Speakers

Aijaz Ahmad

Aijaz Ahmad is a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature and Critical Theory at University of California. He also serves on the editorial board of Left Word, and as Senior Editorial Consultant for the news magazine Frontline. He writes in English, Urdu and, much less often, Hindi. He has authored Ghazals of Ghalib; In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures; Lineages of the Present; Globalisation and Culture: Offensives of the Far Right; and Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Imperialism of Our Times. His writings are frequently translated into several Indian languages as well as other languages including Chinese, Turkish, Portuguese, Korean, French, and Arabic.
He will deliver the Inaugural lecture titled The Languages of a Union at ILF Samanvay on November 26, 2015 at 06:00 pm.

CHENNAI,18/01/2015: A.R. Venkatachalapathy at the Lit For Life Function on Sunday.. Photo: R. Ragu

Amit Pasricha

Amit Pasricha is one of the world’s foremost names in the field of Panoramic Photography. Pasricha’s collector’s edition, The Monumental India Book was acclaimed as one of the top 10 coffee-table books of the world in 2008. Its sequel The Sacred India Book, won the prestigious German Photo Book Award in 2014. His works have been exhibited in India, New York, London, Berlin, Minsk, Prague and Sofia. They also form part of several private collections. His current projects include India at Home, a panoramic book on people in their domestic spaces; One India Many Lives, a book on Indian dualities and, The Forgotten Monuments.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 29, 2015 at 12:00 pm.

Ashok Vajpeyi

Ashok Vajpeyi is a Hindi poet-critic, translator, editor, culture-activist, and a former civil servant. He has served as the chairman of Lalit Kala Akademi; and authored thirteen books of poetry, seven of criticism in Hindi and three books on art in English. He has translated the works of four major poets of Poland, Czeslaw Milosz, W. Szymborska, Z. Herbert and T. T. Rozewicz into Hindi. He has been awarded ‘The Officer’s Cross of Merit of the Republic of Poland’ by the President of Republic of Poland, and the French Govt. has recognised his work with the award, ‘Officier De L’Ordre Des Arts Et Des Lettres’.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 27, 2015 at 03:00 pm and 06:30 pm respectively.

Bhuchung D. Sonam

Bhuchung D. Sonam was born in Tibet. In exile, he studied at the Tibetan Children’s Village School in Dharamshala, a town in northern India. He has published three poetry books, including Conflict of Duality and Songs of the Arrow; a non-fictionYak Horns: Notes on Contemporary Tibetan Writing, Music, Film and Politics; and edited Muses in Exile: An Anthology of Tibetan Poetry. Bhuchung is also a translator whose works include Mindful Education: Theory and Practice; My Life My Culture; Twenty Years of My Life in China’s Death Camp; and A Handbook for Tibetan Journalists.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 27, 2015 at 11:00 am.

Dharmakirti Sumant

Dharmakirti Sumant is one of the foremost playwrights of the new Marathi experimental theatre. He has been awarded with the Sahitya Academy Youth Award for his book Pani, which includes two plays Pani and Charoo Aro Etyadi. He received the Jayvant Dalvi Award for his play Geli Ekvis Varshe. He was also the recipient of Vinod Doshi Fellowship for his writings in 2009. Some of his other major plays include Logging Out, Something Stupid Like I love You, Amhala Amche, Kholamba, Zade Lavnara Manoos and Natak Nako. Sumant has also written an eight part series Jadyabaddalchi Vyavcchedak Lakshne in the magazine Priya Rasik by Popular Publications.
He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 28, 2015 at 05:30 pm.

Gopal Guru

Gopal Guru teaches at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. His teaching and research focus is Humiliation Studies which combines literature (primarily, Autobiographies) and moral philosophy. He has edited Humiliation: Claims and Context for Oxford University Press in 2009. He has co-authored The Cracked Mirror: An Indian Debate on Experience and Theory with Sundar Sarukkai. He is also writing a sequel to The Cracked Mirror with Sarukkai, tentatively titled The Nature 0f Social: Exploring the phenomenon of Authorless Authority.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 27, 2015 at 12:00 pm.

J. Devika

J. Devika is a feminist researcher and teacher at Centre for Development Studies, Kerala. She has contributed to the history of gender, development, politics, and culture of modern Kerala. She is interested in opening up the boundaries between academic, public and pedagogic discourses; the social sciences and humanities; and English and Malayalam. She actively translates literature and social science between Malayalam and English. She has translated K. R.Meera’s short stories and her novel Hangwoman, the short stories of Sarah Joseph, and the memoirs of Nalini Jameela from Malayalam to English; her translations to Malayalam include writings by Satish Deshpande and Nivedita Menon (forthcoming).

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 29, 2015 at 02:00 pm.

Kannan Sundaram

Kannan Sundaram was proprietor of Kalachuvadu Pathippagam from 1995 to 2010 and is presently the Managing Director and Publisher of Kalachuvadu Publication Private Ltd. He is Editor and Publisher of Kalachuvadu, a monthly journal for culture and politics. Kannan is attempting, through his magazine, to forge an international Tamil identity which is not abrasive, illiberal and separatist. He had co-organised Tamil In 2000, a privately funded International Tamil conference on 20th century Tamil writing. He was part of the International Visitor Leadership Program in 2002 and of the Frankfurt Book Fair Fellowship Program in 2007.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 28, 2015 at 02:00 pm.

Makarand Sathe

Makarand Sathe, an architect by profession, has been writing plays, novels, articles and theatre-history in Marathi for the last three decades. His plays have been performed in many national and international festivals. He has also directed some of his plays. His novels and plays have been translated and published in many languages like Kannada, Hindi, Urdu, English, French and Russian. He is on the panel of selectors for the Pune International Film Festival. His three volume Socio-political History of Marathi theatre was published in Marathi in 2011 and later in English by Oxford University Press.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 28, 2015 at 05:30 pm.

Mayank Shekhar

Mayank Shekhar is a film critic, journalist and author. He was the head of the Features team at Mumbai Mirror and later worked with the features team at Mid Day. He has also served as a National Cultural Editor for Hindustan Times. He wrote for a blog at the Hindustan Times’ website, titled Fad for Thought.

Shekhar is a member of the Central Board of Film Certification. He published a book titled Bombay Talkies in 2006. He received the “Young Achievers Award” from the Indo-American Film Society for his work as a film critic in 2004, and the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism in 2007. He currently runs a cinema website called theW14.com.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 29, 2015 at 11:00 a.m.

Perumal Murugan

Perumal Murugan is a Tamil author, scholar and poet. He has six novels, four collections of short stories and four anthologies of poetry to his credit. He has received numerous awards from the Tamil Nadu government. He is a Tamil Professor at the Government Arts College in Namakkal. His most recent novel, Madhorubhagan, has been translated and published in English as One Part Woman. He has quit writing following protests by certain religious and caste based groups for the alleged misrepresentation of the Kailasanathar, Tiruchengode, in January 2015.

He will be presented with the Samanvay Bhasha Samman on November 28, 2015 at 06:30 pm.

Rakshanda Jalil

Rakhshanda Jalil is a writer, translator and literary historian. She has published over 15 books, including Liking Progress, Loving Change: A Literary History of the Progressive Writers’ Movement in Urdu; A Rebel & Her Cause: The Life and Work of Comrade Rashid Jahan, The Death of Sheherzad & Other Stories by Intizar Husain translated from the Urdu, as well as four edited volumes of short stories. She runs an organization called Hindustani Awaaz, devoted to the popularization of Hindi-Urdu literature and culture, and writes a weekly column for Daily O. She is presently editing a volume of essays on IsmatChughtai for Oxford University Press.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 27, 2015 at 02:00 pm.

A. R. Venkatachalapathy

A.R. Venkatachalapathy

A.R. Venkatachalapathy, historian, author and translator, is Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies. He writes in Tamil and English, and has published widely on the social, cultural and intellectual history of colonial Tamil Nadu. His publications include In Those Days There Was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History, The Province of the Book: Scholars, Scribes, and Scribblers in Colonial Tamil Nadu; and Chennai, Not Madras. He has also published two volumes of classical Tamil poetry in collaboration with M.L. Thangappa. He is the winner of the V.K.R.V. Rao Prize (2007) and is currently writing a biography of Periyar for Penguin.
He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 27, 2015 at 2:00 pm, and on November 28, 2015 at 2:00 pm respectively.

Anuradha Kapur

Anuradha Kapur is a theatre practitioner and former Director of the National School of Drama. She was among the founder members of Vivadi, a working group of painters, musicians, writers and theatre practitioners. She is the author of Actors, Pilgrims & Gods: The Ramlila at Ramnagar. Kapur was a member of the Screening Committee at Doordarshan, at South Asian Theatre Committee as well as the Governing Body of Kamla Nehru College, University of Delhi. She is also a member Arts Network Asia, a peer group of artists and theatre practitioners, managed by Theatre Works, Singapore. She is presently Professor in Direction and Acting at the National School of Drama.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 29, 2015 at 03:00 pm.

Avadhesh Singh

Avadhesh Kumar Singh is Professor and Dean of School of Translation Studies and Training at IGNOU. He was Vice Chancellor, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Open University, Ahmedabad, from 2006-2009. His areas of interest include contemporary literary theory and criticism, theory and practice of translation, interdisciplinary studies, and Indology. He was the British Council Visiting Fellow to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and he has authored 15 books including Ramayana through Ages, Voices of Woman: Gargi to Gangasati, Interventions: Critical and Literary Discourses, and Revisiting Literature, Criticism and Aesthetics in India.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 27, 2015 at 03:00 pm.

Bulbul Sharma

Bulbul Sharma is a painter and a writer. Her works form part of the collections at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Lalit Kala Akademi and Chandigarh Museum among others. She has authored several books which include The Perfect Woman, Anger of Aubergines, Devi, Eating Women, Telling Tales; Now that I am Fifty, Tailor of Giripul and, Grey Hornbills at Dusk. Her books have been translated into Italian, French, German, Chinese, Spanish and Finnish. She has also written books for children. She conducts Storypainting workshops for children with special needs and is a founder-member of the NGO, Sannidhi.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 27, 2015 at 03:00 pm.

Dolonchampa Chakraborty

Dolonchampa Chakraborty has been actively involved in the dissemination of Bengali language beyond the borders of Indian subcontinent as an active translator, editor and interpreter. She recently translated a short story titled Black Magic by Amar Mitra. Her poetry anthology, Eve, Ekti Daalimekheter Bigyapon was published during the 2015 Calcutta Book fair. She is currently the Executive Editor of online Bengali literary magazine, www.bookpocket.net, which is trying to unite Bengali speaking diaspora of divided Bengal. Currently, she is working on the writings of the Border poets from around the world.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 28, 2015 at 04:30 pm.

Hartosh Singh Bal

Hartosh Singh Bal is the political editor of The Caravan Magazine. As a journalist, he wrote for The Indian Express, Tehelka, Mail Today, and was the political editor of OPEN Magazine. He is also the author of Waters Close Over Us: A Journey Along the Narmada and the co-author of A Certain Ambiguity: A Mathematical Novel which won the Best Professional Book in Mathematics Award from the Association of American Publishers. He is a trained engineer and mathematician.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 26, 2015 at 07:00 pm.

Jerry Pinto

Jerry Pinto is the author of Em and the Big Hoom for which he won the Hindu Lit for Life Award and the Crossword Award. It is being translated into Marathi, Italian and French. He has also written Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb for which he won the National Award. He translated Sachin Kundalkar’s first novel Cobalt Blue which was shortlisted for the DSC Fiction Prize. With Garima Gupta, he crafted a graphic novel When Crows are White, which was shortlisted for the Crossword Award for Children’s Fiction. He has just finished translating Daya Pawar’s autobiography, Baluta.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 27, 2015 at 12:00 pm, and November 28, 2015 at 12:00 pm.

Krishna Prasad

Krishna Prasad is an Indian journalist and Editor-in-Chief of the national news magazine Outlook. He has also worked for the Sunday Observer and the Times of India. He was one of the two journalists who broke the cricket match-fixing scandal. He also founded the world’s first daily technology newspaper in 2000. Prasad has edited three books; taught journalism on three continents; publishes two globally acclaimed blogs, including one on the media; and is often seen on Indian news TV. He has lectured at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore; the National Defence College, New Delhi; and the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 26, 2015 at 07:00 pm.

Manabi Bandyopadhyay

Manabi Bandyopadhyay was associate professor in Bengali at Vivekananda Satobarshiki Mahavidyalaya and became the first openly transgender College Principle of India when she took charge as principal of Krishnagar Women’s College, West Bengal, in June, 2015. She finished her PhD., which was on transgenders, in 2005. She also published the first Bengali Transgender Magazine in 1995, Ob-Manab, which literally means sub-human, titled as a comment on the way transgenders are perceived by society. She has also authored a novel, Endless Bondage, about the hijra community.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 29, 2015 at 02:00 pm.

Meena Alexander

Meena Alexander is a poet whose works include the PEN Award winner Illiterate Heart, the critically acclaimed memoir Fault Lines, and two novels. She has published two books of essays on poetics, two academic studies and edited Indian Love Poems. Her poems have been widely translated and set to music, most recently by the Swedish composer Jan Sandstrom. Her awards include those from the Guggenheim Foundation, Fulbright Foundation, Arts Council of England and the Rockefeller Foundation for a residency at Bellagio. She is Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College, CUNY. Her eighth book of poetry Atmospheric Embroidery has just been published.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 27, 2015 at 06:30 pm.

Priya Sarukkai

Priya Sarukkai Chabria is a poet, novelist, essayist and translator. Awarded by the Indian Government for Outstanding Contribution to Literature, her work has been translated into six languages and published in anthologies and on websites. Her most recent book with Ravi Shankar, The Autobiography of a Goddess, is a translation of the ninth-century Tamil mystic Andal’s songs. She also has a passion for Miniature paintings and Cinema. She has collaborated with cinema artists and classical Indian dancers. She edits Poetry at Sangam.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 29, 2015 at 04:30 pm.

Ramkumar Mukhopadhyay

Ramkumar Mukhopadhyay is a Bengali fictionist with seven novels, ten collections of short stories, two books of criticism and two travelogues to his credit. His books have been translated into various languages including English, Hindi, Rajasthani, Malayalam, Tamil, and Oriya. He has received Somen Chanda Award of Paschim Banga Bangla Akademi, Bankimchandra Smriti Puraskar of the Government of West Bengal, Ananda Puraskar of the Ananda Bazar Patrika, Katha Award, and Sarat Puraskar among others. Presently he is a member of the Executive Board of the Sahitya Akademi, President of Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad and Director of the Visva-Bharati Publishing Department.
He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 28, 2015 at 04:30 pm.

Aman Nath

Aman Nath is a historian by education and the co-author of fourteen illustrated books on art, history, architecture, corporate biography and photography, two of which have won National Awards. Changing Skylines, his latest book, is a corporate and family history of the Shapoorji Pallonji group, one of India’s largest building conglomerates. Aman Nath is involved in the restoration of India’s unlisted architectural ruins, now run as the 28 Neemrana ‘non-hotel’ Hotels, which have won awards from UNESCO, the Indian travel trade industry and National Awards. He was also the curator of Art Today, the gallery of India Today. As an inveterate traveler, he regularly contributes to travel magazines.
He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 29, 2015 at 05:30 pm.

Arunava Sinha

Arunava Sinha translates classic, modern and contemporary Bengali fiction and non-fiction into English. Thirty-one of his translations have been published so far. Twice the winner of the Crossword translation award, for Sankar’s Chowringhee (2007) and Anita Agnihotri’s Seventeen (2011), respectively, he has also been shortlisted for The Independent Foreign Fiction prize (2009) for his translation of Chowringhee. His translations have also been published in the UK and the US in English, and in several European and Asian countries through further translation. He lives and writes in New Delhi.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 27, 2015 at 02:00 pm.

Ayesha Kidwai

Ayesha Kidwai is Professor at Centre for Linguistics, JNU. A recipient of the Infosys Prize 2013 in Humanities, she is a theoretical linguist who studies the morphology and syntax of lesser-known Indian languages. She is also a women’s rights activist who focuses on gender-based violence in university spaces and has been actively associated with JNU Gender Sensitisation Committee Against Sexual Harassment. In Freedom’s Shade, her translation of Anis Kidwai’s Urdu memoir of the Partition of India and Pakistan, was shortlisted for the Crossword Book Award in 2012. She is currently engaged in researching the role of social workers in the recovery of abducted women during the Partition.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 29, 2015 at 05:30 pm.

Christel Devadawson

Christel R Devadawson

Christel R Devadawson is Professor in the Department of English, University of Delhi, and the author of Out of line: Cartoons, Caricature and Contemporary India. Her thesis was published as Reading India, Writing England: The Fiction of Rudyard Kipling and E M Forster. Christel has edited Jane Eyre and A Passage to India for a South Asian edition of Orient Longman. Christel has also edited a critical anthology on A Passage to India with G. K. Das and Word, image text: Nature and time in literature and the visual arts with Shormishtha Panja and Shirshendu Chakrabarti.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 26, 2015 at 07:00 pm.

E.P. Unny

E.P. Unny is an Indian political cartoonist. After an education in sciences, he published his first cartoon in Shankar’s Weekly, in 1973. Four years later, he becomes professional, first with The Hindu, before working with The Economic Times, and finally The Indian Express Group, where he is currently Chief Political Cartoonist. He is the author of several graphic shorts in Malayalam, of the travel book Spices and Souls: A doodler’s journey through Keralaand of Santa and The Scribes: The Making Of Fort Kochi.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 26, 2015 at 07:00 pm.

HS Shiva Prakash

Shiva Prakash is Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at JNU. He is the author of nine books of poems, fifteen plays and three critical works in Kannada. His plays have been performed and translated into several Indian languages and into English, French, Italian, Spanish and German. He has won several awards for his plays and poetry including the prestigious Rajyotsava Award from Karnataka State, Sangeet Natak Akademi Award and the Sahitya Akademi Award. His major publications in English include I Keep Vigil of Rudra, Traditional Indian Theatre, Autumn Ways, and Everyday Yogi. He is also the former Editor of Indian Literature, the journal of National Akademi of Letters.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 29, 2015 at 04:30 pm.

Jyoti Narula Ranjan

Jyoti Narula Ranjan is the Founder of SynTalk, a freewheeling interdisciplinary talk show with a philosophical approach to understanding the world from a long term perspective. SynTalk believes that all understanding lies on nodes, and it therefore brings together concepts, ideas and impulses from different epistemological categories. She is committed to creating a unique globally recognized platform for original long term conversations and thinking across disciplines. Jyoti has worked with several leading global and Indian tech and media companies, and start-ups including Google, Aricent, and Netcore. She has an MBA from Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, and an MCA from Delhi University.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 29, 2015 at 12:00 pm.

Lalit Mangotra

Lalit Mangotra is a Dogri writer working for the development and promotion of Dogri for more than three decades. Physicist by profession, he has received the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Jammu & Kashmir State Award for his outstanding contribution to literature and culture. He has authored ten books across diverse genres like short story, essay, drama, literary criticism and poetry. Lalit Mangotra has played a leading role in integrating Dogri through modern technology; this includes the creation of a Dogri-English-Dogri online dictionary. Presently, he is convener of Dogri Advisory Board and Member of Executive Board of Sahitya Akademi.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 28, 2015 at 03:00 pm.

Margaret Mascarenhas

Margaret Mascarenhas is a multi-lingual and transnational writer, consulting editor, and independent curator with a background in comparative literature. She is the author of the widely acclaimed diasporic novel, Skin. Her second novel, The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos was a Barnes and Noble Discover Pick in literary fiction. She was the founding Director of Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts, and Blue Shores Prison Art Project at the Central Jail, Aguada in Goa. Mascarenhas spends most of her time in Goa where she maintains a residency in the picturesque village of Calvim for working artists and writers from all over India.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 27, 2015 at 05:30 pm.

Navtej Johar

Navtej Johar is a Bharatanatyam dancer, choreographer and yoga exponent whose work freely traverses between the traditional and the contemporary. He is a recipient of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for Contemporary Dance in 2014. Trained in Bharatanatyam at Kalakshetra, Chennai, and with Leela Samson in New Delhi, he studied yoga at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram, Chennai, and pursued critical studies at the New York University. He is currently a fellow at Freie University, Berlin; and also teaches Dance Studies at the Ashoka University. He is the founder of Studio Abhyas, New Delhi, a non-profit organisation dedicated to yoga, dance-theatre, urban activism and the care of stray animals.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 29, 2015 at 03:00 pm.

Promila Manhas

Promila Manhas is a Dogri writer and poet. She had been associated with literary assignments and projects of Sahitya Akademy and National Translation Mission. She is a literary translator who has translated poetry and prose from other languages into Dogri and also from Dogri to English. She is a lecturer of Botany in the School Education Department of the State Government of Jammu & Kashmir. She also works as a Newscaster cum Translator with Radio Kashmir and a News Anchor with Doordarshan Jammu.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 28, 2015 at 03:00 pm.

Riyas Komu

Riyas Komu is a multi-media artist and activist working towards reviving art education and developing art infrastructure in India. His works have been exhibited extensively in India and abroad. He was one of the two artists from India chosen by Robert Storr for the 52nd Venice Biennale. He co-founded the Kochi Muziris Bienalle in 2012, and initiated segments such as Children’s Biennale, Students Biennale, and Artists Cinema. He is currently working as Director of Programmes for the Kochi Biennale Foundation and developing projects focusing on Art Education in India. He has been presented with numerous awards in recognition of his work including Maharashtra State Art Prize and Bombay Art Society Award. In October 2015, ArtReview ranked Riyas Komu and Bose Krishnamachari among the 100 most influential people in the art world.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 27, 2015 at 04:30 pm.

Ameen ul Haque

A storyteller, story coach and consultant, Ameen-ul-Haque is also the founder of Storywallahs, a company that trains people in the art of storytelling. Ameen has coached leaders, teachers and children alike to be powerful storytellers.
A Graduate in Business Administration from MICA, he has also participated in a program in Luxury Management from IIM-Ahmedabad in collaboration with Essec, Paris. Formerly a Vice President at Ogilvy & Mather, Ameen has over 20 years of experience in advertising, theatre & consulting. These stints have exposed him to stories, human behaviour, team dynamics and strategy; themes that have influenced and informed his storytelling.
Ameen-ul-Haque will speak at ILF Samanvay on 28 Nov at 12.00 pm and his storytelling performance is scheduled for 11.00 am on 27 Nov.

Arundhathi Subramaniam

Arundhathi Subramaniam is the author of four books of poetry, most recently When God is a Traveller, which won the inaugural Khushwant Singh Prize for Poetry, the International Piero Bigongiari Award and was short listed for the TS Eliot Prize. Her books of prose include The Book of Buddha and the bestselling biography, Sadhguru: More Than A Life. As editor, her most recent anthology is Eating God: A Book of Bhakti Poetry. She has been Head of Indian Classical Dance and Chauraha at the NCPA, Mumbai, for several years, as well as Editor of the India Domain of the Poetry International Web since its inception.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 29, 2015 at 04:30 pm.

Balwant Thakur

Balwant Thakur is one of the most creative theatre directors of the country and has twelve original plays to his credit. He has been awarded with the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for Direction in theatre. He has also been honored with the title ‘Duggar Rattan’. He was conferred with the Padma Shri Award in 2013. His plays include Ghumayee, BawaJitto, Chauraha, and Mahabhoj. They have been performed in Bangkok, Singapore, London, Berlin, Rome, Moscow, Belgrade, Bishkek, Dubai, Sharjah, Dhaka and others. He is currently working as Regional Director-cum-consultant in Indian Council for Cultural Relations, Ministry of External Affairs.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 28, 2015 at 03:00 pm.

Come Carpentier

Come Carpentier de Gourdon

Come Carpentier de Gourdon, born in the Canary Islands (Spain) of French parents, studied in Europe, India and the USA and has lived, traveled and taught in more than fifty countries on four continents. He is currently the convener of the Editorial Advisory Board of World Affairs, the Journal of International Issues and a member of advisory boards of various scholarly publications. He has authored more than eighty published papers and monographs in English, French, Spanish and Italian and has contributed to various collective volumes on history, philosophy, geopolitics and international relations. He has authored From India to infinity and Memories of a 101 Moons.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 29, 2015 at 12:00 pm.

Gayatri Sinha

Gayatri Sinha is a critic, editor and curator who works in the domains of gender, lens-based art, and cultural politics. She has edited Art and Visual Culture in India: 1857- 2007, Woman/Goddess,and Expressions and Evocations: Contemporary Indian Women Artists of India, among others. She has written monographs on the artists Krishen Khanna and Himmat Shah. As a curator, she has worked with the National Gallery of Modern Art, the National Museum, the Grand Curtius, Musee Ansembourg, the Newark Museum, and the Fotographie Forum Frankfurt. Since 2011, she directly supports knowledge in the arts in institutional and non-institutional spaces through her initiative, Critical Collective.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 27, 2015 at 04:30 pm.

Irawati Karnik

Irawati Karnik is a writer, director, translator and actor. She worked extensively with the theater group Awishkarand has acted in, translated and directed several plays. Her own scripts include Sex, Morality and Censorship; The A Casting, which premiered in Berlin; Satellite City; Gasha; and C Sharp C Blunt which was awarded Best Original Script at Mahindra Excellence in Theater Awards, as well as the Zürcher Kantonalbank Patronage Prize. Her Marathi plays include Teech Ti Diwali, Vadani Kavala Gheta, and Chhapa Kata. She has been awarded the Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar, Vinod Doshi Fellowship, and Kathakar Shantaram Puraskar. She is a visiting faculty at The Drama School, Mumbai.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 28, 2015 at 05:30 pm.

K. Satchidanandan

K. Satchidanandan has authored 23 collections of poetry of which Misplaced Things and Other Poems won him the Sahitya Akademi Award for Malayalam in 2012. He writes poetry in Malayalam, and prose in Malayalam. He is a Fellow of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi and has won 32 literary awards and fellowships including Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award (five times: for poetry, drama, travelogue, translation, criticism), and the Senior Fellowship from the Government of India, besides Knighthood of the Order of Merit from the Government of Italy and India-Poland Friendship Medal from the Government of Poland. A film on him, Summer Rain was released in 2007.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 27, 2015 at 06:30 pm.

Madhusree Dutta

Madhusree Dutta is a filmmaker by profession, curator by hobby and pedagogue by compulsion. Gender, citizenship and urbanscapes are her chosen areas of work. She has won several national and international honours for her films. She was part of the jury for Berlinale (Berlin International Film Festival), 2015. She is the founder and executive director of Majlis, a centre for rights discourse and multi-disciplinary arts initiatives in Mumbai. Her latest curatorial Project Cinema City: Research Art and Documentary Practices was a multi-disciplinary endeavour engaging one hundred visual artists, architects, filmmakers and social scientists. Her publications include dates.sites Bombay/Mumbai, and Project Cinema City, an anthology co-edited with Kaushik Bhaumik and Rohan Shivkumar.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 29, 2015 at 12:00 pm.

Maya Krishna Rao

Maya Krishna Rao has been working in theatre - on and off stage - for the last forty years. She is particularly known for her solo performances, which include Khol Do, The Job, Departures, A Deeper Fried Jam, and Walk. She dances, acts, creates and directs herself. She was faculty at the National School of Drama before she joined Shiv Nadar University for which she has designed a unique Diploma programme, TEST - Theatre for Education and Social Transformation. Maya’s work has been documented in a film by Doordarshan, Portrait of Maya Krishna Rao, made in 1997. Maya received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (2010) for acting, which she returned in 2015.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 29, 2015 at 03:00 pm.

Padma Sachdev

Padma Sachdev is a Padma Shri awardee author and poet and is the youngest recipient of Sahitya Akademy Award for Dogri poetry. She has also been presented with the Kabir Samman from the Madhya Pradesh government and Lifetime Achievement Award from Jammu & Kashmir Cultural Academy, among many other awards. She writes in Dogri and Hindi and has worked as an announcer and news-reader in All India Radio. She came out with the first musical disc in the Dogri language, for which she composed both the music and the lyrics. Some of her important works include Meri Kavita, Mere Geet; Tawite Chanha; Uttar Vahini; Suggi; Deewankhana and Main Kehti Hoon.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 27, 2015 at 06:30 pm.

Radhika Menon

Radhika Menon is a publisher and Editorial Director at Tulika Publishers, Chennai, which she started as an independent, multilingual children’s publishing house in 1996. Tulika’s picture books are published in nine languages – English, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati and Bengali. The imaginatively created books have pioneered a new wave of children’s publishing in India and won many national and international awards. Radhika believes that translating across different languages gives voice and image to cultural diversity in a way that publishing in one language does not. A hands-on publisher, she is deeply involved in the visualizing, editing, designing and marketing at Tulika books.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 28, 2015 at 12:00 pm.

Rizio Yohannan Raj

Rizio Yohannan Raj is a writer, educationist, translator and governance professional whose experience spans two decades of work in journalism, book publishing, academics and institution-building. She is the Founder and Executive Director of LILA Foundation for Translocal Initiatives, a think-tank engaged in multidisciplinary and intercultural knowledge production, dissemination and conservation. Her works including collections of poetry, novels, critical volumes, edited works, research papers and socio-cultural studies, have been published by Harper Collins, Cambridge University Press, Indiana University Press, Kendra Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, and journals and magazines across the world. She is the Creative Director of ILF Samanvay 2015.

She would speak at ILF Samanvay on November 29, 2015 at 05:30 p.m.

Rosalyn D’Mello

Rosalyn D'Mello

Rosalyn D’Mello is a widely published freelance art writer based in New Delhi. Her debut non-fiction title, A Handbook for My Lover will be released in November 2015. Her art reviews and features have been published in Art + Auction, Modern Painters, Passages, Art India, and Take on Art. She is a regular contributor to Vogue, Open, Mint Lounge, Art Review, and Art Review Asia. She was the associate editor of The Art Critic, a selection of the art writings of Richard Bartholomew. She was nominated for Forbes’ Best Emerging Art Writer Award and the inaugural Prudential Eye Art Award for Best Writing on Asian Contemporary Art, in 2014.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 27, 2015 at 05:30 pm.

Sachin Ketkar

Sachin C. Ketkar

Sachin C. Ketkar is a bilingual writer, translator, editor, and blogger. He has two collections of Marathi poetry, Jarasandhachya Blogvarche Kahi Ansh and Bhintishivaicya Khidkitun Dokavtana to his credit. A selection from these collections is available in English translation as Skin, Spam and Other Fake Encounters: Selected Marathi Poems in Translation. He has extensively translated present-day Marathi poetry, most of which is collected in an anthology he edited, titled Live Update: An Anthology of Recent Marathi Poetry. He has also translated extensively from Gujarati. He works as Professor in the Department of English, MS University, Baroda.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 27, 2015 at 02:00 pm and 06:30 pm respectively.

Sadanand Menon

Sadanand Menon is a nationally reputed arts editor, popular teacher of cultural journalism, widely published photographer, arts curator and writer on politics, ecology and the arts. He is currently Adjunct Faculty at the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai; and at the Humanities Department of IIT, Madras. He is member of Apex Advisory Panel, National Museum, Delhi; of Apex Advisory Committee, National Gallery of Modern Art, Bengaluru; of Lalit Kala Akademi, Delhi; of the General Council, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla; and Managing Trustee of SPACES, Chennai.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 28, 2015 at 11:00 am.

Samina Mishra

Samina Mishra is a documentary filmmaker and writer based in New Delhi, with a special interest in media for and about children. She is currently heading the Nehru Learning Centre for Children and Youth. Her films include Jagriti Yatra, Two Lives, The House on Gulmohar Avenue and Stories of Girlhood. She has also created a multi-media exhibition, Home and Away and written children’s books including Hina in the Old City and Madhav and the Magical Marketplace. She has also worked on Nehru’s Children, an archival research project on the archive of the Children’s Film Society of India for the India Foundation for the Arts.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 28, 2015 at 12:00 pm.

Sharmila Seyyid

Sharmila Seyyid is a Sri Lankan journalist, poet, writer and activist. She is the founder President of the Organization for Social Development and has been working closely with the minority women in the East, following the war. She has been professionally educated in Journalism, Psychology and Educational Management. Seyyid has authored two poetry collections Siragu Mulaitha Pen, for which she won the Tamiliyal Award, and Ovva, and a novel called Ummath which won her the Best Novel of the Year Award 2014, by Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers and Artists Association (TNPWAA). She was also awarded TNPWAA’s Master Gorkki Memorial Award for Poetry.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 27, 2015 at 06:30 pm. and on November 28, 2015 at 02:00 pm respectively.

Shohini Ghosh

Shohini Ghosh is Sajjad Zaheer Professor at the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia. She has worked as a producer of UGC educational films at the MCRC where she made educational films and documentaries for UGC Country-wide class room national telecast. She is co-founder of Mediastorm Collective, India’s first all women documentary production collective which received the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Work among Women Media Professionals. She writes extensively on cinema, speech, censorship, gender and sexuality. She is the author of Fire: A Queer Film Classic, and has directed an independent documentary Tales of the Night Fairies which won the Best Film award at Jeevika 2003.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 29, 2015 at 02:00 pm.

Subhro Bandhopadhyay

Subhro Bandopadhyay

Subhro Bandopadhyay is the author of four full-length poetry books and a biography of Pablo Neruda written in Bengali. He received the 2013 Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar for his poetry collection Boudho Lekhomala o Onyanyo Shraman. He received the Antonio Machado Poetry Fellowship from the Government of Spain in 2008 and the Poetas de Otros Mundos award in 2014 from Fondo Poético Internacional. He has published several poetry collections in Spain and has been invited to distinguished poetry festivals including the Medellin International Poetry Festival, Colombia and Expoesía, Spain. He teaches Spanish at Instituto Cervantes, New Delhi.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 28, 2015 at 04:30 pm.

Sudeep Sen

Sudeep Sen is a poet whose works have been translated into over 25 languages. His collections include Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems, Rain, Aria (which won the A K Ramanujan Translation Award), Ladakh, and The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry. His collection Blue Nude: New Poems & Ekphrasis, which has already won Jorge Zalamea International Poetry Prize, and EroText are forthcoming in 2016.

He is the editorial director of AARK Arts and the editor of Atlas. Sen is the first Asian to participate at the Nobel Laureate Week, where he delivered the Derek Walcott Lecture and read from his work, Fractals: New & Selected Poems|Translations 1980-2015.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 27, 2015 at 05:30 pm.

Sudhir Mishra

Sudhir Mishra is an Indian film director and screenwriter. He was one of the pioneers of the alternative independent cinema movement in India in the 1980s. He started his career as a scriptwriter for Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron (1983), and wrote screenplays for Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho! (1984) and Khamosh (1985) before directing his first film Yeh Woh Manzil To Nahin (1987) which won the Indira Gandhi Award for Best First Film of a Director. His other notable films include Dharavi (1991) which won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi, Chameli (2003), Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi (2005) which won the Filmfare Best Story Award; Khoya Khoya Chand (2007) and Yeh Saali Zindagi (2011). He received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Government in 2010.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 29, 2015 at 11:00 a.m.

T.M. Krishna

T.M. Krishna is a vocalist in the Karnatik tradition. He studied at the Krishnamurti Foundation’s The School in Chennai, and is influenced by Jiddu Krishnmurti’s philosophy of ‘pathlessness’. He works with several organizations that research Karnatik music, take it to smaller towns and villages, and support artists from rural south India. He has co-authored Voices Within: Carnatic Music – Passing on an Inheritance and his most recent book, A Southern Music: The Karnatik Story received the Tata literature award for the best first book (non-fiction), 2014. He also gave the Kumar Gandharva Memorial Lecture for the Raza Foundation, and the Dilip Viraraghavan Memorial Lecture at IIT-Madras recently.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 28, 2015 at 11:00 am and perform on November 28, 2015 at 7.30 pm respectively

Tenzin Tsundue

Born to a Tibetan refugee family who broke rocks in the road construction work in the Spiti Valley, Tenzin Tsundue is a Tibetan poet, writer and activist. He studied literature and philosophy from Bombay University and is the author of four books of poetry and stories. He publishes his own books, sells them on his own and is the sole distributor making a living out of his poetry books. Some of his writings have been anthologised and prescribed in universities in India and abroad. He lives in Dharamshala.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 27, 2015 at 11:00 am.

Tsering Wangmo

Tsering Wangmo Dhompa is the author of three collections of poetry: My Rice Tastes like The Lake, In the Absent Everyday and Rules of the House. My Rice Tastes like The Lake was a finalist for the Northern California Independent Bookseller’s Book of the Year Award for 2012. Dhompa’s first non-fiction book, A Home in Tibet was published by Penguin, India, in September 2013. It will be published in the US by Shambhala Publications. She teaches creative writing and is pursuing a PhD degree in Literature at the University of California in Santa Cruz, USA.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 27, 2015 at 11:00 am.

Urmila Pawar

Urmila Pawar is a prolific Dalit writer whose writings explore themes of caste and gender discrimination. She has published ten books including three collections of short stories, some of which were translated in English as Mother Wit by Professor Veena Deo. She has won many prestigious prizes for her sensitive exploration of the lives of Dalit women in India. Her autobiography Aydaan is a part of the syllabus of the University of Columbia, USA, and has been adapted for a Marathi play by Sushma Deshpande. It has also been translated into many Indian languages.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 27, 2015 at 12:00 pm.

Urvashi Butalia

Urvashi Butalia is the co-founder of India’s first feminist publishing house, Kali for Women, and now runs Zubaan, an imprint of Kali. She is an independent researcher and writer, with a number of publications to her credit most notable among them being the award-winning history of Partition, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. Winner of the Oral History Book Association Award 2001 and the Nikkei Asia Award for Culture 2003, this book has been translated into many international and Indian languages. Her most recent publication is an edited volume: Partition: The Long Shadow. In 2011, she was awarded Padma Shri by the Indian government.

She will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 27, 2015 at 03:00 pm.

Vaibhav Abnave

Vaibhav Abnave is an independent film maker. His first feature Maunraag (2013), was based on the works of Mahesh Elkunchwar, and premiered at 15th Mumbai International Film Festival in India Gold Competition. He is pursuing doctorate in International Politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has written directed and acted in Marathi theatre and teaches courses in performance studies, documentary film making and international politics.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 28, 2015 at 05:30 pm.

Vani Tripathi Tikoo

Vijay Dhasmana

Vijay Dhasmana works in the field of forest conservation and ecological gardening, with special emphasis on the flora of Aravali range. His role was pivotal in the rewilding of the Aravali Biodiversity Park, Gurgaon; and creating Wild flower trail in the Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary, Uttarkhand, to showcase the wild flora of the sanctuary. He is also the Ecological Gardening Consultant to Friends for Change Programme of Walt Disney which plans to create 10 native plant gardens in NCR every year. He is also working for the restocking of wilderness areas in Delhi NCR with native flora species such as Boswelliaserrata, Ehretialeavis, Butea monosperma, and others through Seedballs.

He will speak at ILF Samanvay on November 29, 2015 at 05:30 pm.

Zeishan Qadry

Zeishan Quadri

Zeishan Quadri is an Indian writer, actor, director and producer who wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay for the Bollywood crime genre film Gangs of Wasseypur, directed by Anurag Kashyap. Quadri also acted in Gangs of Wasseypur - Part 2. He won the prestigious IIFA and Filmfare awards in the Best Dialogue Category.

This year he made his directorial debut with the well-received Meeruthiya Gangsters for which he also wrote the script. Zeishan is playing a lead in upcoming movie Akkite Vikki te Nikki produced by Bohra bros and John Abraham Entertainment’s Banana. Zeishan started his own production house called Friday to Friday Entertainers and Media Private Ltd in 2013.