McLeod Bethune, the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, and the Papers of Horace Mann Bond. Professor Bracey is a co-editor with Professor James Smethurst and Professor Emerita Sonia Sanchez of SOS: Calling All Black People: A Black Arts Movement Reader (2014).

Dr M B Manoj

Dr M B Manoj. Assistant Professor ,Department of Malayalam and Kerala Studies, University of Calicut, India-Kerala.Poet, Literary Critic, Researcher, Novelist, Storywriter.
He wrote 23 books,name of his books: 1.koottanthatayude ezhupathu Varshangal[2004], collection of poems , published by DC Books.koottanthatha means collective solitude, “the seventy years of collective solitude”it is the meaning of this malayalam poetry. Dr. Ajay shekhar translated it and published .the name of the book is writing in the dark. The poem mainly criticized that the pathalic side of Indian Marxism.Dalits , Adhivasis and working classes are base of Indian marxism.but this poor people avoided by Indian marxist hegimoney. Dalis are
Landless people in India.only the reservation is supported them, Adivasi-Daliths are the cultural historical people in India. But they forcefully vanished on their birthland, koottanthathayude ezhupathuvarshangal is the most powerfull poem collection in Indian Dalit poetry, it’s written in malayalam language, some of his major works are:

1.kanunniloraksharauum [2007] , collection of poems, DC Books.

2.Munkaalukal kooltikketiya Nadathakkar [2011]. Collection of poems, DC-Books

3.Pave Pave Pokavenda[2017]. Collection of poems , DC Books

Dr Amit Ranjan

Dr Amit Ranjan is an alumnus of the coveted Endeavour Research Fellowship and the Inlaks Shivdasani Research Fellowship. He was a Visiting Fellow at University of New South Wales (UNSW) Australia in 2010. His doctoral research about John Lang, an Australian writer, journalist and lawyer who lived in India in the mid 19th century has been widely acclaimed. Currently he is an Australia Awards Ambassador, as also a Fulbright Fellow for 2015-16. He also writes poetry and plays.

Damodar Mauzo

Damodar Mauzo is a Goan short story writer, novelist, critic and script writer in Konkani. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1983 for the novel Karmelin and the Vimala V. Pai Vishwa Konkani Sahitya Puraskar award for his novel Tsunami Simon in 2011.

Mr. Chiranjiv Singh

Mr. Chiranjiv Singh is a Retired IAS officer, who has worked as Development Commissioner for Karnataka. He has interests in education, and rural development and has been a great supporter for the organisation since the inception. He has served as India’s representative in UNESCO in France for five years. He is the Chairman of the board of the ArtMantram trust.

Boverianda Nanjamma and Chinnappa

Boverianda Nanjamma and Chinnappa are translators and scholars of Kodava studies. Their Pattole Palame was written using the Kannada script originally. It has been translated into English by Boverianda Nanjamma and Chinnappa and has been published by Rupa & Co., New Delhi.

Tiffany Atkinson

Tiffany Atkinson is a poet and literary critic. She is author of Kink and Particle (Seren, 2006), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and winner of the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize; Catulla et al (Bloodaxe, 2011) shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year;
and So Many Moving Parts, (Bloodaxe 2014) which was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and winner of the Roland Mathias Poetry Prize. Her forthcoming collection, Lumen, which includes a prizewinning sequence about medicine and healthcare,
will be published by Bloodaxe in February. (https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/lumen-1246 ) She is currently working on a book about poetry, ethics and embarrassment. Tiffany gives regular readings and workshops across the UK and internationally, and is a Leverhulme Fellow and Professor of Poetry at the University of East Anglia.

Prateeti Punja Ballal

Prateeti Punja Ballal grew up in Bangalore and did her postgraduate work in the US. She taught Literature at various universities there, most recently at Hunter College, City University of New York. She earlier worked in the software industry for fifteen years. A musician and dancer, she has a sustaining interest in the arts.

Somrita Urni Ganguly

Somrita Urni Ganguly is a professor, and an award-winning poet and literary translator. She was a Fulbright Doctoral Research Fellow at Brown University, Rhode Island. She is the editor of Quesadilla and Other Adventures: Food Poems (2019), and has translated Dinesh Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Firesongs (2019), Ashutosh Nadkar’s Shakuni: Master of the Game (2019), and Shankarlal Sengupta’s The Midnight Sun: Love Lyrics and Farewell Songs (2018).

Somrita translates from Bengali and Hindi to English, and was selected by the National Centre for Writing, UK, as an emerging translator in 2016. She received a grant from the British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT) in 2020 to attend the International Literary Translation and Creative Writing Summer School at the University of East Anglia, UK. In 2017, she was invited as translator-in-residence at Cove Park, Scotland, and as poet-in-residence at Arcs of a Circle, Bombay. Somrita’s work has been showcased at the London Book Fair, and she has read her works in several cities such as Aligarh, Bloomington, Bombay, Boston, Calcutta, Chandigarh, Cove, Delhi, Hyderabad, Itanagar, London, Miami, Providence, Shantiniketan, and Singapore. She has been published in Asymptote, Words Without Borders, In Other Words, and Trinity College Dublin’s Journal of Literary Translation, among others.

Somrita teaches British literature to undergraduate and graduate students in Calcutta. She has presented research papers at various national and international conferences in India, Singapore, UK, and USA, and has fourteen academic publications to her credit. She is a recipient of the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund Award (2013) and the Sarojini Dutta Memorial Prize (2011).

Taylor Johnson

Taylor Johnson has received fellowships and scholarships from CALLALOO, Cave Canem, Lambda Literary, Tin House, the Vermont Studio Center, Yaddo, the Conversation Literary Festival, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers & Conference, among other organizations. In 2017, Taylor received the Larry Neal Writers Award. Their poems appear in The Baffler, Indiana Review, Scalawag, and the Paris Review, among other journals and literary magazines. Their first book, Inheritance, will be published in November by Alice James Books.

Simone White

Simone White is the author of Dear Angel of Death, Of Being Dispersed, and House of Envy of All the World, and the chapbooks Unrest and Dolly (with Kim Thomas). Recent poems and prose have appeared in BOMB, New York Times Book Review, Harper’s, and Frieze. In 2017, she received the Whiting Award for poetry. White is Assistant Professor at University of Pennsylvania.

Dante Micheaux

Dante Micheaux (moderator) is the author of Amorous Shepherd and Circus, which won the 2019 Four Quartets Prize from the Poetry Society of America and the T. S. Eliot Foundation. His poems and translations have appeared in Poetry, PN Review, The American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Rattapallax and Tongue—among other journals and anthologies. He has been shortlisted for the Benjamin Zephaniah Poetry Prize and the Bridport Prize. Micheaux’s other honors include the Oscar Wilde Award and fellowships from Cave Canem Foundation and The New York Times Foundation.

Nationality: American

Rickey Laurentiis

Rickey Laurentiis’ poetry has been supported by several foundations and fellowships, including the Whiting Foundation, Lannan Literary Foundation, Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy, Poetry International Rotterdam, the National Endowment for the Arts, Cave Canem Foundation, and the Poetry Foundation, which awarded him a Ruth Lilly Fellowship. Laurentiis received a MFA in Writing from Washington University in St Louis, and a Bachelors in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College. Their book Boy with Thorn, won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and the Levis Reading Prize, and was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry and a Lambda Literary Award.

Syed Ahmed Esar

Born on 25 July 1922, Syed Ahmed Esar is a translator and poet based in Bengaluru. His interest in Persian and Urdu poetry began at an early age while growing up in the garrison of the Mysore Lancers in Munireddy Palya where his father was a soldier. He adopted the takhallus (pen name) of ‘Esar’ meaning ‘sacrifice’ while he was still in school. After his graduation from Central College in the city, he joined the Forest Service in 1948. From 1954-56, he studied at the University of Washington in Seattle where he completed a Master’s degree in Forestry. Upon his return, he continued as a member of the elite Indian Forest Service, and later retired as the Chief Conservator of Forests of Karnataka in 1980. While Esar sustained his passion for Persian and Urdu poetry during his lonely sojourns in the jungles, his serious pursuit of a literary career began only after his retirement.
During the 1980s, he completed the translation of the entire Persian corpus of Muhammad (Allama) Iqbal into Urdu, publishing the first of these seven volumes in 1997. Alongside, he also began the translation of 13th century mystic Persian poet Rumi’s poem, the Masnavi (The Spiritual Verses) into Urdu. This epic poem, which some scholars consider to be the greatest mystical poem in world literature runs into more than 25,000 verses and is the most influential work of Sufism. Esar’s translation of the Masnavi was published in six volumes by the National Council for the Promotion of Urdu Language in 2019. His cumulative corpus of work comes up to 19 volumes which, apart from Iqbal and Rumi, also includes translations, into Urdu, of canonical Persian poets such as Omar Khayyam, Shams Tabrez and Saadi Shirazi. He has also published a collection of poetry and an autobiography. Esar was honoured with the Karnataka Rajyotsava Award in 2017.

*Photo Credit – Frontline

Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed

Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed is an award-winning journalist with Frontline newsmagazine and is based in Bengaluru. His article on Syed Ahmed Esar published in Frontline magazine is available here: https://frontline.thehindu.com/arts-and-culture/literature/article31150246.ece

Kamal Chowdhury

Kamal Chowdhury’s journey into poetry began in the mid-seventies and by 1981 he had published his first collection, Michhiler Shoman Boyoshi (As Old as the Procession). Over the next four decades, he published a further 22 volumes of poetry, including a book of poems for young adults. Three anthologies of his poems have been translated into English and a travel- diary was also published during this time. His poems have also been translated in different languages including Hindi, German, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Swedish etc.
Chowdhury’s contribution to Bengali poetry has been recognised through numerous awards from home and abroad including the prestigious Bangla Academy Shahitya Puroshkar in 2011. He is the fellow of Bangla Academy and Life member of Bangladesh Asiatic society.
He was the Former Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister of Bangladesh. As an officer of Bangladesh Civil Service he also served in different capacities including Secretary, information,Secretay Education, Senior Secretary, Public Administration . He was the Bangladesh Representative to UNESCO Executive Board(2014-2017) and Chairman of the Conventions And Recommendations Committee of the Board.

Presently he is the Member-Secretary of the National Committee for the Celebration of Birth Centenary of the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and Chief Coordinator of the National Implementation Committee.

Kamal Chowdhury was born in 1957. He did his Masters in Sociology and later obtained a PhD in Anthropology. Chowdhury lives in Dhaka with his wife and children.

Prof Dr Maya D

Professor of English, Dr Maya won a literary award for her biography of her father, an eminent Gandhian, last year. Taught English Language and Literature for 30 years in various Govt colleges in Kerala. She was Principal, Govt.Arts College and Principal of the prestigious nearly 200 years old University College,Tvm! Maya took Ph.D in 1991. She has Presented papers in various national and international seminars. Published articles in research journals. Was Research Guide to many English Scholars of the University of Kerala.
Publications in English: Narrating Colonialism, Towards Life Sublime(ed.) A prolific writer, Maya has published 6 books in Malayalam and the 7th on Western Literary Theories is under print. 3 are literary studies , 2 Children books and one Biography and a translation.

Yumna Hari Singh Jawa

Yumna Hari Singh Jawa has worked across Asia, Africa, Europe and North America, through her associations with AIESEC participating and leading youth conferences, and later at Cadbury Schweppes, where she worked on policy responding to issues such as obesity. She serves as a General Committee member of the Bangalore Club and is a consultant and ethical auditor for Good Corporation, UK.

She began working with the Arts in 1999 and is today, Founding Trustee and Vice-President of ArtMantram Trust. Yumna is currently curating the Glass House Festival, Poetry from around the World.

William Richmond Marbaniang

William Richmond Marbaniang wrote his first pom ‘Scorn’ in response to injustice he felt meted out to some performers from his home state Meghalaya at an international award ceremony!. He had joined the IPS and was on a flight when this pom ‘happened’!
He had never been interested in poetry till then.

‘I don’t get inspired’, says Bill, ‘I get provoked! Ignorance of the nuances and technicalities of poetry writing, gives me the freedom and courage to write.’ Since then, Bill has written several poems covering various aspects of pain and injustice. His poems on his relationship with God and nature reveal another aspect of his poetic nature. To the question ‘what turns you off?’ Bill says, ‘Insensitivity’ of our fellow beings. And the laziness around.’

Nationality:

Terri L. French

Terri L. French is former Secretary of The Haiku Foundation, and now serves as member at large. She is past Southeast Regional Coordinator for The Haiku Society of America, former editor of Prune Juice Journal of senryu and kyoka, and currently on the editorial team of contemporary haibun online.

Sudharak Olwe

Sudharak Olwe is an indian social documentary photographer. Born in 1966, his extensive body of work spread over the last three decades has resulted in a startling body of work known for its uncannily intimate portraits of those whom mainstream society marginalizes and disparages.

His work includes documentation of atrocities on Dalits, series of exhibitions and books on Mumbai’s conservancy workers, intimate stories from the lives in Kamathipura – Mumbai’s seedy red light district, sensitive journey of the women survivors of domestic violence and revolutionary story of the midwifery in Jharkhand. He has also served at prominent and principal positions at the photography departments in various leading newspapers, including Times of India, DNA and Lokmat. His work has been published in various international publications including Indes France, Zeit, London Times, Harper Bazaar, EPA etc.

Sudharak has exhibited in numerous art galleries, art festivals and institutions,and his exhibitions were well received in Sweden, Bangladesh, Netherlands, USA, Cambodia, Japan and Germany. In 2005, He was one of the four awardees for National Geographic’s “All roads photography programme”. In 2016, Sudharak Olwe was conferred the Padma Shri, India’s 4th Highest Civilian Award by the President of India, in recognition of his valuable and tireless work.

In 2005, Sudharak Olwe founded the Photography Promotion Trust. The non-profit organization aims at using the skills of photography to create definitive change in the lives of socially marginalized communities and promotes Social Documentary Photography

Shabnam Virmani

Filmmaker, singer and writer Shabnam Virmani has been exploring the philosophy of Kabir, Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai and other mystic poets through a deep engagement with their oral folk traditions for close to two decades, ever since the riots of Gujarat in 2002
propelled her on this quest. Her deep inspiration in this poetry and its wisdom has taken the shape of four documentary films on Kabir and the creation of a vast digital archive on mystic poetry and music called Ajab Shahar, as also translating, writing, curating and organizing urban festivals and rural yatras and more recently, infecting students with the challenge and wonder of mystic poetry.

She has co-authored two books I Saw Myself: Journeys with Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai (Penguin, 2019) and One Palace, a Thousand Doorways: Songlines through Bhakti, Sufi & Baul Oral Traditions (Speaking Tiger, 2019) with colleague Vipul Rikhi, and is currently working on a third book Burn Down Your House: Life Lessons from Kabir (upcoming, Aleph). She also curates, interprets and sings a diverse repertoire of folk songs of the mystics to both rural and urban audiences. Her film ‘Kabira Khada Bazaar Mein’ won the Special Jury Prize at the 52nd National Awards in 2011, and the work of the Kabir Project was given the Sadbhavana Award for contributing to inter-faith understanding by Shri Morari Bapu and Vishwagram Trust in Gujarat in 2016. Her work is enabled by the Srishti Institute of Art,
Design and Technology in Bangalore, where she is located as artist in residence and the Kabir Project is housed.

Nirupama Rao

Nirupama Rao was Foreign Secretary in the Government of India (2009-2011) and earlier served as Spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, High Commissioner of India in Sri Lanka and Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China. She was Ambassador of India to the United States from 2011 to 2013. On retirement, Rao was a Fellow at Brown University and also taught there from 2015-16. She was George Ball Adjunct Professor at Columbia University in Fall, 2018. In 2019 she was a Pacific Leadership Fellow at UC San Diego. She is a Global Fellow of The Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington DC, Councillor of the World Refugee Council, a Member of
the Board of Governors of IIM, Bangalore and ICRIER , New Delhi.

Ambassador Rao is a published poet. Her collection of poems “Rain Rising” was published in India in 2004. She is also the founder trustee of The South Asian Symphony Foundation and has founded the South Asian Symphony Orchestra.

Nicholas Roe

Nicholas Roe is Wardlaw Professor of English Literature. He is the author of critically acclaimed biographies and studies including John Keats: A New Life, Fiery Heart: The First Life of Leigh Hunt, Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Radical Years, and John Keats and the Culture of Dissent. He was born in 1955 in England’s West Country, and lived for many years on the edge of Dartmoor at Yelverton and Clearbrook. He was educated at the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe (1967-74), and Trinity College, Oxford (1975-82), before joining the English Department at Queen’s University, Belfast (1982-5). He joined the School of English at St Andrews University in September 1985 and soon afterwards founded the St Andrews Poetry Festival (now ‘StAnza’). He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, an Honorary Fellow of the English Association, and a Lifetime Member of the Japan Association for English Romanticism.

Over the years he has given visiting lectures at numerous UK universities, and more widely in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, and the US. He was a Trustee of The Keats-Shelley Memorial Association 1997-2015 and of The Wordsworth Trust 2010-2017. He is Chair of The Keats Foundation, and a trustee of The Wordsworth Conference Foundation. His two most recently published books are an edited collection, John Keats and the Medical Imagination (2017) and a revised and updated second edition of Wordsworth and Coleridge. The Radical Years (1988; second edition 2018). His research interests are in Romantic literature, particularly Leigh Hunt, John Keats and their circle; Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Percy Bysshe Shelley; and William Wordsworth. His main writing activities are in the field of literary biography.

Najwan Darwish

Najwan Darwish is a poet from Jerusalem, Palestine. He has published eight books in Arabic and his work has been translated into over twenty languages. The New York Review of Books, which published the English translation of his book Nothing More to Lose (NYRB Poets, 2014) describes him as, “one of the foremost Arabic-language poets of his generation”.

Nothing More to Lose, translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, was named one of the best books of 2014 by National Public Radio in the USA and has been nominated for several awards including the Best Translated Book Award (2015).Darwish has been the Chief Cultural Editor of the Arabic-language London based newspaper Al Araby Al Jadeed since 2014.

Michael Dylan Welch

Michael Dylan Welch has been investigating haiku and related poetry since 1976. He is cofounder of the Haiku North America conference (1991) and the American Haiku Archives (1996), and founder and president of the Tanka Society of America (2000) and National Haiku Writing Month (2010).
Michael has been vice president of the Haiku Society of America, and served two terms as poet laureate of Redmond, Washington (near Seattle), where he is also president of the Redmond Association of Spokenword and curator (since 2006) of SoulFood Poetry Night, a monthly poetry reading series. His poems have been chiselled in stone in New Zealand, printed on balloons in Los Angeles, recited at the Baseball Hall of Fame and for the Empress of Japan, and in 2012 a poem from one of his books of translations from the Japanese was printed on the back of 150,000,000 United States postage stamps. He was also keynote speaker for the 2013 Haiku International convention in Tokyo. Michael has published and edited dozens of poetry books and judged or won first place numerous poetry contests. His writing has been translated into more than 22 languages, and he collects his poems, essays, and reviews at his website, www.graceguts.com.

Linda Hess

Linda Hess is a scholar-translator whose life-work has centered on the 15th-century poet Kabir. Her publications include The Bijak of Kabir (with Shukdev Singh, orig. 1983; 2nd edition, Oxford University Press, 2002); Singing Emptiness: Kumar Gandharva Performs the Poetry of Kabir (Seagull Books, 2009); and Bodies of Song: Kabir Oral Traditions and Performative Worlds in North India (Oxford University Press/USA and Permanent Black/India, 2015). She has also written about the 16th-century poet Tulsidas and the Ramlila of Ramnagar, an annual 30-day outdoor traveling performance in Varanasi that dramatizes Tulsi’s devotional rendition of the Ramayana. Linda taught in the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University for 21 years, retiring in 2017. Her courses touched on many aspects of religion in South Asia. She also taught courses on violence, nonviolence, conflict and coexistence—for example, “Gandhi and His Legacy,” “Religious Perspectives on War and Peace,” and “Hindus and Muslims in South Asia.” She was founding co-director of Stanford’s Center for South Asia and co-director of the Peace+Justice Studies Initiative. Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Linda is happy to be teamed up today with Jack Hawley and Shabnam Virmani. She met Jack at a 1978 conference on bhakti literature in Berkeley, where she gave her first public presentations (which subsequently became her first publications) on Kabir. Jack’s smiling face, his profound knowledge, and his phenomenal output of work in our field have been a joyous presence in her life ever since. She met Shabnam in Malwa, Madhya Pradesh, in 2002. During three days of rushing through villages and listening to Kabir singers, they had so much fun that they haven’t stopped meeting every year since then–in villages and cities, in South Asia and North America, making films, writing books, and celebrating their good luck that what they call “work” is to be immersed in the poetry, song, and culture of Kabir.

Kimberly Blaeser

Kimberly Blaeser, past Wisconsin Poet Laureate, is the author of four poetry collections—most
recently Copper Yearning and Apprenticed to Justice; and editor of Traces in Blood, Bone, and
Stone: Contemporary Ojibwe Poetry. A bi-lingual collection, Résister en dansee/Dancing
Resistanc,e is forthcoming in France in 2020. An Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist from
White Earth Reservation, Blaeser is a Professor at UW—Milwaukee and MFA faculty member at
the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Her awards include: Edna Meudt Poetry Book
Award for Copper Yearning, Zona Gale Short Fiction Award, Diane Decorah First Book Award for
Trailing You, Woodland Indian Arts Initiative Grant, Fellowship in Poetry from Wisconsin Arts
Board, and Drama of the Year Award from Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. Blaeser lives in
Lyons Township, Wisconsin and, for part of each year, at a water-access cabin adjacent to the
Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Kimberly Blaeser is Anishinaabe, an enrolled member
of the White Earth Nation and grew up on the White Earth reservation.

Nationality: American

website: kblaeser@uwm.edu

Chandramohan S

Based in Trivandrum, Kerala, Chandramohan S is an Indian English Dalit poet whose poems were shortlisted for Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize 2016. His second collection of poems titled “Letters to Namdeo Dhasal” was a runner up at M.HARISH GOVIND memorial prize instituted by POETRY CHAIN. In addition to being a fellow at the international writing program(IWP) at the university of Iowa, he was instrumental in organizing literary meets of English poets of Kerala for the Ayyappa Panicker Foundation.

*Photo Credit – Tom Langdon

Elaine Foster

Elaine Foster is a performance poet and community theatre maker from Malaysia and the UK. As one of the pioneers of poetry education in Malaysia, she has coached young aspiring poets for the past 10 years around the world. Elaine is the writer, founder and co-host of Speak Easy, a monthly poetry radio show on the Malaysian independent station, BFM. Having recently completed an MA in Applied Theatre from Goldsmiths University, Elaine is now back in Malaysia and ready to inspire more children into the exciting world of poetry.

David Waterman

David Waterman was born into a musical family in Leeds. He studied Philosophy for six years at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he went on to do a PhD and tutored final-year Philosophy undergraduates. At the same time, he continued playing the cello, studied privately with Martin Lovett, William Pleeth and Jane Cowan, and finally opted for a musical career. He is a founder- member of the Endellion String Quartet, andsince 1979, has performed with them all over the world, broadcast countless times on BBC Radio and TV, and recorded for EMI, Virgin Classics, ASV and Pearl. He has played chamber music with many internationally renowned musicians, and taught both cello and chamber music at the Yehudi Menuhin School, the Royal Northern College of Music, the Royal Academy of Music, the Guildhall, the Menuhin Academy at Gstaad, and IMS among many others.

Karl Lutchmayer

Karl Lutchmayer is equally renowned as a concert pianist and a lecturer. A Steinway Artist, Karl performs across the globe, has worked with conductors including Lorin Maazel and Sir Andrew Davis, and has played at all the major London concert halls. He has broadcast on BBC Television and Radio, All India Radio and Classic FM, and is a regular chamber performer. A passionate advocate of contemporary music, Karl has also given over 90 world premieres and had many works written especially for him. Karl’s London lecture-recital series, Conversational Concerts, has garnered critical and public acclaim, and following his landmark recitals celebrating the Liszt and Alkan Bicentenaries, he received invitations from four continents to give lecture-recitals. Karl also held an academic lectureship at Trinity Laban (formerly Trinity College of Music) for 15 years, and is a regular guest lecturer at conservatoires around the world, including the Juilliard and Manhattan Schools in New York.

An OCI of Goan parents, in recent years Karl has focused much of his time and attention on nurturing the burgeoning Western classical music scene in India, his family home. While helping young musicians and music teachers to fulfil their potential, he has also been involved in audience creation projects in many of the major cities. It was for this work that he was awarded the Bharat Gaurav (Pride of India) Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015. Karl studied at the Junior Department of Trinity College of Music, then at the Royal College of
Music and undertook further studies with Lev Naumov at the Moscow Conservatoire. His research interests include the music of Liszt, Alkan, Busoni and Enescu; The Creative Transcription Network; reception theory; and the history of piano recital programming.
For the last two years, Karl has been undertaking research at New College, Oxford, but he usually resides in London, where he is sometimes spotted in his alternative incarnation as keyboard, percussion and theremin player in the prog rock band The Connoisseur.

Keki N Daruwala

Keki Daruwalla writes poetry and fiction and lives in Delhi. He also writes political columns in newspapers, some of them never printed, because they are too strident, and the knees of editors start knocking so hard that they have to run to orthopedists for replacement.
His first poetry volume Under Orion was published fifty years ago in 1970. He has 12 volumes of poetry, the last of which was Naishapur and Babylon (2018 Speaking Tiger). His main interest is fiction these days and his three novels, For Pepper and Christ (Penguin 2009), Ancestral Affairs(HarperCollins 2013) and Swerving to Solitude (Simon and Schuster 2018).

His first novel was shortlisted for the Commonwealth fiction prize in 2010. He has written half a dozen collections of short stories and his next volume will show case his unpublished Long Stories : From the Crevices of the Past’. He is also midway through a novella on the Old Alexandrian Library. Daruwalla joined the Indian Police Service in 1958 and retired as Chairman JIC (Joint Intelligence Committee ) in 1995. He was also a Special Assistant to the Prime Minister in 1970-71. He was Member National Commission for Minorities 2011-2014. He was a part of the Commonwealth Observers Group for the Zimbabwe Elections in 1980-81. Was a Fellow under the Colombo Plan at Oxford
University 1980-81.

Awards: Sahitya Akademi 1984 (which he returned), The Commonwealth Poetry Prize for his book Landscapes, 1987, Poet Laureate (Literature Live 2017) and Padma Shri (2014).

George Szirtes

Born in Hungary in 1948, he became a refugee in England in 1956. His first book, The Slant Door (1979) won the Faber Prize. He has published many since then, Reel (2004) winning the T S Eliot Prize, for which he has been twice shortlisted since. His memoir of his mother, The Photographer at Sixteen, was published in February 2019. It has been shortlisted for four prizes. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

George Szirtes’s first book of poems, The Slant Door (Secker, 1979 ) was joint-winner of the Faber Prize. He has published many since then, his collection, Reel, winning the T S Eliot Prize in 2004 for which he has been twice shortlisted since. His latest is Mapping the Delta (Bloodaxe, 2016). His memoir of his mother, The Photographer at Sixteen, was published by MacLehose in February 2019 and has been short listed for a variety of prizes. His translations from Hungarian poetry and fiction have also won numerous prizes including the Man Booker International for his translations of László Krasznahorkai. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the English Association.

Geethanjali Rajan

This exotic personality teaches Japanese and English in Chennai, India. Her journey into haiku and other Japanese poetry forms started around the year 2003. Geethanjali’s poems have appeared in international journals and anthologies. She also conducts workshops in India to help spread the awareness about haiku and allied poetry forms. Her interests include music, books, Japanese calligraphy and currently serves as the editor of haiku at cattails (UHTS).

Awards and honors include, Redleaf Poetry India Award 2013 (haiku), an Honourable Mention in the Genjuan International haibun Competition 2014, 2016 and 2020, the second place (haiku) at the Tata Lit Live, 2014, second place in The Sonic Boom International Senryu Competition 2015, VBCF Sakura award (International category) 2017.

Ruth Padel

Ruth is an award-winning British poet with close links to Greece, science, classical music and wildlife conservation, especially in India. She has published eleven poetry collections shortlisted for all major UK prizes, a novel featuring wildlife conservation, and eight books of non-fiction: on wild tiger conservation, shortlisted for the Kiriwama Prize; studies of mind and madness in Greek tragedy, and the influence of Greek myth on rock music; and books on reading poetry drawn from her four-year newspaper column, The Sunday Poem.

She is Professor of Poetry at King’s College London, was Chair of Judges for the 2016 T. S. Eliot Prize, Judge for the 2016 International Man Booker Prize, and is Fellow of both the Zoological Society of London and Royal Society of Literature. She is a frequent speaker at the Jaipur Literature Festival, and her poems have appeared in, among others, The New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, Harvard Review, Indian Quarterly, The White Review, Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, Poetry Review, and The Guardian. Awards include First Prize in the National Poetry Competition, a British Council Darwin Now Award, and a Cholmondley Prize. Her latest
book is Beethoven Variations and Darwin: A Life in Poems released a decade ago on Darwin’s centenary captured her great great grandfather memorably.

Bithi Chattopadhyay

She was born in Kolkata, India, on June 11, 1957. She studied in the University of Calcutta, and began her writing career by contributing articles to several newspapers, journals, and dailies. Her first poem was published in Desh in 1995, and since then she has published several volumes of poetry. She is the editor of the journal Prothom Alo. She received the Sunil Gangopadhyay Memorial Award instituted by the Publishers and Booksellers Guild at the 2013 International Kolkata Book Fair. She was recently invited to America to read her poetry by a Bengali association in the US, ‘Banga Sammelan.’

Amir Or

A leading Israeli poet, novelist and essayist, Amir is the author of 13 volumes of poetry that have been translated into over 50 languages. He has won the 2020 Golden Wreath laureate of the SPE, the 2019 Homer European Medal of Poetry and Art, Brussels, the 2020 ACUM Directorate Lifetime Achievement Award and several fellowships from reputed institutions. Amir has been national coordinator for the U.N. sponsored UPC venture, “Poets for Peace” and founding member of the World Poetry Movement.

Rui Cóias

Born and raised in Lisbon, Rui Cóias studied law at the University of Coimbra, and then returned to the capital where he worked as a lawyer for nine years before abandoning the profession. He currently studies philosophy at a university in Lisbon.

His first book of poems, A Função do Geógrafo (The Function of the Geographer), was published in 2000, and his second, A Ordem do Mundo (The World’s Order), in 2005; both titles are indicative of this poetry’s concern with landscape – not as something to be meticulously described but as something to be explored, felt, lived. ‘Landscape’ means the places visited or inhabited by the poet – the Azores are the islands referred to in his first book, and the district around Coimbra is mentioned in both books (Ceira, in the poem that begins “Finally you say . . . “, is a small town not far from Coimbra) – but it also means the historical past, and the poet’s personal past.

Here the distinctions between time and space, and between the personal and impersonal, are blurred. It’s all one vast territory through which the poet journeys, making useful or poignant connections, but without any presumption that he can make the world’s order intelligible. That and other similarly heroic endeavors are impossible (“You’ll never be able to complete / your quest”), which is not, however, a cause for despair. A small, modest happiness is always within our reach, or within our retreat, within us (see the poem ‘What tiny, quivering impulse . . . ), and we also, more rarely, encounter beauty (‘You’ll never be able to complete’ and ‘He said’). Beauty is what this modern style of classical poetry continually pursues.

Shri Kuladhar Saikia

Shri Kuladhar Saikia(b.1959,Assam) had his graduation from Ramjas College, Delhi University in economics and postgraduation from the Delhi School of Economics. He had a brief stint of teaching experience of economics at the Hindu College, Delhi University. Apart from being a law graduate he is a PhD in economics from IIT Guwahati. Shri Saikia was a Fulbright Scholar at the Pennsylvania State University, USA and worked as a consultant at the World Bank, Washington DC. He worked as an officer of the Indian Economic Service in the Planning Commission, New Delhi and also as Indian Railway Traffic Service officer for a short while before joining the Indian Police
Service in 1985. After his superannuation as Director General of Police, Assam, the recipient of President Police Medal twice Shri Saikia has been elected to the prestigious post of President of Assam Sahitya Sabha, the century old literary body of the stat and currently he is holding the post.

He is well known as a short story writer and a winner of a prestigious literary award of India – Sahitya Akademy Award for 2015 . He received KATHA award in 2000 for his fiction. He is being invited as panelist to a number of literary festivals in the country and he represented India in London Book Fair as a speaker. His short stories have been translated into various Indian languages
including Hindi and English and published in prominent anthologies and literary journals like Contemporary Indian literature by Sahitya Akademy. His novel Woh 24 Ghante has been published in Hindi by Penguin publications. Some of his famous stories in English have been compiled in the book If A River. Shri Saikia’s fiction writing has been influenced by post modernists’ style of story telling with occasional taste of magic realism.

He has proved his acumen as a seasoned story teller in making an inward journey deep into the complex mental universe of the characters with unique ability to present beautiful narratives. He has 23 short story collections, one collections of essays and a novel published to his credit. Shri Saikia has written in major national newspapers like The Times of India, The Economic Times, The Hindu, The Indian Express, The Economic Times, Business Standard on different issues. He is a highly acclaimed dramatist with 5 plays to his credit and has scripted and directed two television films. Presently Shri Saikia is a member in both Academic and Executive boards of Cultural University, Majuli, Assam.

Apart from being an Adjunct Professor in Cotton University Shri Saikia is invited as visiting speaker to speak on various topics of literature, economics, ethics and governance, social innovation in a number of prominent institutes both in India and abroad like INSEAD(Singapore), Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy(National University of Singapore), Indian Institutes Of Management(Ahmadabad, Lucknow), Indian School Of Business(Hyderabad), Indian Institute of Public Administration(Delhi), Institute of Economic Growth(Delhi), Indian Institute of Mass communications, Tezpur University ,TISS, etc. Shri Saikia is also a member in the Board of Directors in Assam Electronic Development Corporation and in the Rural Technology Application Group(RuTAG) in IIT, Guwahati.

John Stratton Hawley

John Stratton Hawley informally, Jack is Claire Tow Professor of Religion at Barnard College, Columbia University. His most recent books on India’s bhakti traditions are A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement (Harvard, 2015), Sur’s Ocean
(with Kenneth Bryant, Harvard, 2015), and a poem-by-poem commentary called Into Sur’s Ocean (Harvard Oriental Series, 2016). In the last chapter of Surdas: Poet, Singer, Saint (Primus, 2018), “An Afterlife in Art,” he changes medium, moving from text to miniature
painting. Jack has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fulbright-Nehru Fellow, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Jack Hawley’s reflections on Kabir both his poetry and his life story appear in Songs of the Saints of India (with Mark Juergensmeyer, Oxford, 2004) and in Three Bhakti Voices (Oxford, 2012). Recently he asked “Can There Be a Vaishnava Kabir?” (Studies in History, 2016) and wondered whether Kabir really belongs to the fifteenth century, as most people say, or should rather be situated in the sixteenth. Of course, Kabir also belongs to our own time, and Jack has been interested to see how Kabir comes across to English speakers living in places like the United States. He is a great admirer of Linda Hess’s translations, but he has also tucked himself away at the back of Robert Bly’s much-read Kabir: Ecstatic Poems (Beacon, 2006) in an afterword called “Kabir and the Transcendental Bly.” As for present-day India, it is the subject of Krishna’s Playground: Vrindavan in the 21st Century, published earlier this year by Oxford University Press, Delhi.

Nishi Chawla

As an academician and a writer, Nishi Chawla has six collections of poetry, nine plays, two screenplays and novels, to her credit.
She holds a Ph. D. in English from The George Washington University, USA and has also done a two year post doctoral study at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. After teaching in various reputed institutions like Delhi University, India and the University of Maryland, she is now on the faculty of Thomas Edison State University, New Jersey, USA. Her plays get staged both in USA and in India.

Nirupama Dutt

Nirupama Dutt is a poet, journalist, and translator of many seasons. She received the Punjabi Akademi, Delhi, award for her collection of Punjabi poems, ‘Ik Nadi Sanwali Jahi’. She writes in English, Punjabi and occasionally in Hindi. Her recent works include the biography of Punjab’s Dalit icon, ‘The Ballad of Bant Singh’ and translation into English of Gulzar’s anthology of poetry, ‘Pluto’. She lives and works in Chandigarh.

Nina Kanter

British soprano Nina Kanter is a faculty member at KM Music Conservatory in Chennai, where she is a lecturer in western classical voice, music history and musicianship. Nina is the founder of vocal ensemble Vox Madras, and India’s first Art Song Festival, which launched in 2020. Winner of second prize in the 2018 North International Music Competition, Nina is a Britten-Pears Young Artist, an Opera Prelude Artist and was an ENOA Artist at Teatr Wielki, Polish National Opera.

Opera highlights include Norma in Bellini’s Norma for RAM Vocal Faculty Opera Scenes; Santuzza in Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana for Hampstead Garden Opera (nominee: Best Opera Production, Off West End Theatre Awards) and for London’s Italian Cultural Institute, and Tatyana in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin for Cambridge University. In recital, highlights include performances of Slavic song at the Aldeburgh Festival and Schubert lieder with pianist James Cheung for the Oxford Lieder Festival.

Nina received her MA from the Royal Academy of Music in 2018, where she was awarded Distinction and the Grabowsky Connell Prize. During her studies Nina was a Josephine Baker Trust Artist and a prizewinner in the Joan Chissell Schumann Lieder Prize. She has trained with English National Opera, with Lyric Opera Studio Weimar and with the Glyndebourne Opera Academy. Previously Nina read Music at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where she was awarded first class honours and the Sir Rudolph Peters’ Prize for Music.

Nandini Varma

She is a poet and educator based in Mumbai. She co-founded Airplane Poetry Movement in 2014 under which she has conducted several performance poetry workshops in schools, colleges and performance spaces across the country. She was awarded a place in the list of Forbes Asia 30 Under 30, class of 2019.

Mrigaa Sethi

Born in Delhi and raised in Bangkok, Mrigaa Sethi is a queer editor, poet and storyteller. She received her MFA in poetry from New York University and has since performed at and moderated for literary platforms in the US, Thailand and Singapore. Her poems have appeared in Seneca Review, ep;phany, Folio, The Bangkok Post and elsewhere. She currently lives in Singapore with her wife and two cats.

Michelle Green

Michelle Green is a UK-based writer and editor with an immigrant working class background, working in poetry, short fiction, spoken word and hybrid non-fiction. Their debut collection of short stories – Jebel Marra (Comma Press, 2015) – was nominated for a number of national and international awards, and they are now working on a second collection: a map of sea-level stories based on Hayling Island.
Michelle’s work explores the hollow spaces inside so much of the public discourse around class and gender, and their ongoing work on disability aesthetics was featured at the Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters 2019. They recently co- edited an anthology of work by writers with invisible disabilities (Crocus Books) and the forthcoming TransBareAll anthology of writing and art by transgender and non-binary artists. More at www.michellegreen.co.uk

Mazhar Tirmazi

A committed and experienced journalist and creative writer. Author of 5 poetry books, playwright, linguist and columnist. His areas of expertise include News Editor,Creative Writer,Play Write, columnist ,Poet and Literary Critic. He is a professional TV Producer
Responsible for introducing young talent musicians and artists. He has written scripts for Awaz International and Watan Weekend Newspaper – London. Personal works of poetry included ‘Thandi Bhubul’ (Cold Ashes), ‘Jagda sufna’ (Dream of awakening) ‘Kaya Kagad’ and many more. Coming from a punjabi background, he is fluent in English , Urdu and Hindi.

Manal Younus

From Eritrea, Manal Younus is an Australian based freelance storyteller. She speaks on issues including youth leadership, migration, racism and interculturalism, along with facilitating writing, performance, public speaking and awareness workshops in schools, community groups and professional environments. The young artist has participated in multiple national competitions and has been successful in securing the position of being the – Finalist for Channel 9 Young Achiever Award in Arts and Culture, Finalist as Young South Australian of the Year, Finalist of Governors Multicultural Award and Australian Poetry Slam National Finalist. She has gone on to release multiple publications, namely, ‘Reap’, ‘Growing Up African in Australia’ , ‘Cordite Review April 2019’ and ‘Dubnium’.

Jennifer Elise Foerster

Jennifer Elise Foerster is the author of two books of poetry, Bright Raft in the Afterweather (2018) and Leaving Tulsa (2013), both from University of Arizona Press. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford, she received her PhD in English and Literary Arts from the University of Denver and has been the recipient of a 2017 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship and a Lannan Foundation Residency Fellowship. A member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, she lives in San Francisco.

*Photo Credit – Richard Blue Cloud Castaneda

Tanaya Winder

Tanaya Winder is Duckwater Shoshone, Southern Ute, and Pyramid Lake Paiute, and grew up in Ignacio, Colorado, on the Southern Ute Reservation. She received her BA in English from Stanford University and her MFA from the University of New Mexico. Her debut poetry collection, Words Like Love, was published in 2015, followed by Why Storms Are Named After People and Bullets Remain Nameless in 2017. She cofounded As/Us, and founded Dream Warriors, an Indigenous artist management company. She has taught at Stanford University, and the University of New Mexico, and is the director of the University of Colorado Boulder’s Upward Bound program.

*Photo Credit – Viki Eagle

Illya Sumanto

Illya Sumanto is spoken word artist-educator who has worked and produced shows with youth in Asia, Europe, and Africa. In 2018, she received an award from University Malaya’s Education Faculty for her role in championing Spoken Word in education in Malaysia. She then moved to Senegal to teach slam poetry and organized Senegal’s first Youth Poetry Slam in 2019. Soon she founded her own school, Empathy For Youth, that specializes in teaching empathy and emotional literacy through therapeutic art, mindfulness, and poetry.

She won the 2016 Ubud Writers Readers Festival’s Grand Slam in Bali, recently hosted the 100 Thousand Poets For Change Global Reading 2020, and premiered her solo spoken word show, “Conversation About Twerking, Deportation, and Communist Education” in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Raphael d’Abdon

Dr Raphael d’Abdon is a writer, scholar, spoken word poet, editor and translator. He holds an MA in Arts from the University of Uppsala (Sweden) and a PhD in Linguistics and Literary Studies from the University of Udine (Italy).

He is the author of three collections of poems, sunnyside nightwalk (Geko, 2013), salt water (Poetree Publishing, 2016) and the bitter herb (The Poets Printery, 2018), and he has read his poetry in South Africa, Nigeria, Somaliland, Italy, Sweden and the USA, and his poems are published in journals, magazines and anthologies in South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Malawi, Singapore, Palestine, India, Italy, Canada, USA and UK. Along with being South Africa’s representative of AHN (Africa Haiku Network), and a member of ZAPP (The South African Poetry Project) and IPP (International Poetry Project), he is Honorary Research Fellow at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC, Pretoria).

Nurduran Duman

Apart from her passion as an Ocean Engineer and Naval Architect, Nurduran Duman is a Turkish poet, playwright and a columnist in one of the most prestigious newspaper of Turkiye, Cumhuriyet. A member of the Turkish PEN, her famous writings include ‘Yenilgi Oyunu’, the 2005 Cemal Sureya Poetry Award winner, ‘Semi Circle’ and “Steps of Istanbul” that was awarded as “The Poetry Collection of the Year of the Second Boao International Poetry Award”. Nurduran featured in the #internationalwomensday2018 (#IWD18) Modern Poetry in Translation list of ten women poets in translation from all over the World in 2018.

Natalie Ann Holborrow

This explicit artist is the multi award-winning Welsh writer whose debut collection, ‘And Suddenly You Find Yourself’ (Parthian, 2017) was listed as one of Wales Arts Review’s ‘Best of 2017’ and was launched at the International Kolkata Literary Festival. Her second poetry collection, ‘Small’, is to be published by Parthian in 2020. She is editor of the prestigious ‘Cheval’ anthology and is also a curator for the ‘Just Another Poet’ project, a new virtual poetry exchange showcasing work across different cultures worldwide.

Dr Manu Baligar

Dr Manu Baligar, currently President of the Kannada Sahitya Parishat is an extremely renowned figure in both Karnataka and nationally! He has won several awards for his contribution to the Arts and Literature.
He has authored 29 books of short stories, poems, essays and biographies. Some of his short stories and poems have become textbooks and references in Karnataka and Maharashtra. In his earlier roles he was Commissioner Schools and colleges, Commissioner, Kannada & Culture,Government of Karnataka. He was CEO, Roerich and Devikarani Roerich, Estate Board.

Mahdi Mansour

Mahdi Mansour is one of the leading poets in Lebanon and the Arabic world, a quantum physicist and a public speaker in the fields of literature, science and education. His poetry is known for its’ authenticity and modernity; he tackles today’s social conflicts and concerns in a creative language and a distinguished Arabic poetic rhythm. His talent and creativity were idolized on more than one occasion by great poets in the region. Nevertheless, his interest in sciences especially Quantum physics, equalled his passion for the literature and he received his Doctorate degree in Molecular Physics in 2015.

He won several prizes for his poetry collection and represented Lebanon in many poetry festivals and educational forums in recent years

Madhu Raghuvendra

Madhu Raghuvendra is a poet, curator and social development practitioner. He is the founder of Poetry Couture, a movement which creates free spaces for poetry in many cities of India. His debut book of poems, Make Me Some Love To Eat has been well-received nationwide. The second, Stick No Bills, was awarded the Best Poetry Manuscript Award by Lit O Fest, Mumbai. His works have been featured in literary journals like Muse India, Sunflower Collective and Erothanatos. He was also shortlisted for the Humphrey Hubert Fellowship Award.

Huzaifa Pandit

Huzaifa Pandit is the author of ‘‘Green is the Colour of Memory’ which won the first edition of Rhythm Divine Poets Chapbook Contest 2017. His poems alternate between themes of despair, defiance, resistance and compliance as they seek to make sense of a world where his identity is outlawed. Pursuing his PhD in “Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Agha Shahid Ali and Mahmoud Darwish – Poetics of Resistance”, made him realise his passion. His writings have been published in various journals like Indian Literature, PaperCuts, Life and Legends, JLA India and many more.

Hajinal Csilla

Born in 1992 in Slovakia, Csilla studied comparative literature in Budapest. She is currently living in Istanbul and is the co-founder of the Asteroid Antelopes. She published her first poetry collection in 2016 titled “Why Are We Afraid of the Insane” for which she got awarded the Makói Medáliák Award which won the best poetry debut book of the year. Her poems have been translated into English, Slovakian, Turkish, Azeri and Serbian. She is currently working on a verse novel with a scholarship from Kultminor , a cultural fund for minorities.

G Akila

Akila, being a versatile and proficient writer, writes free verse, haiku and haibun in English. She has read and conducted workshops at various writers’ meets in Hyderabad, and her work has been published in anthologies and various reputed online and print journals. She has presented her poetry at the Goa Arts and Literature Festival (2016), TEDx at VNR VJIET College, Hyderabad (2017), and Sahitya Akademi’s Young Writers Festival (2017) in Jammu. She is an active member of the Twin City Poetry Club, Hyderabad. Her poem ‘Stains’ is one of the ten poems shortlisted for “The Womaninc Sakhi Award 2018”

Cedar Sigo

Cedar Sigo was raised on the Suquamish Reservation in the Pacific Northwest. He studied at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute. Sigo is the author of Wave Books, Language Arts, and Stranger in Town (City Lights, 2010). He is also the editor of There You Are: Interviews, Journals, and Ephemera, on Joanne Kyger. Of his work, Ron Silliman writes, “Cedar Sigo is a Frank O’Hara for the 21st century: witty, erudite, serious, with a terrific ear and eye for the minutest details, at home in the world of the arts.” He has taught at St. Mary’s College and Naropa University. He lived in San Francisco, California for many years and now lives in Lofall, Washington.

Sonnet Mondal

Sonnet Mondal is an Indian poet, photographer, editor, and author of Karmic Chanting (Copper Coin 2018) and Ink and Line (Dhauli Books 2018). Founder director of Chair Poetry Evenings – Kolkata’s International Poetry Festival, Mondal is an international coordinator of Lyrikline (Haus für Poesie, Berlin). He has been a guest editor for Poetry at Sangam, India, and Words Without Borders, New York. He has read at literary festivals in Macedonia, Ireland, Turkey, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Germany, Italy, Ukraine, Hungary, and Slovakia. His writings have appeared in publications across Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and Australia. He has been translated in over 15 languages.

Dr Guillermo Rodríguez Martin

Dr Guillermo Rodríguez Martin is the founding director of Casa de la India, a pioneering cultural centre in Spain, which has become the model for India’s cultural diplomacy abroad. He has researched AK Ramanujan’s work and legacy since the early 1990s in India and later scrutinized the AKR Papers at the University of Chicago for his PhD dissertation on the poetics and aesthetics of Ramanujan (University of Kerala and University of Valladolid, Spain, 2006). He is the author of When Mirrors Are Windows: A View of A.K. Ramanujan’s Poetics (OUP, 2016) and has recently co-edited with Krishna Ramanujan Journeys. A Poet’s Diary (Penguin India, 2019), a careful selection of the personal diaries, journals and autobiographical writings of A.K. Ramanujan.

Tacey Atsitty

Tacey Atsitty is Diné, Tsénahabiłnii (Sleep Rock People) and born for Ta’neeszahnii (Tangle People). Her maternal grandfather is Tábąąhí (Water Edge People) and her paternal grandfather is Hashk’ áánhadzóhí (Yucca Fruit Strung-Out-In-ALine People). Atsitty earned her MFA from Cornell University. Her awards and fellowships include a Truman Capote creative writing fellowship and the Philip Freund Prize. Her first poetry collection is Rain Scald.

Shri.Chiranjiv Singh

Retd. IAS officer, Shri.Chiranjiv Singh, is an eclectic man of letters, often known as the ‘Renaissance man’ owing to his multiple interests and knowledge of art, literature, music and a dozen languages. He worked as Development Commissioner for Karnataka. He has interests in education, and rural development and has been a great supporter for the organisation since the inception. He has served as Ambassador of India to UNESCO in France for five years. He is the Chairman of the Board of the ArtMantram trust.

Robert Hill

Robert Hill is an Oneida poet, fiction writer, essayist, and scholar. Her poetry collections include Star Quilt (1984, 2001), Her Fierce Resistance (1993), Philadelphia Flowers (1996), and Cicadas: New and Selected Poetry (2013). She edited an issue of About Place (2014); “Reading the Streets” (fiction) appeared in Narrative Witness: Indigenous People Australia–United States (2016). She is a professor of English and American Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and is an affiliated faculty member of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.

Pervin Saket

Pervin Saket is the author of the novel ‘Urmila’ and of a collection of poetry ‘A Tinge of Turmeric’. Her novel has been adapted for the stage, featuring classical Indian dance forms of Kathak, Bharatnatyam and Odissi. Her work has been featured in ‘The Indian Quarterly’, ‘The Joao-Roque Literary Journal’, ‘Paris Lit Up’, ‘The Madras Courier’, ‘The Punch Magazine’, ‘Cold Noon’, ‘Earthen Lamp Journal’, ‘Breaking the Bow’, and others. She is co-founder of the annual Dum Pukht Writers’ Workshop held at Pondicherry, India.

Elizabeth Kuruvilla

Elizabeth Kuruvilla is Executive Editor, Ebury Publishing & Vintage Publishing, Penguin Random House, where she commissions non-fiction and literary fiction titles. She was previously a journalist working with leading national newspapers and magazines such as The Hindu, Mint, Hindustan Times, The Indian Express and Open magazine. She’s been the books and arts editor at several of these publications, and was also the editor of the international art newspaper Blouin ArtInfo.

Nationality:Indian

Eleni Sikelianos

Eleni Sikelianos was born and grew up in California, and has lived in New York, Paris, Athens, Colorado, and now, Providence, where she teaches Literary Arts at Brown University. She is the author of nine books of poetry, most recently What I Knew (Nightboat,2019), and two hybrid memoirs (The Book of Jon, City Lights, andYou Animal Machine, Coffee House Press). Her work has been translated into over a dozen languages, and she has been the happy recipient of many awards, including two from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Fulbright Fellowship, The National Poetry Series, New York Foundation for the Arts, Princeton University’s Seeger Fellowship, and the Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative American Writing. Long an activist, she has taught in prisons, homeless shelters, and public schools. Her work takes in many concerns, and has often been particularly focused in ecopoetics.

Deborah A. Miranda

Deborah A. Miranda is an enrolled member of the Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen Nation of the Greater Monterey Bay Area in California. Her mixed-genre book Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir (Heyday 2013), received the 2015 PEN-Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, a Gold Medal from the Independent Publishers Association, and was short-listed for the William Saroyan Literary Award. She is also the author of four poetry collections (Indian Cartography, The Zen of La Llorona, Raised by Humans, and the forthcoming Altar for Broken Things. She is co editor of Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature.

Deborah lives in Lexington, Virginia with her wife Margo and a variety of rescue dogs. She is Thomas H. Broadus, Jr. Professor of English at W&L University in Virginia, where she teaches literature of the margins and creative writing.

Nationality: American

Email id: deborah.a.miranda@gmail.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deborah.miranda

Boverianda Nanjamma and Chinnappa

Nanjamma has a Master’s in Statistics from Madras University, and a postgraduate degree from the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. She was a visiting Fellow at Cambridge University, UK, and has a Doctorate from Mangalore University. She pursued her career in Statistics in various capacities in Kolkata, Chennai and Canada and was a Statistical Consultant in national and international agencies.

Chinnappa has a B.E., Mechanical Engineering from the College of Engineering, Guindy, Madras University, and a Master’s degree in Industrial Engineering from Northwestern University, USA. He has worked in India, Sweden, Germany and Canada in various positions
including directorship and consultancy.

After retirement, the couple dedicated themselves to the preservation of the culture of the Kodavas. Their English translation of the Pattole Palame, written by Nadikerianda Chinnappa (1924), was published by Rupa &amp; Co., in 2003. The second edition of the book, to be published by Mangalore University, is forthcoming.

Ainmanes of Kodagu, their study of the ainmanes (ancestral homes) in Kodagu, was published by Niyogi Books in 2014. They are currently working on a website that contains information and photographs of the nearly 800 ainmanes covered in their fieldwork.

Nationality: Indian

Annie Chandy Mathew

Annie Chandy Mathew (former) Professor and Head of the Department of English and Communicative English, Mount Carmel College is a woman of varied interests. She taught at Mount Carmel College for 23 years and set up the UGC sponsored Communicative English
Course there. She was also a popular resource person and motivational speaker in many schools, colleges and leadership camps conducted by the Rotary and Lions Clubs. She has presented several papers on Literature and pedagogical strategies at seminars hosted by the British Council and Bangalore University, and papers on Solar Cooking at the NREL Denver and the Department of Physics, University of Chicago. She has conducted workshops on Creative Writing at the ECC, Media Centre and St Agnes College, Mangalore.

Passionately interested in quiz, she has compiled and conducted an All-India Quiz on Renewable Energy and an audio-visual quiz to mark 400 years of Shakespeare. As an editor and publisher for eight years, she organised and conducted annual short story and
poetry competitions and compiled several anthologies of original poetry, including Heartbeat, Peacocks Cry, Mosaic and I Me Myself, and collections of short stories A Cup of Chai, The Shrinking Woman, Vanilla Desires and The Curse of the Bird. She was also the Editor of the revised New Horizon Series for Macmillan India.

Her own publications include Fireflies in the Dark (a collection of short stories), Sunshine Meals (an introduction to solar cooking) and Because We Care (a handbook for parents of preschool children). In addition to several articles in academic journals and newspapers, she has published interviews with Sir Stephen Spender the legendary poet, playwright and critic and Alistair Niven, critic and expert on Commonwealth Literature. She would like to be remembered as a teacher of English Literature especially poetry, which
keeps her grounded and gives her wings.

Aljaž Koprivnikar

Aljaž Koprivnikar (1987) poet and literary critic. His poetry debut Anatomy was published in 2019 with the Greek publishing house Vakxikon, and in the same year by the Centre for Slovenian Literature. Otherwise, his poems have been published in various literary journals or anthologies and translated into English, Czech, Greek, Croatian, German, Macedonian, Portuguese, Serbian and Spanish. Currently, he is living between Ljubljana, Berlin, Prague and Lisbon. To the first he returns to Slovene literature and to organise the International Critics’ Symposium The Art of Criticism, in the second he prepares an Anthology of young Slovene literature, in the third he is the program director of the International Literary Festival Microfestival and in the last he often teaches at the Faculdade de Letras.

A.N.D. Haksar

A.N.D.Haksar is a well-known translator of Sanskrit classics. A long-time career diplomat, he also served as India’s High Commissioner in Kenya and Seychelles, Minister in the United States, and Ambassador in Portugal andYugoslavia. His twenty translations from Sanskrit include the Raghuvamsam and Ritusamharam of Kalidasa, apart from Hitopadesa, Kama Sutra, Three Hundred Verses of Bhartrihari, and Chanakya Niti, all published as Penguin Classics.
Chanakya Niti
This is an ancient collection of still-quoted verses of observation and advice on life and living. They are attributed to the sage Chanakya, who is also associated in history with the foundation of the Maurya empire under Chandragupta, over 2000 years ago.
Three Hundred Verses

In Sanskrit this work is Trishati, or three hundred verses. Their author, Bhartrihari, is regarded as one of the foremost poets in Sanskrit, who lived about 1500 years ago. The verses are about life, love and renunciation, and still much translated and anthologized.

Nationality: Indian

LeAnne Howe

LeAnne Howe, Choctaw, writes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and screenplays. She is the Edison Distinguished Professor at the University of Georgia. Howe is a United States Artists (USA) Ford Fellow as well as the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas, an American Book Award, and an Oklahoma Book Award. She was also a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar to Jordan. Her most recent collection of poetry is Savage Conversations (2019).

Nationality: American

Email id: ileannehowe@gmail.com

Chris Agee

Chris Agee is a poet, essayist, photographer and editor. His third collection of poems, Next to Nothing, was shortlisted in Britain for the 2009 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, funded by the British Poet Laureate. He recently edited Balkan Essays, the sixth volume of Hubert Butler’s essays. His fourth collection, Blue Sandbar Moon, appeared in 2018. He is Editor of Irish Pages, Ireland’s premier literary journal, and The Irish Pages Press. He lives in Belfast, and divides his time between Ireland, Scotland and Croatia.

On Blue Sandbar Moon:

“I think it is a monumental work ranging across both the European landscape and the deepest inner worlds.”

David Park, novelist

Nationality: Irish and American

Twitter: @irishpages

Facebook: Chris Agee & Irish Pages: A Journal of Contemporary Writing

Sanket Mhatre

A renowned poet, lyricist and curator, Sanket Mhatre started his literary career by assisting actor & poet Kishor Kadam in creating Kavyotsav 2001: the first bilingual poetry festival featuring some of the most prominent voices in Marathi and Kannada Literature. Multilingual Poetry & Performances fascinated him and years later, he created Crossover Poems in collaboration with The Poetry Club & Goethe Institut Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai. Crossover Poems is a multilingual poetry reading session featuring Marathi, Hindi & English Poets. Sanket Mhatre has been the first poet to represent Marathi Literature at Vagdevi Litfest in Orissa and at Jaipur Literature Festival 2019. He was also invited to read his work at the 93rd Akhil Bhartiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan and Goa Arts & Literature Festival 2019. He has curated & created several poetry reading sessions such as क, that brought unpublished work of illustrious poets through public readings, I (Don’t) have a dark side, प्रिय आईस, and has been a featured poet in numerous poetry recitation shows held in Mumbai and different parts of the country. He’s also acted in a documentary, produced by Films Division on the life of Bhalchandra Pendharkar – a theatre veteran. Besides poetry, Sanket has also penned the title song of ‘Radha Hi Bawari’ which was awarded the best song at Zee Alpha Gaurav Puraskar. He’s also penned lyrics for Bhagyalakshmi, another daily soap aired on Zee TV Marathi. Currently, while dabbling in poetry & curation, Sanket has been writing two columns titled, ‘Kavadse’ and ‘Mere Kavi Dost’ for the renowned Marathi daily, Lokmat.

Nationality: Indian

Facebook: www.facebook.com/sanketmhatre

Twitter handle: insanekeeda

Insta handle: carelesswriter

Anthony Tao

Anthony Tao’s poetry has appeared in journals such as Prairie Schooner, The Cortland Review, Borderlands, Rattle, Frontier, Michigan Quarterly Review, Asian Cha, etc. He has a “poetry x music” collaboration with the classical guitarist Liane Halton; their latest album, Here to Stay, can be found on poetryxmusic.bandcamp.com.

Angela Gegg

Angela Gegg is a published Poet and Spoken word artist. She has published two books to date. Her first book was published in 2006, “The Light, the Dark, and Everything in Between”, followed by “Artist Confessions” in 2009. She is also a Poet in the World Poetry Directory for UNESCO. Angela was invited to participate in The Other Voices International Project, a cyber-anthology that erases the boundaries of nations, ethnicity, religions, cultures, and age to present some of the world’s best poetry (Volume 34, The Pages In Between) after the success of her first book which was inducted by the then Prime Minister, Said Musa, at the Image Factory in Belize.

Amarjit Chandan

Amarjit Chandan (1946, Nairobi) has lived and worked in London since 1980. He has published eight collections of poetry, eight volumes of selected poems and five books of essays in Punjabi. Being one of the ten poets selected for the National Poetry Day in 2001, he himself has edited and translated over thirty anthologies of poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction by Brecht, Neruda and John Berger, among others, in Punjabi. Chandan received the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004 from the Government of the Punjab, India, the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006 from the Panjabis in Britain, All-Party Parliamentary Group, London and Anãd Poetry Award, India in 2009. His work has been translated into many languages including Arabic, Brazilian-Portuguese, Greek, Italian, Slovene and Turkish.

Nationality: Indian

Aditi Angiras

Aditi Angiras is a poet and artist based in New Delhi. She is the founder of Bring Back The Poets, a queer collective of poets and performers. She is also the co-editor of The World That Belongs to Us: An Anthology of Queer Poetry from South Asia (HarperCollins India) that’s just come out this June.

Nationality: Indian

Twitter: @AditiAngiras (https://mobile.twitter.com/aditiangiras?lang=en)

Tenzin Tsundue

Tenzin Tsundue is a poet, writer and activist born to a Tibetan refugee family in India. Having done a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and gone on to procure two masters in English and Literature and Philosophy, respectively, he has gained recognition for writing four books – Crossing the Border, Kora: stories and poems, Semshook: essays on Tibetan freedom struggle, Tsengol: stories and poems of resistance and won the first ever Picador-Outlook Non-Fiction Contest 2002. This self published author is frequently invited as a guest speaker to Festivals and Conferences to speak on topics such as Exile Writing, Writing and Resistance, Languages of Protest, Buddhism and Activism; Talking Culture, Identity and Politics.

Nationality : Indian

Instagram : tenzin_tsundue_tibet

(https://instagram.com/tenzin_tsundue_tibet?igshid=19m46qt4amzwv)

Facebook : Tenzin Tsundue

(https://m.facebook.com/TenTsundue/)

Twitter E : Tenzin Tsundue

(https://mobile.twitter.com/tenzintsundue)

Shoma Bakre

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