Mitra Phukan

Mitra Phukan is a writer, translator, columnist and classical vocalist who lives and works in Guwahati, Assam. Her published literary works include four children’s books, a biography, two novels, “The Collector’s Wife” and “A Monsoon of Music”, both published by Penguin-Zubaan, and a collection of fifty of her columns, “Guwahati Gaze”. Besides, her short stories have appeared in various journals. Her works have been translated into several Indian and European languages. As a translator, she has put across the works of some of the best known contemporary writers of fiction in Asomiya into English. Her fortnightly column “All Things Considered” in The Assam Tribune is very widely read, across Assam and by the diaspora. A collection of her short fiction is due to appear in 2015.

She edits NEWFrontiers, (the journal of the North East Writers’ Forum) and is an active member of Aradhana, an organization that takes music to the underprivileged sections of society.

Mangalesh Dabral

Mangalesh Dabral was born in 1948 in a village in the Tehri Garhwal district in the Himalayan region. He has spent all his adult life as a literary editor in various newspapers published from Delhi and other north Indian cities. His books include five collections of poems, titled Pahar Par Laltein (Lantern on the Mountain, 1981), Ghar Ka Rasta (The Way Home, 1981), Hum Jo Dekhate Hain (That Which We See, 1995), Aawaaz Bhi Ek Jagah Hai (Voice Too Is a Place, 2000) and Naye Yug Mein Shatru (New-Age Enemies, 2013), and two collections of literary essays and sociocultural commentary, titled Lekhak Ki Roti (Writer’s Bread, 1998) and Kavi Ka Akelapan (Solitude of a Poet, 2008), and a book of conversations, Upkathan (Substatement, 2014). He has also published a travel account, Ek Baar Iowa (Once in Iowa, 1996), based on his experiences in Iowa, USA, where he resided for three months as a fellow of the International Writing Programme in 1991. His poems have been widely translated and published in all major Indian languages and in Russian, German, Dutch, Spanish, French, Polish and Bulgarian. They have been included in various periodicals, such as Modern Poetry in Translation, World Literature Today, The Poetry Review and The Little Magazine, and the anthologies Periplus (ed. Daniel Weissbort and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra), Survival (ed. Daniel Weissbort and Girdhar Rathi), Gestures (an anthology of poems from SAARC countries) and Signatures (ed. K. Satchidanandan). Aawaaz Bhi Ek Jagah Hai was translated into Italian by Prof. Mariola Offredi under the title Anche la Voce e un Luogo. Dabral gave a poetry reading at the International Poetry Festival, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 2008. He has also travelled and given poetry readings in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Russia, and various cities in Germany on the eve of the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1996. He has translated into Hindi the poems of Pablo Neruda, Bertolt Brecht, Ernesto Cardenal, Yannis Ritsos, Tadeusz Rozewicz, Zbigniew Herbert, to name a few. He has also worked as a consultant to the National Book Trust, India, and has received a number of awards, including Shamsher Sammaan (1995), Pahal Sammaan (1998) and the Sahitya Akademi Award (2000).

Arundhati 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 shortlisted 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 Dance and 'Chauraha' (an interactive arts forum) at the NCPA, Mumbai, for several years, as well as Editor of the India Domain of the Poetry International Web since its inception, a project that has grown into a significant web archive of contemporary Indian poetry. She has written on the arts for various national newspapers and international journals.

K. Satchidanandan

K. Satchidanandan, perhaps the most widely translated of contemporary Indian poets , has 23 collections of his poetry in 19 languages including English, Irish, Arabic, Chinese,French, German and Italian. His book While I Write : New and Selected Poems (Harper-Collins) came out in 2011 and Misplaced Things and Other Poems (Sahitya Akademi) in 2014. Satchidanandan writes poetry in Malayalam, and prose in Malayalam and English and has more than 20 collections of poetry besides several books of travel, plays and criticism and translations of poetry from around the world and five books in English on Indian literature. This is besides the 20 -odd books in three languages that he has edited. He has represented India in many Literary Festivals and Book Fairs across the world including those in Lahore, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Dubai, Damascus, Berlin, London, Manchester, Liverpool, Wales, New York, Washington, Hay, Paris, Frankfurt , Bonn, Leipzig, Beijing , Shanghai, Rotterdam, Medellin, Havana, Lima, Sarajevo, Vilenica and Moscow . He is a Fellow of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi and has won 32 literary awards and fellowships including Sahitya Akademi Award, Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award five times, ( for poetry, drama, travelogue, translation, criticism) Gangadhar Meher National Award (Orissa) , Kusumagraj National Award ( Maharashtra)and NTR National Award ( Andhrapradesh), Kuvempu National Award ( Karnataka), K. K. Birla Fellwship for Comparative Literature, Sreekant Verma Fellowship for Translation and the Senior Fellowship from the Govt 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, SummerRain was released in 2007.

Sachin Ketkar

Sachin C. Ketkar, a bilingual writer, translator, editor, blogger and critic based in Baroda, Gujarat. His books in English include Skin, Spam and Other Fake Encounters: Selected Marathi Poems in translation, (2011), (Trans) Migrating Words: Refractions on Indian Translation Studies (2010). His Marathi books are Jarasandhachya Blogvarche Kahi Ansh (2010) and Bhintishivaicya Khidkitun Dokavtana, (2004). He has extensively translated present-day Marathi poetry, most of which is collected in the anthology Live Update: An Anthology of Recent Marathi Poetry, 2005 edited by him. Along with numerous recent Gujarati writers, he has rendered the fifteenth century Gujarati poet Narsinh Mehta into English. He has also translated the work of the well-known contemporary Gujarati short story writers like Bhupen Khakkar, Nazir Mansuri and Mona Patrawala. His poetry, critical writings and translations have appeared in reputed English and Marathi journals like New Quest, Indian Literature, Little Mag, Abhidhanantar, Khel, Mouj, Poetryinternationalweb. Com, Cerebration. Org, Muse India and so on. He won ‘Indian Literature Poetry Translation Prize’, given by Indian Literature Journal, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi in 2000. He holds a doctorate in Translation Studies from Veer Narmad South Gujarat University, Surat and works as Professor in English, Faculty of Arts, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara. He blogs at www.sachinketkar.blogspot.com.