Speakers '11

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A Revathi

Revathi, who was once a son of Armugam is now a member of the Hijra community. She was the Director of Sangama which is a non-governmental organization working for the rights of Sexuality Minorities namely, Hijras, Kothis, Bisexuals, Double Deckers, Lesbians, Gays and Transgenders. Being a Community member herself, she joined Sangama as an office assistant in 2000. During her prolonged stay with Sangama she has been involving herself in meticulously planning and actively participating in all the protest rallies and social justice movements and public events that were organized on behalf of the Community and other oppressed minorities. She has also dared to write a book on the life of Hijras in Tamil, tiltled Unarvum, Uruvamum.  She has recently written an autobiography and has acted in a Tamil movie named -Thenavattu. She is presently the advocacy co-ordinator at Sangama.

Abha Dawesar

Abha Dawesar is the author of four novels, most notablyBabyji. She is the winner of a Lambda literary award, an ALA Stonewall award, and a Fiction Fellowship from NYFA. Her recent novel Family Values was shortlisted for the Vodafone Crossword award, the Prix Médicis Etranger and the Prix Femina Etranger.

Adam Zagajewski

Adam Zagajewski was born in Lvov (now in Ukraine) and grew up in Gliwice, Poland. He was an active dissident and took part in the oppositional literary movement. In 1979 he was offered a fellowship by the International Kunstler programm and spent two years in Berlin. Since 1982 he lived in Paris and in 2002 returned to Krakow. In Paris he was on the editorial board of the exile literary magazine Zeszyty Literackie and taught Creative Writing at the University of Houston. In 2007, Adam became a member of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago where he teaches one quarter a year. He has published several collections of poems and essays translated into many languages.

Ahdaf Soueif

Author of the bestselling The Map of Love and In the Eye of the Sun, Ahdaf Soueif is also the Founder of the Palestine Festival of Literature, PalFest. Her collection of cultural and political essays, Mezzaterra, was published in 2004, as was her translation (from Arabic into English) of Mourid Barghouti's I Saw Ramallah.

Ahmed Rashid

Ahmed Rashid is a Pakistani journalist based in Lahore, who has covered Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia for a variety of publications since 1979. He is the author of the best selling Taliban. His most recent book isDescent into Chaos : The US and the Disaster in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia. His other books include Jihad (2002) and The Resurgence of Central Asia (1994). He writes for the Financial Times, the Washington Post, the New York Review of Books and BBC Online amongst other publications. Foreign Policy magazine chose him as one of the world's most important 100 Global Thinkers in 2009 and 2010. Ahmed Rashid was born in Rawalpindi, Pakistan in 1948 and was educated at Malvern College England, Government College Lahore and got his degree in political science at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University. He is married with two children and lives in Lahore. For more: www.ahmedrashid.com.

Aidan Singh Bhati

Aidan Singh Bhati is a famous poet and critic in Rajasthani and Hindi. His collection of Rajasthani poems Hanstoda Hothan Ro Sanch and Rat Kasumbal have widely been appreciated among readers and literary circles. Apart from his creative work, he has contributed a number of articles on Rajasthani folk culture and life of the desert. At present he is Head of the Dept. in Govt. College, Jaisalmer.

Akhil Sharma

Akhil Sharma, born in India in 1971, immigrated as a child to America. He has published numerous award winning short stories and a novel. He lives in New York City with his wife, Lisa. Currently he is completing his second novel. Granta has listed Akhil as one of their Best Young American Writers.

Alex Bellos

Alex Bellos is the author of the popular science bestsellerAlex's Adventures in Numberland, which was shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction 2010. (The book's American title is Here's Looking at Euclid). A former foreign correspondent for the Guardian based in Brazil, his first book wasFutebol: The Brazilian Way of Life. He also ghostwrote Pelé's autobiography.

Alex von Tunzelmann

Alex von Tunzelmann is the author of Indian Summer, a history of partition and the end of the British Empire in India and Pakistan, which is in development as a feature film. Her next book, Red Heat: Conspiracy, Murder and the Cold War in the Caribbean, is to be published in April 2011. She writes Reel History, a weekly column about historical movies, for The Guardian Film Online.

Ali Sethi

Ali Sethi was born in Lahore in 1984 and grew up there. In 2002 he left to attend college in the United States and graduated in 2006. He has since written reviews and articles for several publications, local and international, and has co-produced and narrated a documentary on student politics in Pakistan. He lived in New York City for a year and now lives in Lahore, where he is making music.

Alka Pande

An independent curator, Dr Alka Pande is also prolific writer on Indology and art history and is the author of several books, with a special interest in Ancient Indian Erotic literature and art. Recipient of the Charles Wallace Award in 1999-2000, Dr Pande completed her post-doctoral studies in critical art theory from Goldsmith College, University of London. She has been awarded the Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres - Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters - award by the French government, to recognise significant contributions in the fields of art and literature. She has been responsible for curating several significant and perceptive exhibitions in India and abroad. She is currently an art consultant and curator at the India Habitat Centre. Another of her publications awaiting release is Shringara the Many Emotions of Indian Beauty.
For more: www. alkapande.com

Aman Nath

Aman Nath is a historian by education. He has written poetry, practiced graphic design and copywriting for several path-breaking advertising campaigns. He has co-written and authored thirteen large-format illustrated books on art, history, architecture, corporate biography and photography. Two of these books are also used as the official gifts of the President and the Prime Minister of India. He is actively involved in the restoration of India's lesser-known architectural ruins, now run as the Neemrana ‘non-hotel' Hotels. He was the curator of Art Today, the contemporary art gallery of India Today for seven years. Aman Nath is an inveterate traveller and has contributed to several travel magazines: after walking 400 kms to Mount Kailash in Tibet; to a hidden monastery between Rohtang and Leh; or to the sub-Antartic in an ice breaker, just after the film Titanic was released!

Ambikadutt Chaturvedi

Ambikadutt Chaturvedi is a Rajasthani poet and translator. He has worked as a public administrator at various places in Rajasthan and has been part of Akashvani & Doordarshan. Ambikadutt is currently working as Sub District Magistrate at Sangod in Rajasthan.

Amitabh Kant

Amitabh Kant is the author of Branding India - An Incredible Story and has been the key driver of theIncredible India and God's Own Country campaigns which positioned and branded India and Kerala State as leading tourism destinations. He has also conceptualized and executed the Atithi Devo Bhavah- Guest is Godcampaign to train Taxi Drivers, Guides, immigration officials and make them stake holders in the tourism development process. Amitabh is presently posted as Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director of the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation. This is India's most ambitious Infrastructure project aiming to develop new manufacturing cities between Delhi and Mumbai. He is an IAS Officer of Kerala Cadre.

Amitava Kumar

Amitava Kumar was born in Ara, in Bihar, and grew up in Patna, famous for its poverty, corruption, and delicious mangoes. Kumar's writings on the experience of migration, as well as his poetry and criticism, have been widely published in India and abroad. His latest non-fiction book,A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm A Tiny Bomb, was described by the New York Times as a "perceptive and soulful ... meditation on the global war on terror and its cultural and human repercussions." He is a professor of English at Vassar College.

Amrita Tripathi

Amrita Tripathi is an Indian journalist, juggling several roles at CNN-IBN, where she's worked for the past five years. Amrita is a news anchor and CNN-IBN's Health and Books Editor. Her debut novel Broken News is a work of fiction, but stabs at the truth of fractured identities and misplaced priorities in the glittering world of television news. Broken News is on stands now!

Anjum Hasan

Anjum Hasan is the author of the novels Neti, Neti(short-listed for the Hindu Best Fiction Award, long-listed for the DSC Literature Prize and the Man Asian Literary Prize) and Lunatic in my Head (short-listed for the Crossword Book Award). She has also written the book of poems Street on the Hill. Anjum's essays, reviews, short stories and poems have appeared in various Indian and international publications. She is Books Editor, The Caravan and lives in Bangalore.

Annie Griffiths

One of the first women photographers to work for National Geographic, Annie Griffiths has published dozens of magazine and book projects for the Society. Griffiths is Founder and Executive Director ofRipple Effect Images, a non-profit of photojournalists who are documenting the programs that help poor women. Her books include Last Stand, A Camera,Two Kids and a Camel, and Simply Beautiful Photographs.

Anthony Sattin

Anthony Sattin is a British journalist and broadcaster and the author of several highly acclaimed books of history and travel, including The Pharaoh's Shadowand The Gates of Africa. He has lived and travelled extensively in these regions. His latest radio documentary traced the development of the Majnun Layla story. In May 2010 he published A Winter on the Nile, which tells the story of Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert in Egypt and which has been variously described as a treat, entertaining, important and a triumph of the historical imagination.

Antony Loewenstein

Antony Loewenstein is a Sydney independent journalist, author and blogger. He has two best-selling books, My Israel Question (2009) and The Blogging Revolution (2008), and has written for the Guardian,Sydney Morning Herald, Haaretz, The Nation,Huffington Post and many others. He speaks regularly at events across the world. More on http://antonyloewenstein.com

Arthur I. Miler

Arthur I. Miler is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at University College London. He is fascinated by the nature of creative thinking and, in particular, in creativity in art (on the one hand) and science (on the other). What are the similarities, what are the differences? He is the author of Einstein, Picasso, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, andEmpire of the Stars, which was shortlisted for the 2006 Aventis Prize for Science Books. His most recent book is 137: Jung, Pauli and the Pursuit of a Scientific Obsession. He is currently writing about how art and science developed in parallel in the twentieth century. For more www.arthurimiller.com

Arunava Sinha

Arunava Sinha is a translator of classic and contemporary Bengali fiction. His latest published translations are The Chieftain's Daughter(Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay) and Three Women(Rabindranath Tagore) - both part of the Random House Bengali Classics Series, of which he is the series editor. His earlier translations include What Really Happened and Other Stories (Banaphool), By The Tungabhadra (Saradindu Bandyopadhyay), Striker Stopper (Moti Nandy), and My Kind of Girl (Buddhadeva Bose). His translation of Sankar'sChowringhee won the Vodafone-Crossword translation prize for 2007, and was shortlisted for the Independent Best Foreign Fiction prize in the UK for 2009.

Arundhathi Subramaniam

Arundhathi Subramaniam is a poet, editor, critic and cultural curator. She is the author of three books of poems, the most recent being Where I Live: New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Publishers, UK, 2009). She is also the author of a prose work, The Book of Buddha (Penguin, 2005) and co-editor ofConfronting Love (Penguin, 2005), an anthology of contemporary Indian love poems. She has received the Charles Wallace Fellowship (2003), the Visiting Arts Fellowship for a poetry tour of the UK (2006) and the Raza Award for Poetry (2009). She is Editor of the India domain of the Poetry International Web.

Ashok Chakradhar

Ashok Chakradhar is a leading Hindi poet specializing in satire and comedy. He has won many prestigious national awards for literature and has been actively associated with radio and television and has scripted a number of dramas, satires and poems including, Masalaaraam and Bandariyaa Chalee Sasuraal amongst many others.

Atiq Rahimi

Atiq Rahimi is a Franco-Afghan writer and filmmaker born in 1962 in Kabul. After getting political asylum in France, he started audiovisual studies at the Sorbonne University. His first film, Terre et cendres, got the Prix du Regard sur L'Avenir at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004. His novel Syngué Sabour. Pierre de patience, which was written in French, received the Goncourt Prize in 2008.

Avijit Ghosh

Avijit Ghosh grew up in the small towns of Bihar andJharkhand - Dumka, Giridih, Arrah and Ranchi. He works in The Times of India where he writes regularly on cinema and sports. He is the author of the novel Bandicoots in the Moonlight (2008) andCinema Bhojpuri (2010).

Avinash

After working for Prabhat Khabar, Dainik Bhaskar, NDTV India for a long period, Avinash is currently concentrating on content for new media. He has been credited for making hindi blogging popular and has been a moderator of mohalla live dot com and is the concept designer of BAHASTALAB, a debate and interaction series.

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Bant Singh

Bant Singh is a singer of revolutionary poetry and is known as the living icon of Dalit resistance in Punjab. In January 2006, he was mercilessly beaten up, leading to the amputation of his two arms and one leg on successfully getting a conviction for a Jat for raping his minor daughter in Punjab in 2002. His famous words when he lost his limbs were: "They have not cut my tongue, I can still sing". Giving voice to his favorite poet Sant Ram Udasi and some of his own verses, Bant still sings songs for social change and justice.

Basharat Peer

Basharat Peer was born in Kashmir in 1977. He studied journalism and politics at Columbia University, worked as a reporter in India and as an editor at Foreign Affairs in New York. He is a Fellow at Open Society Institute, New York. His first book, Curfewed Night, an account of the Kashmir conflict won the Vodaphone Crossword Award for Non-fiction and was chosen among the Books of the Year by the New Yorker, The Economist, Sunday Times, and Daily Telegraph. His work has appeared in Granta, Financial Times magazine, Guardian, Foreign Affairs, N+1, The Caravan, Open, and Outlook magazines. His is working on a book on India's Muslims.

Ben Macintyre

Ben Macintyre is the author of six non-fiction history books, including the bestselling A Foreign Field(2001). His other book Agent Zigzag was short-listed for the Costa Biography of the Year Award and the National Book Awards. In 2008, he published For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond, to accompany the exhibition at the Imperial War Museum of the same name. This was followed by The Last Word, and Operation Mincemeat: The True Spy Story that changed the course of World War II which was also shortlisted for the National Book Awards. Ben has written a weekly column in The Times since 1998 on history, espionage, art, politics and foreign affairs. He joined the newspaper in 1992 as New York Correspondent, and went on to become Paris Bureau Chief and then US Editor, based in Washington, before returning to the UK in 2002 as parliamentary sketch-writer.

Bettany Hughes

Bettany Hughes is an award-winning author and broadcaster. She is a Research Fellow of King's College London and has spent much of the last twenty years vigorously promoting knowledge of the ancient world - both East and West - to as wide a global audience as possible. Her television films, including subjects such asThe Spartans, Helen of Troy, Athens, The Truth About Democracy, the Women of the Bible, When the Moors Ruled in Europe, Alexandria - City of Dreams and Nefertiti have now been seen by over 100 million worldwide. Last year she was awarded the Naomi Sargent Award for Broadcast Excellence and a Special Award for Services to Hellenic Culture and heritage. She is chair of this year's orange prize for fiction and will be curating a new exhibition about the ideas of the world for the British Library in 2012. Her last book, Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore has been translated into ten languages.

Bulbul Sharma

Bulbul Sharma is a painter and writer. Her works are in the collection of the National Gallery of ModernArt, Lalit Kala Akademi as well as in private collections in India, UK, U.S.A, Japan and France. She has publishedMy Sainted Aunts (Penguin), The Perfect Woman(UBS) and Anger of Aubergines (Kali for Women), a novel Banana Flower Dreams (Penguin),Shayatales (Penguin) and Devi (Penguin). Her books have been translated into Italian, French and Finnish. Her books for children areFabled Book of Gods and Demons (Puffin) and The Children's Ramayana(Puffin). She has been conducting art and story telling workshops for special needs children for the last fifteen years.

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C P Surendran

C P Surendran is a novelist and poet. His latest novel is Lost and Found, released in December. His debut novel was An Iron Harvest. Surendran stopped writing poetry since 2006, when his last collection of poems Portraits of the Space We Occupy was published. His other poetry collections are, Gemini II, Posthumous Poems, and Canaries On The Moon. Surendran is a journalist by profession. He is based in Delhi.

Candace Bushnell

Candace Bushnell is the critically acclaimed, international best-selling author of Sex and the City, One Fifth Avenue, Lipstick Jungle,Trading Up, Four Blondes and The Carrie Diaries. Sex and the City, published in 1996, was the basis for the HBO hit series and subsequent blockbuster movie. Lipstick Jungle became a popular television series on NBC. She is the winner of the 2006 Matrix Award for books and a recipient of the Albert Einstein Spirit of Achievement Award. She is currently at work on the second book in The Carrie Diaries series: Summer and the City.

Chandra Bhan Prasad

Chandra Bhan Prasad, born in 1960, is a self-trained anthropologist and social psychologist. His books include Dalit Diary- Reflections On Apartheid In India & Dalit Phobia- Why Do They Hate Us? For more: www.chandrabhanprasad.com

Chandrahas Choudhury

Chandrahas Choudhury is a novelist and literary critic based in Mumbai. He is the author of the novelArzee the Dwarf (2009), which was recently named by World Literature Today magazine as one of 60 essential English-language works of modern Indian literature, and the editor of the just-published anthology India: A Traveler's Literary Companion (Whereabouts Press, USA, and HarperCollins India). Choudhury's book reviews and essays have appeared in the Sunday Telegraph, the Observer, and Foreign Policy. He writes the literary blog The Middle Stage, and is also a contributing editor of The Caravan. He was recently a Fellow of the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria. She is the authorof two novels, Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the 2007 Orange Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, andPurple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Her short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck was published in 2009 and was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writer's Prize, Best Book (Africa) and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. She is the recipient of a 2008 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Chimamanda's fiction has been published in Granta and The New Yorker, who named her on their ‘20 under 40' list of twenty of the most important fiction writers under 40years old.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is the author of 16 books. Her work has been published in over 50 magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker, widely anthologized, and translated into 18 languages, including Dutch, Hebrew and Japanese. Divakaruni's recent books include: One Amazing Thing, about a group of travelers trapped by an earthquake in an Indian consulate, and Palace of Illusions, a retelling of the ancient Indian epic, The Mahabharata, from a woman's point of view. She has received, among others, an American Book Award and a PEN Josephine Miles Award and been shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She is the Betty and Gene McDavid Professor of Writing at the nationally ranked Creative Writing program at the University of Houston. She serves on the advisory board of Maitri (California) and Daya (Houston), two domestic violence organizations, and on the emeritus board of Pratham, a non-profit organization that promotes literacy in India. For more: www.chitradivakaruni.com

Christopher Bayly

Author of ten books, C A Bayly is Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial History and Director of the Centre of South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge. He has written on Allahabad and the early Congress, Banaras merchants and Indian capital, the British Empire and the world and on nationality in South Asia. His recent books includeEmpire and Information, and two studies of the Second World War in Asia with Tim Harper, Forgotten Wars and Forgotten Armies. One of his latest books is a broad study of nineteenth-century global history, The Birth of the Modern World and has been translated into seven languages, including Chinese. He is currently completing a study of liberalism in India. Bayly was awarded the Wolfson Prize for History for ‘Lifetime Achievement' in 2004 and was knighted in 2007 for services to Indian and world history.

Christopher Shackle

Christopher Shackle is Emeritus Professor of Modern Languages of South Asia, SOAS, University of London. His recent books include A Treasury of Indian Love Poetry (1999), and The Teachings of the Sikh Gurus (2005). He is currently translatingBullhe Shah for the Murty Classical Library of India.

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Daman Singh

Daman Singh graduated in Mathematics from St. Stephen's College, Delhi University, in 1984. For further studies she went to the Institute of Rural Management, Anand. After working for twenty exciting years in the field of rural development, she retired. Her first book was a work of non-fiction - The Last Frontier: People and Forests in Mizoram(1996). Since then she has written two novels, both published by Harper Collins India: Nine by Nine (2008), and The Sacred Grove (2010). Daman lives in Delhi with her husband, son and dog.

David Finkel

David Finkel is the author of The Good Soldiers, a ground-level account of the U.S. "surge" into the Iraq war, published in 2009 by Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux. An editor and writer for The Washington Post, Finkel has reported from Africa, Asia, Central America, Europe, and across the United States, and was part of the Post's war coverage in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting in 2006 for a series of stories about U.S. democracy promotion efforts in Yemen.The Good Soldierswas named one of the ten best books of 2009 by The New York Times Sunday Book Review. Finkel is married, has two daughters, and lives in the Washington, D.C. area.

Dayanita Singh

Dayanita Singh is a book maker / photographer. She is the author of Myself Mona Ahmed Scalo 2001, Privacy Steidl 2003, Chairs Steidl 2005, Go Away Closer Steidl 2007, Sent a Letter Steidl 2008, Blue book Steidl2009, Dream Villa Steidl 2010. Her works have been exhibited and collected at various museums and galleries world wide.

Her most recent publication House of Love is a work of photographic fiction that takes the form of nine short stories. Working closely with writer Aveek Sen, whose prose follows a journey of its own, Singh explores the relationship between photography, memory, and writing. House of Love, designed to blur the lines between an art book of photographic images and a work of literary fiction, is a book whose images demand to be read, not just seen, and whose texts create their own sensory worlds. The combination creates a new vocabulary for the visual book.

Deepa Agarwal

Deepa Agarwal is an author, poet and translator who writes for children as well as adults. She has received the National Award for Children's literature and her historical fiction Caravan to Tibet featured in the IBBY Honour List 2008. Recent titles include a translation of Chandrakanta Devakinandan Khatri's classic Hindi novel and Rani Lakshmibai, a biography.

Devdutt Pattanaik

Devdutt Pattanaik is a medical doctor by education, a leadership consultant by profession, and a mythologist by passion. He has written and lectured extensively on the nature of sacred stories, symbols and rituals and their relevance in modern times. His books include The Book of Ram, Myth=Mithya: A Handbook of Hindu Mythology and The Pregnant King (all by Penguin India). The Book of Kali (Viking India) is based on his talks. Devdutt's unconventional approach and engaging style is evident in his lectures, books and articles.

Diane de Selliers

Over the last 20 years, Diane de Selliers has taken a deep interest in the founding texts of humankind. She has published them using the most beautiful and significant paintings that they have inspired. Each piece is the result of a long and meticulous research carried out in museums and private collections all over the world, filled with passion and a taste for beauty and excellence.

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Faiza S Khan

Faiza S Khan is a Karachi-based columnist and book and film critic whose work has appeared in The Friday Times, Open magazine, The Caravan, The Times of India and the Express Tribune. She founded and co-administrates the Life's Too Short Short Story Prize. She is editor-in-chief of the Life's Too Short Literary Review, a journal of new Pakistani writing, and is co-founder of Siren Publications.

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Gcina Mhlophe

Gcina Mhlophe has been writing and performing on stage and screen for the past 24 years. She is a multi award winning writer of poetry, short stories & plays for all ages. Her writings have been published all over the world and translated into many languages. Her work is used extensively in many schools and universities. Gcina has produced and performed inmany CD's for children. Some of her publications include Love Child, Have You Seen Zandile, Stories of Africa, Queen Of Imbira, Our Story Magic African Tales, to name a few. Gcina created a new Workshop Theatre production with Greenlandic performers in NUUK, Greenland, which was performed at the ARCTIC WINT ER GAMES in Vancouver, March 2010. She lives in Durban with her husband and their daughter Nomakhwezi, the morning star!

Giriraj Kiradoo

Giriraj Kiradoo has published poems, criticism, translations and short stories in several literary journals. He is founder-editor of Pratilipi, a sprightly bilingual (Hindi-English) and multi-script online literary magazine. In 2000, he received the prestigious Bharat Bhushan Agrawal Smruti Award for his first published poem. He is currently translating Hanif Kureishi'sIntimacy into Hindi, Geetanjali Shree's Tirohit into English, and Sahitya Akademi-award-winning Hindi poets, Shree Kant Verma and Arun Kamal, into English. He teaches at a university in Rajasthan and is an editor at Siyahi, a Jaipur-based literary consultancy.

Githa Hariharan

Githa Hariharan has worked as a staff writer in WNET-Channel 13 in New York, and in India as an editor, first in a publishing house, then as a freelancer. Some of her published works includes The Thousand Faces of Night (which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1993), The Ghosts of

Gulzar

Gulzar is an eminent writer of rare talent, a leading filmmaker, lyricist and script-writer. He was conferred with the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2002 for his collection of short stories, Dhuan. Gulzar is an author of several collections of poems and short stories in Urdu and has to his credit many hauntingly melodious film songs that demonstrate his multi-lingual sensitivity. His creative repertoire also includes books for children, plays, ballets, translations & music albums. He has made some significant television serials on Mirza Ghalib and on the works of Munshi Premchand. His film scripts have been published in a series of books entitled Manzarnama. Gulzar has been honoured with ‘Life Time Achievement Award' for his contribution to Hindi Cinema & with the Padma Bhushan. The most recent honour conferred upon him at the international level are the Oscar (2008) and the Grammy (2010) Awards for his song written for the film Slumdog Millionaire.

Gurcharan Das

Gurcharan Das is the author of The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma. His past works include, India Unbound, A Fine Family (a novel); The Elephant Paradigm; and an anthology, Three English Plays. He studied philosophy at Harvard University, and was CEO Procter & Gamble India before he took early retirement to become a writer. He writes a regular column in the Times of India.

Gyan Prakash

Educated in India and the United States, Gyan Prakash is the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History at Princeton University and the former director of the Shelby Cullom Davis Davis Center. A long-time member of the Subaltern Studies Collective, he is a historian of modern South Asia. He has writtenBonded Histories (1990) and Another Reason(1999), and edited several volumes of essays, including the recently published Noir Urbanisms (2010). His latest book isMumbai Fables, and he wrote the script for Bombay Velvet, a film to be produced and directed by Anurag Kashyap.

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Habib Kaifi

Born on 10th of July 1944 at Sojat City Habib Kaifi has been a story-writer, novelist, dramastist, columnist and shayar for more than four decades in Hindi and Urdu. His work has been translated into many other Indian languages. Some of his stories have been dramatized into plays and radio serials. Author of four novels, three short story collections and edited a book of Urdu poetry, Habib has also scripted two tele films. He is the recipient of many awards for his writings in Hindi & Urdu.

Hemant Shesh

Hemant Shesh is a distinguished poet, art-critic and columnist of Hindi. More than nine collection of his Hindi poems have been published till date and has participated in various poetic symposium across the country. As a modern artist and painter number of one-man art exhibitions have been arranged on his oil paintings, poster-poems and drawings at various centers and art galleries of all major metro cities. He is an editor of quarterly art journal Kala-Prayojan, published by Western Cultural Center, Udaipur. He has also been awarded for his valuable creative contribution on state and national level. At present he is working as Secretary with Rajasthan Public Service Commission, Ajmer. Contact mobile no. 09314508026

Henning Mankell

Henning Mankell was born in Sweden in 1948 and is a successful author of plays, children's books and several novels for adults. But it is as the prize-winning author of the eight Kurt Wallander Mysteries that he is best known. The Kurt Wallander Mysteries has now sold more than 20 million copies worldwide and has been translated into more than 40 languages, and has been published to great critical acclaim in both the UK and America. Mankell divides his time between Sweden and Maputo, Mozambique, where he works as a director at Teatro Avenida. He is passionately committed to the fight against AIDS in Africa and spends much time working to encourage support for his Memory Books project to raise awareness of the problem.

Hong Ying

Hong Ying was born into a sailor's family in Chongqing on the Yangtze River in southwest China. An author and poet, she began her career as a full time writer in the early 1980s, having studied creative writing at Lu Xun Creative Writing Academy and Fudan University. She is best known in the English-speaking world for her novels: K: The Art of Love (which won the Prix de Rome in 2005), The Concubine of Shanghai, Peacock Cries and Summer of Betrayal. Her autobiography, Daughter of the River, has been translated into twenty-nine languages, and many of her works have been turned into TV series and films. Her latest memoir, Good Children of the Flowers, a sequel toDaughter of the River, won Asia Weekly's Top Ten Novels of the Year Award (2009). She lives in Beijing.

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Ian Jack

Ian Jack edited Granta magazine between 1995 and 2007 and previously The Independent on Sunday, a newspaper he helped to found. He has been a judge of the Booker and Orwell prizes and chaired the judging panel for Granta's Best of Young British Novelists in 2003 and Granta's Best of Young American Novelists in 1996 and 2006. Before and after he became Editor, he wrote for Granta and many other publications, including the London and The New York Review of Books. As a journalist on the London Sunday Times, he reported from India during the 1970s and 80s. Two anthologies of his work have been published, most recently The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain in 2009. He is a columnist with the Guardian and lives in London.

IIra Trivedi

IIra Trivedi is the author of the best-selling novels What Would You Do To Save The World? (Penguin 2006) andThe Great Indian Love Story (Penguin 2009). Her books have been translated into several regional languages and meet by critical and public acclaim. Her latest book There is No Love on Wall Street will be released in January 2011. She holds a MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA in Economics from Wellesley College.

Irvine Welsh

Irvine Welsh is the author of nine works of fiction.Trainspotting has been published in 29 countries and sold over a million copies in the UK. His most recent works include Crime and The Bedroom Secrets of the Masterchefs, and Reheated Cabbage, a selection of short stories. Irvine Welsh is currently working on the film version of Alan Warner's The Man Who Walks and on a new novel named Skagboys, a prequel to Trainspotting.

Isabel Fonseca

Isabel Fonseca is a writer and journalist, whose work appears in The Wall Street Journal, The Times, The Guardian and Vogue, among other publications. Her first book, Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey, was an international bestseller. Her debut novel, Attachment, was published in 2008.

Isabel Hilton

Isabel Hilton is a London based writer and broadcaster, and founder and editor of www.chinadialogue.net, an innovative, fully bilingual Chinese English website devoted to building a shared approach on climate change and environmental issues with China. Isabel has reported extensively from South and East Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Europe and Africa, writing for a wide range of national and international media. She has also made several radio and television documentaries and has been a distinguished presenter for BBC Radio Three and Four. Some of her books include The Search for the Panchen Lama, The Falklands War, co-author, of the Fourth Reich & The Best of Granta Travel, Betrayed,The Rise of China & The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup, Her television and radio documentaries include: City On The Edge, Condemned To Live, The Caravan Of Death, to name a few. She was awarded an OBE in 2009 for her contribution to raising environmental awareness in China.

Izzeldin Abuelaish

Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, a passionate and eloquent proponent of peace has been an important figure in the Israeli-Palestinian relations for years. Recipient of many awards, he was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize 2010. His book I Shall Not Hate The Gaza Doctor's Journey is the best seller in Canada and is being translated into 15 languages. Currently he is Associate Professor of Medicine at the University Of Toronto. He has been invited for speeches in The European Parliament, Belgian Parliament, House of Commons, the American Congress, State Department, Forum 2000 in Prague in addition to giving speeches all over the world in academic institutions.

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J. P. Meena

Shri J. P. Meena is Joint Secretary, NHRC and dealing with matters relating to Policies, Research, Programmes, International Coordination and various thematic issues of human rights importance. He belongs to Indian Administrative Service and has held various important positions in the Government of India as well as State Governments. He belongs to Assam and Meghalaya Cadre and joined his service in the year 1983. While in State, he served in various positions as Sub-Divisional Officer, District Magistrate , Principal Secretary to the State Government. He also had experience of serving in the autonomous tribal districts of Assam.

Jagannath Prasad Das

J. P. (Jagannath Prasad) Das is an eminent poet, playwright, fiction writerand critic, who does his creative writing in Oriya. His books have beenwidely translated into English, Hindi and other Indian languages and his plays have been performed in many languages in different parts of India. A Ph.D. in Art History, he has authored several books on Orissan art. He was a Member of the Indian Administrative Service which he left to devote himself to full-time research and writing. He is a recipient of the SahityaAkademi award and the Saraswati Samman. Born in 1936 in Orissa, helives and works in New Delhi.

Jai Arjun Singh

Jai Arjun Singh is a freelance writer and journalist. He has authored the book Jaane bhi do Yaaro: Seriously Funny Since 1983, about the making of the cult comedy film, and has edited The Popcorn Essayists, an anthology of film essays. He writes about books and films on the culture blog Jabberwock (http://jaiarjun.blogspot.com).

Jaishree Misra

Jaishree Misra has written six novels published by Penguin and Harper Collins. She has an MA in English Literature from Kerala University and two post-graduate diplomas from the University of London, in Special Education and Broadcast Journalism. She worked until recently at the British Board of Film Classification but has moved to Delhi, where she is helping develop a residential unit for developmentally challenged adults.

James Kelman

James Kelman is a citizen of Glasgow, Scotland where he continues to live. His short story collections include Greyhound for Breakfast, The Good Times and If It Is Your Life; novels include A Disaffection, How Late It Was, How Late,Translated Accounts, You Have To Be Careful In The Land Of The Free, and Kieron Smith, boy. He has also published essays and plays for radio, stage and film.

James Mather

James Mather was educated at Cambridge and Harvard Universities. His first book, Pashas, was published in November 2009 to critical acclaim and tells the forgotten story of the English Levant Company. He lives with his wife and daughter in London, where he is a barrister.

Jasbir Jain

Jasbir Jain, presently Director, Institute for Research on Interdisciplinary Studies (IRIS) , has been an Emeritus Fellow and a Sahitya Akademi Writer in Residence(2009). Recipient of the 2008 SALA Award for distinguished scholarship and the 2003 IACS award for lifetime achievement, Jain has worked extensively in narratology and feminist studies. Amongst her forthcoming works are Indigenous Roots of Feminism: Culture, Subjectivity and Agency & The Writer as Critic.

Jatin Das

Born in December 1941 in Mayurbhanj, Orissa (India), Jatin Das studied at the Sir JJ School of Art, Bombay, under Professor S.B. Palsikar. He has held over 55 one-man painting exhibitions in India and abroad and has participated in numerous national and international shows and artist camps. He has also done several murals and sculpture installations. Working in oil, watercolour, ink, graphics and conté, his works now feature in several public and private collections internationally. Jatin has built a large personal collection of traditional arts and crafts over the last 35 years. His works have been auctioned by major international auctioneers like Sotheby's, Christie's and Osian's. Jatin has also extensively lectured at innumerable art and architectural colleges and museums on contemporary and traditional art forms. He is also an advisor to many government and private bodies and is the settler and founder chairman of the JD Centre of Art, in his home state, Orissa. Several of his works have been donated to charity. He has very actively led the relief and rehabilitation work of a village in Orissa, affected by the super-cyclone of 1999.

Jay McInerney

Jay McInerney is the author of seven novels, including Bright Lights, Big City, his bestselling 1984 debut, which was cited by Time Magazine in 2006 as one of nine generation-defining novels of the twentieth century. It was translated into more than 20 languages. McInerney wrote the screenplay for the 1988 United Artists film version of the novel, along with several other screenplays, including Gia. His other novels are Ransom, Story of My Life, Brightness Falls, The Last of the Savages, Model Behavior and The Good Life. McInerney has also written for numerous publications including New York magazine, the New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, and Corriera della Serra.

Jayant Prasad

Mr. Prasad was educated in Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University. After lecturing on modern Indian history for two years at St. Stephen's College, Delhi, he entered the Indian Foreign Service in 1976. He has served as India's Ambassador to Afghanistan, Permanent Representative to the Conference on Disarmament, Geneva, and Ambassador to Algeria. He is currently Special Secretary (Public Diplomacy) in the Ministry of External Affairs.

Jeet Thayil

Jeet Thayil is a poet, novelist and musician. His four poetry collections include These Errors Are Correctand English, and he is the editor of The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets. He is one half of the contemporary music project Sridhar/Thayil. His novel Narcopolis is forthcoming in 2012 from Faber (UK) and Penguin (US).

Jerry Pinto

Jerry Pinto has won the National Award for the Best Book on Cinema for his Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb. Most recently, he has co-authored, with Leela Naidu, her memoirs: Leela; A Patchwork Life. He is at work on his first novel.

Jim Crace

Jim Crace is the author of eleven novels. His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages and his prizes include two Whitbreads, the Guardian Fiction Award and the National Book Critics' Circle Award. He lives in Birmingham, England.

John Coetzee

J.M. Coetzee was born in South Africa in 1940 and educated in South Africa and the United States. He has published thirteen works of fiction, as well as criticism and translations. Among awards he has won are the Booker Prize (twice) and, in 2003, the Nobel Prize for Literature. He lives in Adelaide, South Australia.

John Elliott

John Elliott is a former Financial Times journalist. Now based in New Delhi, he writes a blog on South Asia current affairs -http://ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com/, as well as contributing to The Economist and Fortunemagazine. He has been in Asia since 1983, initially in Delhi for the FT 1983-88.

John Makinson

John Makinson is the Chairman and Chief Executive of the Penguin Group, the international publishing company. He was the Finance Director of Pearson, Penguin's parent company, between 1996 and 2002, and is a member of the Pearson Board. John's career has included journalism and investor relations both in London and abroad. He co-founded Makinson Cowell, a firm which is a specialist independent consultancy advising leading international companies on their relationships with the financial community. He was the managing director of the Financial Times newspaper and is Chairman of the National Theatre, a Trustee of the Institute for Public Policy Research, as well as a director of the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian organisation. From 1986 to 1989 he held the position of vice chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi's US holding company. John began at Reuters where he remained from 1976 - 1979 and worked in the London, Paris and Frankfurt offices. He then moved to the Financial Times from 1979 to 1986 as a journalist, becoming editor of the Lex column and Financial Editor.

Jon Halliday

Jon Halliday has taught at universities in Italy and Mexico. He was the author/originator of a 6-hour television series on the Korean War (for British, US [PBS] and Australian TV), broadcast in the late 1980s in some 20 countries. From 1991 to 1999 he was a Senior Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of War Studies at King's College, London University, researching the secret Russian role in the Korean War. He is the co-author with his wife, Jung Chang, of Mao: The Unknown Story (2005) which has sold some 1.5 million copies and been translated into more than 30 languages. He is the author/editor of eight other books on Japan, the Korean War, Albania, cinema and the Psychology of Gambling.

Jon Lee Anderson

Jon Lee Anderson is a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine. He has reported from many countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, and, most recently, Sri Lanka. His books include: Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, The Fall of Baghdad, and The Lion's Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan. Anderson began his reporting career in 1979 in Peru. In 2009, he won a Overseas Press Club Award for his reporting on Rio de Janeiro's gangland. He is currently working on a bography of Fidel Castro.

Jung Chang

Jung Chang was born in Yibin, Sichuan Province, China. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) she worked as a peasant, a ‘barefoot' doctor, a steelworker, and an electrician before becoming an English-language student and, later, an assistant lecturer at Sichuan University. She left China for Britain in 1978 and obtained a PhD in Linguistics in 1982 at the University of York - the first person from Communist China to receive a doctorate from a British university. She is the author of the best-selling books Wild Swans - Three Daughters of Chinaand Mao: The Unknown Story (with Jon Halliday). Recipient of many awards, Jung has been awarded honorary doctorates from the Universities of Buckingham, York and Warwick, the Open University, UK, and Bowdoin College, USA.

Junot Díaz

Junot Díaz is the author of Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. He is the fiction editor at the Boston Review and the Rudge (1948), and NancyAllen Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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K Satchidanandan

K Satchidanandan is perhaps the most translated of contemporary Indian poets , having 23 collections in 18 languages including Arabic, French, German and Italian. His book While I Write : New and Selected Poems (Harper-Collins) is being launched during this festival. 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. He has represented India in many Literary Festivals across the world including the Berlin Literary Festival and London, Paris, Frankfurt and Moscow Book Fairs. He has won 27 literary awards besides Knighthood of the Order of Merit from the Government of Italy and India-Poland Friendship Medal from the Government of Poland.

Kai Bird

Kai Bird's most recent book is Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 (Scribner, 2010). He is the co-author with Martin J. Sherwin of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005), which also won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography. He wrote The Chairman: John J. McCloy, the Making of the American Establishment (1992) and The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy & William Bundy, Brothers in Arms (1998). He is also co-editor with Lawrence Lifschultz of Hiroshima's Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy (1998). He is the recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Alicia Patterson Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, to name a few. He is a member of the Society of American Historians and a contributing editor of The Nation. He lives in Kathmandu, Nepal with his wife and son.

Kamila Shamsie

Kamila Shamsie has written 5 novels, includingBurnt Shadows which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for fiction and is translated into 22 languages. She grew up in Karachi, and now lives in London.

Kapil Sibal

Kapil Sibal graduated from Delhi University and attained a Masters Degree at the Harvard Law School. He joined the Bar in 1972 and was designated a Senior Advocate in 1983. He was the Additional Solicitor General of India between 1989 and 1990. He has figured in several landmark decisions of the Supreme Court of India that have proved to be turning points in India's constitutional history. In May, 2009, he was appointed as Minister of Human Resource Development. In that capacity, he has initiated several path breaking reforms in education. The historic guarantee of the right to free and compulsory elementary education to every child became a reality under his stewardship. Mr. Sibal has recently taken charge of the Ministry of Telecommunication.

Karen Chase

Karen Chase is the award-winning author of the newly published, book-length homoerotic poemJamali-Kamali (Mapin Publishing), as well as two collections of poetry, Kazimierz Square and Bear, and the non-fiction book, Land of Stone. She lives in rural Massachusetts in the United States with her husband, the painter Paul Graubard.

Karthika Naïr

Karthika Naïr lives in Paris, and works as a producer in performing arts. The proximity to dance, in particular, is refracted in much of her poetry, which has been published in several anthologies and journals including Penguin's 60 Indian Poets, Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poetsand The Literary Review. HarperCollins India publishedBearings, her first collection, in 2009. She is currently researching her second book, and writing the script for British Bangladeshi choreographer, Akram Khan's new piece, Desh.

Katherine Russell Rich

Katherine Russell Rich is the author of Dreaming in Hindi: Coming Alive in Another Language. Her work's appeared in the New York Times, theSunday Times Magazine, on This American Life, and in the Daily Beast. She teaches narrative nonfiction at Harvard.

Katie Hickman

Katie Hickman is the author of seven books, including two best-selling history books, Daughters of Britannia and Courtesans. She has written two travel books, Travels with a Mexican Circus, about her experiences travelling with a Mexican circus, and Dreams of the Peaceful Dragon, about a journey on horseback through the forbidden Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. Her two latest novels, The Aviary Gate and The Pindar Diamond, set in Constantinople and Venice in the early seventeenth century, have been translated into nineteen languages.

Kavery Nambisan

Kavery Nambisan is a surgeon and novelist who prefers to work in ruralareas. She did her higher surgical training in the UK. Her novels have been published by Penguin India, one also by Penguin UK. The most recent The Story That Must Not Be Toldwas shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. She is married to poet and writer Vijay Nambisan and they live in Maharashtra.

Kavita Srivastava

For two and half decades now Kavita Srivastava a Human Rights worker has been part of non-violent resistance undertaken by people to assert their democratic and constitutional rights and attain justice. She works with various movements including the Women, Dalit, Tribals, Workers and the Civil liberties movement bringing accountability for the crimes committed against them through legal and public action. She has played a critical role in the Country in exposing the violations by the State of the rights of Human Rights Defenders and is campaigning for the release of Dr. Binayak Sen. She is also in the forefront of the campaign for the Right to Food, which is working towards the realisation of the right to food and the end of hunger and malnutrition in India. She was one of the nominees for the Noble Peace Prize as a part of the Global Campaign called the 1000 women for Peace in 2005.

Kiran Desai

Kiran Desai was born in India in 1971 and educated in India, England and the US, and now lives in New York. She received the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Inheritance of Loss, which was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize.

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Lata Sharma

Lata Sharma been a lecturer for 22 years. Her work has been published in all leading journals in Hindi, broadcast from Akashvani and has been translated into German & English and many other regional languages of India. She has published many books, won many prizes. Lata used to write a column for Rashtriya Sahara.

Lee Siegel

Lee Siegel, Professor of Indian Religions at the University of Hawaii, is a novelist and translator of Sanskrit poetry. He has written non-fiction books about magic in India, Net of Magic and comedy in Sanskrit literature, Laughing Matters. His novels include Love in a Dead Language, Love and Other Games of Chance, and, most recently, Love and the Incredibly Old Man.

Leila Aboulela

Leila Aboulela's new novel Lyrics Alley is set in 1950s Sudan. She was the first winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story The Museum included in her collection of short storiesColoured Lights. Her previous novels are The Translator, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and Minaret - both novels long-listed for the Orange Prize and IMPAC Dublin Award.

Liaquat Ahamed

Liaquat Ahamed is the author of Lords Of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke The World which won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for History and the FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. It tells the story of the 1929 global economic collapse, in part through the biographies of the West's four principal central bankers. This was his first book. He has spent most of his career in the investment business.

Lloyd Rudolph

Lloyd Rudolph is Professor of Political Science Emeriti, University of Chicago. For many years, he along with wife Susanne has been active in promoting the study of Rajasthan. In 1986, they helped to found the Rajasthan Studies Group [RSG] [www.rajstudies.org] in the USA. In 1992 they assisted the late Dr. Rajendra Joshi in establishing the Institute for Rajasthan Studies [IRS]. He has co-edited The Idea of Rajasthan: Explorations in Regional Identity with Susanne Rudolph. They are the authors with Mohan Singh Kanota of Reversing the Gaze: Amar Singh's Diary, A Colonial Subject's Narrative of Imperial India, Essays on Rajputana and of the forthcoming Romanticism's Child: Essays on and Documents of James Tod. The Rudolphs are recipients of the 2007 Colonel James Tod award of the Maharana Mewar Foundation. They spend three months in Jaipur each year.

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Madan Gopal Singh

Dr Madan Gopal Singh is a singer, composer, lyricist and script writer. He doctoral dissertation was a semiotic study of some of the seminal Indian film texts. He has lectured and performed extensively in India and abroad. He is currently working on the Indian film music as a Senior Fellow of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi.

Mahesh Elkunchwar

Mahesh Elkunchwar is an Indian playwright with more than 22 plays to his name, in addition to his theoretical writings, critical works, and his active work in India's Parallel Cinema as an actor and screenwriter. Elkunchwar emerged onto the national theatre scene with his play Sultan in 1967. Elkunchwar's plays are written in Marathi, and have been subsequently translated into multiple Indian and Western languages. He has been honored in India with multiple awards such as the Homi Bhabha Fellowship (1976-78), the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, annual award for best playwright (given by the National Academy of the Performing Arts, 1989), the Sahitya Akademi Award (given by the National Academy of Letters, 2002), and internationally with the Brittingham Fellowship (2005).

Mahmood Farooqui

Mahmood Farooqui studied history at St Stephen's College, Delhi, and at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. He has been a journalist and a newspaper columnist and, over the last few years, has effected a major revival of Dastangoi, the art of Urdu storytelling. Farooqui is the co-director of the Hindi feature film, Peepli Live, and lives in Delhi with his wife Anusha Rizvi.

Makarand Sathe

Makarand Sathe, an architect by profession, has written plays (Charshe Koti Visarbhole, Surya Philele Manus, Chowk, Te Pudhe Gele etc.), novels (Achyut Athawale Aani Aathawan, Operation Yamu) and essays in Marathi. His work has been translated and published in English (by Seagull Books, and under publication by Penguin), French, Russian and many Indian languages. Recently he has finished writing a 3 volume socio-political history of Marathi theatre under the fellowship from IFA, which is under publication.

Malashri Lal

Malashri Lal is Professor in the Department of English, University of Delhi. On fellowships from Fulbright and Rockefeller Foundation she was invited to Harvard University, USA, and Bellagio, Italy. Her recent publications include the co-edited volumes, Speaking for Myself: Anthology of Asian Women's Writing, and In Search of Sita, both published by Penguin (2009). She is currently associated with the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, London and New Delhi.

Mamang Dai

Mamang Dai is a poet, novelist and free lance journalist. She has written extensively on Arunachal Pradesh and was correspondent for the Telegraph,Hindustan Times and the Sentinel newspapers, and President, Arunachal Pradesh Union of Working Journalists. She is the author of Arunachal Pradesh- the Hidden Land, (Non-fiction) that received the State Verrier Elwin Award, (in the field of publication & print media) 2003, River Poems (poetry), and two novels-The Legends of Pensam and Stupid Cupid. Currently Dai is General Secretary, Arunachal Pradesh Literary Society, and member- North East Writers' Forum, (NEWF), and General Council member of the Sahitya & Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi. Dai lives in Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh.

Mamang Dai

Mangalesh Dabral

Mangalesh Dabral has published five collections of poetry and three collections of socio-cultural literary essays and commentary. He has published a travel account of Iowa in the US where he was for three months as a fellow of The International Writing Programme in 1991. A recipient of many awards, Dabral has also given a poetry reading at the prestigeous International Poetry Festival, Rotterdam, the Netherlands in 2008. One of his collections, Aawaaz Bhi Ek Jagah Hai(Voice Too Is A Place) has been translated into Italian by Prof Mariola Offredi under the title, Anche La Voce e un Luogo. Dabral's poems have been translated into multiple languages. He has translated into Hindi, poems of Pablo Neruda, Bertolt Brecht, Ernesto Cardenal, Yannis Ritsos, to name a few. He has also worked as a consultant to The National Book Trust, India. He lives in Delhi and works as a journalist.

Mangalesh Dabral

Mani Shankar Aiyar

Mani Shankar was born in Lahore is a former Indian diplomat who resigned from the foreign service and became a politician working for Rajiv Gandhi in 1989-1991. He is a member of the Indian National Congress party and was Minister of Panchayati Raj until he lost his seat in the 2009 Election. He served as Union Cabinet Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas from May 2004 through January 2006 and Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports till 2009.

Manisha Kulshreshtha

Manisha Kulshreshtha is a popular young Hindi writer. She has published three story collections. Her very popular story Kathputaliyan, based on life in the Thar Desert in Rajasthan, has been translated into 12 languages. Her first published novel Shigaf (The Slit) based on Kashmir, is written in the unusual form of a blog! She is the Editor of the first and famous Hindi web portal - www.hindinest.com. Her regular columns published in Naya Gyanoday on ‘literature and internet' have made an impact on the Hindi literary world. Some of her translations into Hindi include the autobiography of Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday, a few stories of Khorkhe Luyis Borkhes. A Kathak dancer herself, she is presently writing a novel on the dance form, tentatively titled Panchkanya. Having been born and brought up in Rajasthan, and being married to an Airforce officer she is well traveled, though she presently lives in Delhi. (manisha@hindinest.com)

Manisha Pandey

Manisha Pandey is Bhopal based journalist, writer and blogger. She works as Feature Editor in Dainik Bhaskar. Her Blog Bedakhal Ki Diary is very popular and highly acknowledged. She has translated French feminist writer Simon de Beauvoir's interviews and Henrik Ibsen's play Dolls House in Hindi. Currently she is working for a book on one of the world's greatest film directors - Ingmar Bergman.

Manju Kapur

Manju Kapur taught English literature in Miranda House for over 25 years. Her novel Difficult Daughters won the Commonwealth Prize for best first novel, Eurasia region in 1998. Her other novels are A Married Woman, Home, shortlisted for the Hutch-Crossword Prize, and The Immigrantshortlisted for the DSC Prize of South Asian Literature. Her work has been translated into German, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Hebrew, Marathi and Hindi.

Manjushree Thapa

Manjushree Thapa is the author, most recently, ofSeasons of Flight, set in rural Nepal and Los Angeles. Her previous books of fiction are Tilled Earth and The Tutor of History. Her literary nonfiction books include Forget Kathmandu, a finalist for the Lettre Ulysses Award. She lives in Kathmandu and Toronto. More on www.manjushreethapa.com.

Manu Joseph

Manu Joseph is the editor of the national news-magazine OPEN. He has been a journalist for over 15 years. His first novel Serious Men has won The Hindu Best Fiction Award and is one of The Huffington Post's 10 Best Books of 2010. He lives in Delhi, grudgingly.

Marina Lewycka

Marina Lewycka was born of Ukrainian parents in a refugee camp in Kiel, Germany, at the end of World War II, and now lives in Sheffield, Yorkshire. Her first novel, The Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (2005) was published when she was 58 years old, and went on to sell a million copies in more than thirty languages. It was shortlisted for the 2005 Orange Prize for Fiction, longlisted for the Man Booker prize, won the 2005 Saga Award for Wit and the 2005 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. Marina's second novel Two Caravans(2007) (published in US as Strawberry Fields) was short-listed for the George Orwell prize for political writing. Her third novel, We Are All Made of Glue, was published in 2009, and touches on, among other things, the property boom in London, the conflict in the Middle East, epilepsy, bondage, cats, and glue.

Martin Amis

Martin Amis is the author of eleven novels, the memoir Experience, two collections of stories and six collections of non-fiction, most recently The Second Plane. He lives in London with his wife, the writer Isabel Fonseca, and their two daughters.

Meena Kandasamy

Meena Kandasamy is a poet, writer, activist and translator. She sees each of these as a way of engaging with her identity as a woman, a Dalit and a Tamil, three categories of belonging with a history of resistance to oppression. She was the youngest person ever to represent India as a writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa's International Writing Program 2009. Her debut poetry collection, Touch, was published in 2006 to widespread critical acclaim. A second collection,Ms.Militancy, was published by Navayana in 2010.

Mirza Waheed

Mirza Waheed was born and brought up in Srinagar, Kashmir. He studied English Literature at the University of Delhi, and worked as a journalist and editor in the city for four years. In 2001 he went onto join the BBC's Urdu Service in London, where he now works as an editor.Waheed briefly attended the Arvon Foundation in 2007. He has written for the Kashmir Observer and the BBC's Urdu and English websites and appeared on BBC radio and TV as a commentator. He has been writing since he was ten. The Collaborator is his first novel and he has started work on a second novel, a young girl's love story spanning Kashmir, Delhi and Pakistan.

Mita Kapur

Mita Kapur is a freelance journalist regularly featured in many newspapers and magazines. She covers social and developmental issues along with travel, food and lifestyle humor stories. She is the founder and CEO of Siyahi, a literary consultancy where she doubles up as a literary agent along with conceptualizing and directing literary events. Her first book,The F-Word was published by HarperCollins in 2010.

MJ Akbar

MJ Akbar has worked in the field of journalism withTimes of India, Illustrated Weekly, the Onlooker,Sunday, The Telegraph, Deccan Chronicle amongst others. He launched and was editor of The Asian Age. In 2008 he launched Covert, a political based fortnight magazine. He also launched in 2010 The Sunday Guardian, Delhi's first Sunday newspaper and India on Sunday, published from London. MJ Akbar has recently joined India Today and Headlines Today as Editorial Director. His books include India: The Siege Within, Challenges to a Nation's Unit; Riot After Riot; Nehru: The Making of India & Kashmir: Behind the Veil& The Shade of Swords: Jihad and the Conflict Between Islam and Christianity. MJ Akbar's book Blood Brothers is the story of three generations of a Muslim family- based on his own- and how they deal with the fluctuating contours of Hindu-Muslim relations. This book has been translated into Italian, Hungarian, Hindi and Malayalam.

Mohsin Hamid

Mohsin Hamid is the author of two best-selling novels: Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which was short-listed for the 2007 Booker Prize. His books have been published in over 25 languages and have won numerous awards. He also writes for Dawn, the Guardian, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, and other publications. He lives in Lahore.

Mridula Behari

Mridula Behari is an award-winning author, playwright and activist. She has written numerous books including a historical novel, a collection of plays, and contemporary fiction primarily with women as the central character. She has been published in several national and regional newspapers and magazines including Dharmyug, Saptahik Hindustan, Saarika,Dainik Bhaskar among others. Her plays have been broadcasted on All-India Radio and Doordarshan widely. She has also contributed to the theatre and films. She was recently awarded the Meera Sammaan from the Rajasthan Sahitya Academy and the Radhakrishna Sammaan. She has spoken extensively on Literary Forums both in India and abroad. Originally from Ranchi, she is now settled in Jaipur and United States.

Mridula Garg

With novels like Chittacobra, Anitya Halfway to Nowhere, Country of Goodbyes (in English translation) and the recent Miljul Man (Hindi), Mridula Garg does not adhere to any tradition, Marxist, feminist or region specific. Her contemporary milieu has space for parents, siblings and servants but the familiar turns unpredictable as she discards stereotypes, using irony to elucidate the axiom, I am my choices.

Mrinal Pande

Mrinal Pande writes in both Hindi and in English and her work covers fiction, plays, and essays on contemporary India and its women and a study of India's rural women and their sexual and reproductive lives. She was awarded the Padmashree in 2006 for her services in the field of journalism. Mrinal has taught at the Universities of Allahabad, Delhi and Bhopal before switching to journalism in mid 1980s and has edited well known Hindi periodicals. Mrinal has worked as Editor Anchor for Hindi news in Star News and also Doordarshan. In 2000 she became India's first woman Chief Editor of a multi edition Hindi daily (Hindustan , Hindustan Times Group). She was also the Secretary General of the Editors' Guild of India and the founder President of the Indian Women's Press Corps. Mrinal was recently appointed Chairman of India's national broadcaster, Prasar Bharati. She lives in Delhi with her husband .

Muneeza Shamsie

Muneeza Shamsie, writer, critic and bibliographer, is the regional Chairperson (Eurasia) of the Commonwealth Writers Prize 2010, 2011. She is on the editorial board of Pakistaniaat, Guest Editor for The Journal of Postcolonial Writing Special Pakistan Issue (April 2011) and Managing Editor of a work-in-progress The Oxford Companion to the Literatures of Pakistan. She has edited three anthologies of Pakistani English Literature, writes for Dawn and Newsline and for scholarly publications including The Journal of Commonwealth Literature and the online Literary Encyclopedia .

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Nam Le

Nam Le is the author of The Boat, which won over a dozen major awards and was selected for over thirtybest books of the year lists internationally. He is the fiction editor of the Harvard Review, and divides his time between Melbourne and overseas. More on www.namleonline.com

Namita Devidayal

Namita Devidayal is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, The Music Room, and the recent bestselling novel, Aftertaste. She is winner of the Crossword Popular Book Award (2008). Namita graduated from Princeton University. She is a journalist with The Times of India and lives in Mumbai.

Namita Gokhale

Namita Gokhale is a writer and publisher. Her first novel, Paro: Dreams Of Passion, caused an uproar due to its candid sexual humour. Her other books include, Gods Graves And Grandmother, A Himalayan Love Story, Mountain Echoes, The Book of Shadows and The Book Of Shiva.Shakuntala, The Play of Memory, published in 2005, was the first Indian novel to be released simultaneously in Hindi and English. Gokhale's retelling of the Mahabharata for young readers, The Puffin Mahabharata, was released in January 2009. In Search of Sita, an anthology of essays co-edited with Dr.Malashri Lal, was published in October 2009. Namita Gokhale is a director of Yatra Books, which co-publishes with Penguin India in English, Hindi, Marathi and Urdu. Besides being a founder and the co-director of the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival, Namita Gokhale conceptualized the International Festival of Indian Literature, Neemrana 2002, and the Africa-Asia Literary Conference, Neemrana 2006.

Nand Bharadwaj

Nand Bharadwaj is a well-known writer of Hindi & Rajasthani and a media person. Critics and the fans both have equally appreciated his contribution in literature as well as in media. Born in a small village in Barmer district of Rajsthan, he has contributed a number of books in fiction, literary criticism, interviews with personalities and a collection of articles on culture and media. Andhar Pakh, Jheel Per Havi Raat and Hari Doob Ka Sapna are some of his poetry collections. His novelSamhi Khulato Marag in Rajasthani, has been awarded by Sahitya Akademi, in 2005. His major editorial works include Ret Par Nange Panvand Teen Beesi Paar published by National Book Trust, India in 2007. Doordarshan has also awarded him for his outstanding contribution in the production of series on INDIAN CLASSICS in 2003. As media professional, he has worked with AIR and DD more than three decades. He has recently been retired as Senior Director of Doordarshan Jaipur. At present, he is active as a free-lance writer and media expert.

Nandita C Puri

Nandita C Puri made her literary debut with Nine On Nine, a critically-acclaimed collection of short stories about the urban Indian woman. She is the author ofUnlikely Hero, the best-selling biography of her husband, actor Om Puri. A columnist with major Indian publications, and a screenplay writer, Nandita wrote the Bollywood commercial Dil Leke Dekho. Her next script based on her short story, At Jenny's, is ready for filming. She is currently wrapping up her next book, Breaking News, a tongue-in-cheek look at the Indian media. Nandita lives in Mumbai, where her refrigerator is always stocked with food for thought as she conceptualizes a new book in yet another genre, Eating India, her foray into gluttony with co-author Simon Majumdar (of Eat My Globe fame).

Narayan Wagle

Narayan Wagle, a journalist by profession, is the Editor in Chief of Nagarik Nepali National Daily in Kathmandu, Nepal. His best selling Nepali novel Palpasa Cafe, was published by Publication Nepa-laya, Kathmandu in 2005. It was later translated and brought out in English with the same name and also by Random House, India in 2010 for the South Asian market. The novel has also been translated into Korean. He was awarded the Madan Puraskar, Nepal's best known literary prize for a book and the Akhyan Puraskar for his debut novel. As a journalist, Narayan has covered important political, diplomatic and social issues during the country's tumultous time.

Naseem Shafai

Naseem Shafai has carved out a distinct place in Kashmiri literature for herself and earned applause for her style and way of expressing herself through her poetry. Her first poetic collection Derche Machrith (Open Windows), the first of its kind by a Kashmiri woman writer, was published and received wide acclaim from the literary circles of Kashmir. Her second collection titled Na Thsay Na Aks (Neither shadow nor copy) was selected for the prestigious Tagore award, sponsored jointly by the Sahitya Akademi and Samsung international of South Korea. Besides poetic symposiums, Naseem has been taking an active part in various other cultural and literary activities. A large number of Naseem's poems have been translated in English, Telgu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu and several other languages

Navtej Sarna

Navtej Sarna graduated in Commerce and Law from Delhi University and joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1980. He is presently India's Ambassador to Israel and has earlier served as a diplomat in Moscow, Warsaw, Thimphu, Geneva, Tehran and Washington DC as well as most recently at Delhi as the Foreign Office Spokesperson. He is the author of The Exile (2008), We Weren't Lovers Like That (2003), The Book of Nanak (2003) and Folk Tales of Poland (1991). His translation ofThe Zafarnama is scheduled to be published as a Penguin Classic in spring 2011. His short stories have been broadcast over the BBC World Service and published in prominent magazines and anthologies in the UK and in India. He contributes regularly to the Times Literary Supplement and several Indian journals and his literary column Second Thoughts in The Hindu is now in its fifth year. For more: www.navtejsarna.com

Neerja Mattoo

Neerja Mattoo is a writer, translater, academic and social activist. She has been Professor and Head, English Department, Government College for Women, Srinagar. A British Council Visitor to the Oxford University, she was also awarded a Senior Fellowship by the Ministry of Human Resource Development to work on Kashmiri women poets, including Lal Ded (14th century). Her publications, apart from papers published in books, include, The Stranger Beside Me, Contemporary Kashmiri Short Stories and Kashmir, Jammu and Ladakh: The Trefoil Land.

Neeta Gupta

Neeta Gupta is the publisher at Yatra Books. Besides translating and contributing to various magazines, she is the editor of Bharatiya Anuvad Parishad's quarterly journal on translation, Anuvad. Yatra Books has been co-ordinating Penguin's Indian Languages Publishing Programme since January 2005. They have published almost two hundred titles together in Hindi, Urdu and Marathi. These books have been published both in translation as well as in the original languages.

Nilanjana S Roy

Nilanjana S Roy is a literary critic and columnist with extensive experience in the worlds of publishing and the media. She is currently working on a collection of literary essays, How To Read in Indian, for HarperCollins, and a children's book.

Nirupama Dutt

Nirupama Dutt is a poet, journalist, translator and has written in English, Hindi and Punjabi. Her anthology of poems in Punjabi Ik Nadi Sanwali Jahi received the Punjabi Akademi award. Stories of the Soil, an anthology of 41 short stories of Punjabi, translated and edited by her and published in December 2010 by Penguin India. She has translated the autobiography and poems of Punjabi revolutionary poet Lal Singh Dil called Song of the Flaming Satluj for Penguin India and has penned the biography of Dalit singer Bant Singh for Navanya called Ballad of Bant Singh. Nirupama is working on a book on Punjab and translating the novels of Amrita Pritam.

Nirupama Rao

Nirupama Rao, who assumed the office of Foreign Secretary on 1 August 2009, has served in various capitals, including Washington, Moscow and Beijing; has had extensive experience in India-China relations; served as the first woman Spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs; and has been Ambassador of India to Peru, Sri Lanka and China. She is an accomplished pianist and her book of poetry, Rain Rising, was published in 2004.

Nitasha Kaul

Nitasha Kaul (www.nitashakaul.com) is a writer, scholar, poet and traveller with many lives in England, Bhutan, Delhi, Kashmir. Her debut novelResidue was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2009. In 2010, she was Associate Professor of Creative Writing in Bhutan. In addition to her fiction and poetry, she has published books and articles on themes of Kashmir, democracy, identity, technology, politics, economy. A PhD in Economics and Philosophy, she was previously a professor of Economics in the UK. She has travelled to over 50 countries around the world, photographing streets and strangers, and writing poetry. She is represented by Stephanie Ebdon at The Marsh Agency, London.

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Om Thanvi

Om Thanvi, born and brought-up in Rajasthan, is editor of Jansatta, a Hindi daily of the Indian Express Group. He is known for his social and cultural concerns. He has personally been engaged in theatre, literature and environmental activities and has keen interest in history and anthropology; particularly in cinema, music, painting and language. Om writes travelogues and critical essays. His ten-part travelogue on Pakistan, tracing remains of the Indus Valley civilization, was widely acclaimed in the literary circles. So were his research based articles on Dr. L.P. Tessitori, an Italian who worked on traditional Rajasthani literature and language in early 20th century in Jodhpur and Bikaner.

Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk is the author of eight novels, the memoir Istanbul, and three works of non-fiction, and is the winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. One of Europe's most prominent novelists, his work has been translated into over 50 languages.

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Pallavi Aiyar

Award winning journalist and author Pallavi Aiyar spent six years living in a hutong home in the heart of the old imperial city of Beijing. She reported from across China for the Hindu and Indian Express in addition to teaching English at the Beijing Broadcasting Institute. Her debut book Smoke and Mirrors: An Experience of China won the Vodafone-Crossword Reader's Choice Award for 2008. Her first novel, Chinese Whiskers, a modern fable set in contemporary Beijing, will be published in January 2011. Aiyar currently lives in Brussels where she writes about Europe for the Business Standard.

Paro Anand

Paro Anand is the author of 20 books. She headed the National Centre for Children's Literature, India and has been awarded by President Kalam and The Russian Centre for Science and Culture for her contribution to children's literature.

She is a performance storyteller and runs the program, Literature in Action. Paro has worked with children in difficult circumstances including the orphans of Kashmir and children of poachers in Madhya Pradesh. Her book No Guns At My Son's Funeral has received extensive critical acclaim and was nominated on the IBBY Honor List, 2006, as the best book for young people from India. It has been translated into Spanish and German. A follow up novel, Weed, is the story of the son of a terrorist and his struggle to find an alternate life to sustain himself and his family.

She was writer-in-residence at the Woodstock School, Mussoorie, where she wrote her first novel for adults, Pure Sequence, a book celebrating the grace and strength of older women.

Patrick French

Patrick French is a British writer, the author ofYounghusband, Liberty or Death, Tibet,Tibetand the World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul, described by James Wood in The New Yorker as ‘a masterly, mournful book ... full of intimate and moving revelations.' His latest book is India: A Potrait, which will be released in January 2011.

Pauline Melville

Writer Pauline Melville's first book, Shape-Shifter, won the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Macmillan Silver Pen Award and a Commonwealth Writers Prize. Her first novel, The Ventriloquist's Tale won the Whitbread First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Eating Air is her second novel. She has also worked as an actress in film and television, and currently lives in London.

Pavan K. Varma

Writer-diplomat Pavan K. Varma joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1976. He has been Press Secretary to the President of India, the Spokesman of the Ministry of External Affairs, Joint Secretary for Africa, High Commissioner for India in Cyprus, Director of the Nehru Centre in London and Director General of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, New Delhi. A writer of depth and insight, he has written over a dozen books including the highly successful The Great Indian Middle Class, Being Indian: The Truth About Why the 21st Century Will Be India's, Krishna: The Playful Divine and Ghalib: The Man, The Times, and the Havelis of Old Delhi. Another recent work is a witty adaptation of Vatsyayana's Kama Sutra; Kama Sutra: The Art of Making Love to a Woman, was published early in 2007. His latest book titled: Becoming Indian: The Unfinished Revolution of Culture and Identity. Pavan K. Varma, is currently the Indian Ambassador to Bhutan.

Philip Lutgendorf

Philip Lutgendorf is a Professor of Hindi and Modern Indian Studies at the University of Iowa (USA). His book on the performance of the Hindi Ramayana, The Life of a Text won the A. K. Coomaraswamy Prize of the Association for Asian Studies. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002-03 for his research on the popular "monkey-god" Hanuman, which has appeared as Hanuman's Tale, The Messages of a Divine Monkey. His interests include epic performance traditions, folklore and popular culture, and mass media. He maintains a website devoted to Indian popular cinema, a.k.a."Bollywood" (www.uiowa.edu/~incinema). He is presently working on a social history of "chai" in India, and also on a new translation of the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas for the Murty Classical Library of India and Harvard University Press. He is President of The American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS).

Preeta Bhargava

Preeta Bhargava selected in Rajasthan Administrative Services became the first woman to be the Jail Superintendent of Rajasthan. Her dedicated works for the welfare of women and children mostly through awareness programs and literary works are widely recognized. Her collection of Hindi poems areChoote ghar ki deewarein, Tum ho Isiliye &Baki Sab Khairiyat Hai. She has been awarded by many institutions for her exemplary efforts in the domain of women empowerment.

Pritham Chakravarthy

Pritham Chakravarthy is an actor, dramaturge and playwright. She has written and translated scripts for many television serials, documentaries and plays. She is an activist for gender and equality issues. Apart from being a fellow at University of Madison, Wisconsin and SOAS, London, she is the Artist in Residence, Tata Institute of Social Studies, Mumbai, India.

Priya Sarukkai Chabria

Priya Sarukkai Chabria is a poet, writer, translator, teacher of creative writing and cultural curator with two poetry collections and two novels; she is extensively published internationally. She edits the website Talking Poetry (South Asia), curates seminars for the Indian Academy of Literature and has worked on the Rasa Theory of aesthetics. This year a translation of Aandaal, mystic poet and a travelogue are forthcoming. More on www.priyawriting.com.

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Rachel Polonsky

Rachel Polonsky is the author of the critically acclaimed Molotov's Magic Lantern, A Journey in Russian History. She writes for the TLS, theTimes, The Daily Telegraph, the Spectator, and Areté, among others, and for various scholarly publications. She lived in Moscow for ten years, and now lives in Cambridge.

Rahul Pandita

Rahul Pandita is a Delhi-based writer, journalist and works as a senior Special Correspondent with the Openmagazine. He is the co-author of the best-selling book on insurgency, The Absent State. As a journalist, he has covered wars in Iraq, Sri Lanka and elsewhere, and has extensively reported from India's insurgent heartlands of Maoist red zones, Kashmir and the Northeast. His next book on the Maoist movement in India, Hello Bastar, will be out by February 2011.

Rajendra Singh

Rajendra Singh, is a winner of 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award For Community leadership. He leads an organization, Tarun Bhagat Sangh, which is supported by the United Nations, USIAD, and the World bank. He was highly appreciated and recognized for the efforts he made for harvesting rain water water by building check dams in Rajasthan. It is because of this he is popularly known as the ‘Jal Pusush' or the ‘Water man of Rajasthan'.

Rajyashree Kumari

Rajyashree Kumari Bikaner, is Late Maharaja Dr. Karni Singhji's daughter. In 2009 her coffee table book titledThe Lallgarh Palace - Home of the Maharajas of Bikaner was published. The book is an enchanting tale by Rajyashree Kumari Bikaner of her royal family, in the backdrop of the imposing beauty of Lallgarh Palace - the Royal House of Bikaner. She was awarded the Arjuna Award in 1969 for her achievements in Shooting. Her other interest include the preservation of heritage properties and ancestral forts and palaces that belong to the Bikaner family. She is a Life member of INTACH and PETA, India. In 1999, she founded Maharaja Dr. Karni Singhji Memorial Foundation in the memory of her late father.

Rana Dasgupta

Rana Dasgupta was born in Canterbury, England in 1971 and studied at Balliol College, Oxford and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After his studies he worked for a marketing consultancy firm which took him to London, Kuala Lumpur and then New York. In 2001, he moved to Delhi to write. His first novel, Tokyo Cancelled, appeared in 2005 and was shortlisted for the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize. Solo(2009) won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. His essays have appeared in Granta, The Missouri Review and the New Statesman. Rana now lives permanently in Delhi, and is at present working on a book about his adopted city.

Ravi Singh

Ravi Singh is publisher and editor-in-chief with Penguin Books India, which he joined in 1994.

Ravish Kumar

Ravish Kumar has been working with NDTV India, a national news channel in Hindi, for more than 15 years. He does a weekly report called Ravish Ki Reporton NDTV India. His work can be accessed onwww.tubaah.com. He has won several awards including Ramnath Goenka Awarad for excellence in Journalism. His blogis called naisadak.blogspot.com. Ravish has been reviewing blogs for Hindi Daily Hindustan for the more than 2 years. He has published one book Dekhte Rahiye and his next book is going to be published by Penguin India. He has a passion for photography.

Reeta Chowdhury

Reeta Chowdhury is a well acclaimed author in the genre of poetry, short story, fiction, travelogues. She published her first novel Abirata Jatra during the time that she went underground due to the Assam movement and then continued her activism through writing fifteen more books. She received the Sahitya Akademi Award for her famous novel Deolangkhui. She has won many awards, some of which include Kolaguru Bishnuprasad Rabha Award (2006) and the Sahitya Akademi Award ( 2008). She is currently teaching Political Science in Cotton College, Guwahati, Assam.

Renee Ranchan

Renee Ranchan hails from the pine-breezed mountains and has reluctantly set up home in dusty Delhi. From 1993 to 2003, she has been a columnist and feature writer for the Metropolitan of The Hindustan Times, Delhi-Midday, Evening News, The Sun, The Tribune and The Patriot, besides contributing to the Indian Express, The Times of India and The Pioneer. Her book of poetry, Untwine the Wind, published in July, 2010, received wholesome reviews in all major Indian newspapers. Currently she is giving the finishing touches to her book of stories tentatively titled, Simla to Shimla. Renee was invited to attend Martha's Vineyard Writers' Residency, near Boston, in October,2010. She has also been asked to participate at El Gouna's Writers-in-Residence programme, Egypt in June,2011.

Richard Ford

Richard Ford lives in Maine, in the United States, and is the author of seven novels, three collections of stories and many essays. His novel Independence Day won the Pulitzer Prize in 1996. His trilogy The Bascombe Novels was published in 2009. He is a frequent contributor to The Guardian the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung and several other newspapers in Europe.

Rima Hooja

An archaeologist, historian and writer, Dr. Rima Hooja is the Director of Minnesota University's MSID India Program. She has held several academic posts, served on various governing boards, committees and councils, and has over 80 published research papers and articles, as well as numerous journalistic pieces and book-reviews to her credit. Books by her includeThe Ahar Culture and Beyond; Prince, Patriot, Parliamentarian: Biography of Dr. Karni Singh - Maharaja of Bikaner; Crusader for Self-Rule: Tej Bahadur Sapru and the Indian National Movement; an English translation of a fifteenth century Sanskrit manuscript on iconography, Mandan's Devata-Murti-Prakarnam, A History of Rajasthan; and a co-edited work (with Rakesh Hooja and Rakshat Hooja)Rajpootana- Rajasthan.

Roberto Calasso

Born in Florence, Roberto Calasso lives in Milan. He's the author of a work in various parts, which so far includes The Ruin of Kasch (1983), The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony (1988), Ka (1996), K.(2002), Tiepolo Pink (2006) and Baudelaire's Folly (2008). Calasso is also the author of the novelL'Impuro Folle and two collections of essays The Forty-Nine Steps and Literature and the Gods. His One Hundred Letters to an Unknown Reader was published in 2003, and in 2004 he edited The Zürau Aphorisms by Franz Kafka.

Roma Tearne

Roma Tearne left Sri Lanka for Britain at the age of ten. She gained her Master's degree at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford, and was Leverhulme Artist in Residence at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. She is the author of Mosquito, shortlisted for the Costa First Book award and the Kiriyama Prize, Bone China, Brixton Beach andThe Swimmer. She lives and works in Oxford.

Rory Stewart

Rory Stewart OBE MP was educated at Balliol College, Oxford. He served in the British Embassy in Indonesia and as the British Representative in Montenegro. From 2000-2002 he walked 6000 miles across Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, India and Nepal. The Places in Between is his account of this journey. His second book The Prince of the Marshes was about his time as Deputy Governor of two provinces in Southern Iraq. Rory lived in Kabul from 2006-2008, where he foundedTurquoise Mountain, investing in the development of Afghanistan's traditional crafts and the rehabilitation of the old city of Kabul. Rory was appointed as the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights at Harvard University in 2009. He was elected as Member of Parliament for Penrith and the Border on 6th May 2010.

Rupika Chawla

Rupika Chawla is a conservator of paintings based in Delhi. She has restored several Ravi Varma paintings and also gives training in conservation. She has written extensively on contemporary Indian art and is the author of Surface and Depth; Indian Artists at Work (Viking), A. Ramachandran: Art of the Muralist (Kala Yatra and Sistas), Icons of the Raw Earth (Kala Yatra) and has recently published Raja Ravi Varma, Painter of Colonial India (Mapin Publishing). She also maintained a column in the Indian Express from 2001 to 2004.

Rupleena Bose

Rupleena Bose teaches Literatures in English at Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi. She writes on cinema, urban cultures, nineteenth century women's autobiographies and journals. Between contemplating a PHD and thinking stories, she researches, translates, and scripts documentaries and feature films. Contact:rupleena.bose@gmail.com

Ruskin Bond

Ruskin Bond was born in Kasauli, and now lives in Landour, Mussoorie, with his adopted family. He wrote his first novel, The Room on the Roof, when he was seventeen. Since then he has written several novellas, over 500 short stories, as well as various essays and poems, all of which have established him as one of the best-loved and most admired chroniclers of contemporary India. Besides The Room on the Roof, his published works include the novels A Flight of Pigeons, Delhi Is Not Far, The Sensualist and A Handful of Nuts, and the short story collections Night Train at Deoli, Time Stops at Shamli, Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra and When Darkness Falls. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993 and the Padma Shri in 1999.

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S. Anand

S. Anand is the publisher of Navayana, an independent press that focuses on issues of caste. He is also the co-author of the just-published Bhimayana, a graphic biography of B.R. Ambedkar.

Salman Ahmad

Salman Ahmad is a doctor by training and a rock musician by profession. He went to school in his birth place of Lahore, Pakistan and then moved with his family to New York. After graduating from high school in the U.S. he got his medical degree from Pakistan's King Edward Medical College in Lahore. In 1990 he founded South Asia's biggest rock band, Junoon. Salman has also been appointed as U.N.AIDS special representative for Hiv/Aids. As UN Goodwill Ambassador for HIV/AIDS, and through his music video Al-Vida, Salman has brought urgent attention and resources to this issue throughout South Asia. He has raised thousands of dollars for social causes and for those in need. Salman has appeared in two documentary films: It's My Country Too on muslim-americans and Rockstar & the Mullahs. For more: www.ssgwi.org and twitter@sufisal.

Sangeeta Bahadur

Sangeeta Bahadur is an Indian Foreign Service Officer of the 1987 Batch, currently posted in New Delhi. Born in Kolkata, she moved around a great deal during her childhood and adolescence, and took the Civil Services Exams from Mumbai. In the years since, she has lived and worked in Spain, Bulgaria, Mexico and Belgium. The writing-bug bit her at a tender age, but it was only later in life that she found the right outlet for her imagination and style in the delightful genre of Speculative Fiction. Jaal- The Web, published by Picador, is the first Book of her Trilogy, Kaal. Married to an Architect, she has two young daughters.

Sanjoy Hazarika

Sanjoy Hazarika is Professor at the Centre for North East Studies at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, and Managing Trustee, Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research (C-NES) in the NE. Author, essayist and film maker, Hazarika is one of India's best known faces and commentators on the issues before the North-east of India. He was awarded the Dr Jean Mayer Award for Global Citizenship by Tufts University. Chairman of the Board at the highly regarded Down to Earth magazine of the Centre for Science and Environment, Hazarika is also a member of the Executive Board of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. Hazarika has held fellowships at Harvard University, Tufts University and the University of Kentucky. In 2006, he was a Practitioner in Residence at Tufts University, which honored his innovation, research and policy advocacy. Acknowledged as a specialist on migration, some of Hazarika's books include, Writing on the Wall,Reflections on the North-East; Bhopal, lessons of a tragedy; Rites of Passage: border crossings, imagined homelands - India's East and Bangladesh. He has co-authored The State Strikes Back: India and the Naga Insurgency (with Charles Chasie).

Sara Rai

Author and translator Sara Rai's fiction includes Ababeel ki Uraan (1995), Biyabaan Mein (2005) and most recently, Cheelvali Kothi (2010). She works in Hindi, Urdu and English. She has written the dialogue sequences for the film Seven Islands and a Metro and done the theatre adaptation of Sahib Bibi aur Golam staged by the National School of Drama. Books edited /translated by her includeThe Golden Waist-Chain (1992), Imaging the Other (1999) and Hindi Handpicked Fictions (2003). She lives in Allahabad and Delhi and is currently working on a collection of short stories.

Sarita Mandanna

Sarita Mandanna is from Coorg, India. A private equity investor by profession, she has a PGDM from the Indian Institute of Management, an MBA from the Wharton Business School and worked in India, Hong Kong and New York before moving to Toronto in 2010.Tiger Hills is her debut novel. First launched in 2010 in the UK and India,Tiger Hills will be published in 18 countries and translated into 16 languages worldwide to date. Tiger Hills has been selected for the 2011 TV Book Club in the UK and has also been longlisted for the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize.

Sarnath Banerjee

Sarnath Banerjee studied image and communication at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is the author of India's first graphic novel, Corridor, and his work has appeared in various magazines and newspapers.

Satyanand Nirupam

Satyanand Nirupam, a young writer/poet, is the Hindi editor at Penguin Books India. After completing his M. Phil from Delhi University on the tradition and philosophy of historiography of Hindi literature, he worked with the NCERT as a research associate. Nirupam joined Penguin/Yatra in March 2009 and has since then steadily built a list of important titles for their list - including an anthology of Sahir Ludhianvi's poetry, two new collections by the reclusive Krishna Baldev Vaid and a successful translation of Pavan Verma's Becoming Indian into Hindi. He plays an active role in promoting a book-reading culture in Hindi through all possible media channels. In 2010 he was a coordinator and one of the concept developers for Bahastalab, the popular debate series.

SH Raza

Born in 1922, Babaria (Madhya Pradesh), Raza graduated from Sir J.J. School of Arts, Mumbai in 1943 and became one of the founding members of Progressive Artists Group in 1947. He received the French Government Scholarship in 1950 to study at Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He is a recipient of Prix de la Critique, Paris; Rajkeeya Samman and Kalidas Samman by Government of Madhya Pradesh; Officier de LOrdre Des Arts et des Lettres by Government of France. He was conferred the Padma Shri in 1981 and Padma Bhushan in 2007 by the Government of India. He was honoured with the Fellowship of the Lalit Kala Akademi in 1983. In his long career, Raza has held several solo and group exhibitions in India and abroad. Several publications have been released on his life and work which include Bindu: Space and Time in Razas Vision by Geeti Sen, 1997; Raza by Ashok Vajpeyi, 2002 and A Life in Art: Razawritten & edited by Ashok Vajpeyi, 2007. After 60 years living in France Raza comes back to India in 2010 and now lives in New Delhi.

Shaheen Akhtar

Shaheen Akhtar was born in Comilla in Bangladesh. Now she lives in Dhaka. Shaheen is a short story writer and a novelist. Written between 2001-2003,Talaash (The Search) is her second novel, for which she won the Prothom Alo best book award in 2004. Her recent novel Sokhi Rongomala (published in 2010) is based on a true event in the 18th century about an intercaste love affair. In this novel Rongomala, the protagonist of the story, was brutally killed.

Shailja Patel

Shailja Patel is an internationally acclaimed Kenyan poet, playwright and activist. Her US debut,Migritude, went straight to #1 on Amazon's Bestsellers In Asian Poetry, and was a Seattle Times Bestseller. Translated into 13 languages, CNN calls her "the face of globalization as a phenomenon of migration and exchange." More on www.shailja.com

Sharmila Kantha

Sharmila Kantha's writing includes two novels, three books on Indian business and picture books for children. Her novel A Break in the Circle was released in May 2010. Building India with Partnership: The Story of CII 1895-2005 andIndia Unlimited - A Corporate Journey were published by Penguin India. A former banking professional, she is now based in Sri Lanka with her diplomat husband.

Sheen Kaaf Nizam

Sheen Kaaf Nizam is an Urdu poet and critic. He has published Lamhon kee Saleeb, Dasht mein Dariya, Naad, Saya koi Lamba na Tha,Bayazein Kho Gayi Hai and many other collections and anthologies. He has edited many Devnagari volumes of poets besides editing Deewan-e-Ghalib and Deewan-e-Mir. He has been honoured with many prizes including the Iqbal Samman, Bhasha Bharti Samman, the Urdu Akademi Award and the Begum Akhtar award. He has won the Sahitya Akademi Award for Urdu in December 2010.

Shehan Karunatilaka

Shehan Karunatilaka spent the last 3 years interviewing drunks and watching Sri Lankan cricket matches. The result, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, won the 2008 Gratiaen prize for best Sri Lankan novel. This tale of a sportwriter’s quest to find a forgotten cricket genius will be launched by Random House and published by Jonathan Cape in the UK in April 2011. It has been selected by Waterstones as one of 2011’s top debut novels. Shehan was born in Sri Lanka, raised in New Zealand and has lived in London and Singapore. He has written advertisements, rock songs and travel stories. His writings can be found at www.shehanwriter.com

Shehryar Fazli

Shehryar Fazli is the South Asia Regional Editor and Senior Analyst for the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research and advocacy organisation focused on resolving deadly conflict. He is a graduate of McGill University, in philosophy and political science, and the creative writing program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He lives in Islamabad, Pakistan. His first novel, Invitation, will be published in India in January 2011 by Westland/Tranquebar.

Sheldon Pollock

Sheldon Pollock is The William B. Ransford Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Studies at the University of Columbia. He is author of the award-winning The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India and editor of Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia. He recently edited and translated Bhanudatta's The Bouquet of Rasa and the River of Rasa, and Bhavabhuti's Rama's Last Act, with a forward by Girish Karnad. He is currently working on two books, Liberation Philology and Reader on Rasa: A Historical Sourcebook in Indian Aesthetics. Pollock is general editor of the Murty Classical Library of India, a new dual-language series published by Harvard U. Press, and recently received the Padma Sri award from the Government of India.

Shoma Chaudhury

Shoma Chaudhury is Managing Editor, Tehelka, a weekly newsmagazine widely respected for its investigative and public interest journalism. Earlier she had worked with The Pioneer, India Today, and Outlook. When Tehelka was forced to close down by the government after its seminal story on defence corruption, she was one of four people who stayed on to fight and articulate Tehelka's battles and relaunch it as a national weekly. Shoma has written extensively on several areas of conflict in India - people vs State; the Maoist insurgency, the Muslim question, and issues of capitalist development and land grab. She has won several awards, including the Ramnath Goenka Award and the Chameli Devi Award for the most outstanding woman journalist in 2009. She lives in Delhi and has two sons.

Shomshuklla started

Shomshuklla started her creative journey with times music as a pop singer, releasing 9 albums in pop n fusion category. She was a collomnist with Asian Age, writeing about relationships. She was a columnist with kolkatamirror.com, an online paper of Times of India group. She started her theatre company Kali under whose banner she writes, directs, acts and produces. She launched her first book of poems in 2006 by Rupa Co, and this year march she is coming out with her 5th book of poems by Rupa. At the moment she is penning down her 1st novel.

Shreela Flather

The Baroness Flather was born Shreela Rai in Lahore, India. She is married to Gary Flather OBE QC. Baroness Flather was educated at University College London (LLB), and was called to the Bar from Inner Temple. In 1976 she was elected the first ethnic minority woman Councillor in the UK. She became the first Asian woman Mayor in the country of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in 1986. She was elevated to the House of Lords in 1990 being the only Asian in the House. Immediately prior to her elevation to the House of Lords she was a UK delegate to The Consultative Assembly of the European Community being the only ethnic minority delegate from any member state. She was the first ethnic minority Deputy Lieutenant for the Royal County of Berkshire in 1994. She feels that her most enduring achievement is the construction of the magnificent memorial on Constitution Hill at Hyde Park Corner. This long overdue Memorial commemorates the contribution of nearly 5 million forgotten volunteers from the Indian subcontinent, Africa and the Caribbean in the two World Wars.

Shubhu Patwa

Shubhu Patwa has dedicated his life to journalism, education and environmental awareness. He has been honoured by several social, cultural, literary institutions and media organisations. His awards include Patrakarita Samman and Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Smiriti Rashtriya Puraskar. He lives in Bikaner and contributes regularly to newspapers, magazines and radio channels, includingJansatta and Aakashvani - both in Jaipur and New Delhi. One can access his writing at his blog: http://shubhupatwa.blogspot.com/

Shyam Jangid

Shyam Jangid write in Hindi & Rajasthani. His short stories focus on social issues. Some of his popular stories includeYodha, Natak & Natraj. Shyam has also edited books and written satires & travelogues. His short story book Ekala Chalo Re has won the Dr.Rangeya Raghava Katha Purskar.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Siddhartha Mukherjee, M.D., Ph.D., is a cancer physician and researcher. He is an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University and a cancer physician at the CU/NYU Presbyterian Hospital. A Rhodes Scholar, he graduated from Stanford University, University of Oxford, and Harvard Medical School and was a Fellow at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and an attending physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He has authoredThe Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of of Cancer and has published articles in Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, Neuron, Journal of Clinical Investigation, The New York Times, and The New Republic. He lives in New York with his wife and daughters.

Somnath Batabyal

Somnath Batabyal is a Fellow at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. A columnist, television commentator and media analyst, his first book,Indian Mass Media and the Politics of Changehas been recently published by Routledge. Dr Batabyal is currently working on his second book, a case study of television news in India and a graphic novel.

Sonam Kinga

Sonam Kinga is a writer, translator from Bhutan. He translated Gaylong Sumdar Tashi, an 18th century autobiographical poem from Dzongkha to English. Other publications include Changes in Bhutanese Social Structure: Impact of Fifty years of Reforms, Flying Rocks, Speaking Statues: Writings on Bhutanese History, Myth and Culture, The Origin and Description of the National Flag and National Anthem of the Kingdom of Bhutan, & Polity, and Kingship and Democracy: a biography of the Bhutanese State. He is currently a Member of Parliament & Deputy Chairperson & Chairperson, house Committee, National Council of Bhutan.

Sonia Faleiro

Sonia Faleiro is an award-winning reporter and writer. She is the author of a book of fiction, The Girl(Penguin, 2006), and a contributor to several anthologies including AIDS Sutra: Untold Stories from India (Random House, 2008). Beautiful Thing, her first full-length work of non-fiction, uncovers the secretive world of Bombay's dance bars. It was Time Out's Subcontinental Book of the Year, and CNN's Mumbai Book of the Year (2010). Critics described it as ‘a brilliant, unforgettable book by a writer who is one of the best of her generation.'Beautiful Thing is being translated into several languages and will be published in the UK by Canongate in August 2011. Sonia was born in Goa, studied in Edinburgh, worked in Bombay, and lives in San Francisco.

Stephen McCarty

Hong Kong-based Stephen McCarty is Editor in Chief of the Asia Literary Review and a former Literary Editor of the South China Morning Post. He has moderated at literary festivals in Melbourne, Ubud, Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong. Stephen aims to pitch his sessions somewhere between the circus and a literary salon.

Sudhish Pachauri

Sudhish Pachauri has written over 50 books in Hindi on subjects like post modernism, post structuralism, cultural theories, popular culture and media. Some of his books include Kavita Ka Anth; Nai Kavita ka Vaichant Aadhar and Break ke Baad. Soon to be published books are Dekh Tamasha TV Ka and Badalti Hindi. He is the honorary editor of the quarterly magazine Vaak. He is a regular columnist in Jansatta and Rashtriya Sahara.

Suhel Seth

Suhel Seth is the Managing Partner of Counselage India and founder of Equus. Counselage is India's only strategic brand management and marketing consultancy advising Chairpersons and CEOs on branding and marketing. Suhel writes columns in The Financial Times, London and in Business India, The Hindustan Times and The Indian Express on current affairs and the social landscape of India and has co-authored two books on Calcutta with Khushwant Singh and R K Laxman. Suhel has published several papers on The Changing Indian Consumer and has written extensively on the impact of advertising and its linkages to societal influences such as religion and culture. His first book was In your face. More recently, he has been commissioned by Penguin India to write a book which is tentatively titled The Indian Mindset. Suhel has also just finished a book Of roots and wings: 50 years of Indian Airlines. Suhel is also active on the Delhi theatre scene and has acted in several plays and films (by Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen).

Sujeev Shakya

Sujeev Shakya writes and speaks on Nepali business, management and economy issues. He is author of Unleashing Nepal - Past, Present and Future of the Economy(Penguin 2009). He has been writing a popular column in Nepali Times as Arthabeed since 2001. He Chairs the Nepal Economic Forum, a economic policy institution and Southasia Trust, the publisher of Himal Southasian. He works in Kathmandu as CEO of beed (www.beed.com.np) a consulting and advisory firm.

Suman Bissa

Dr. Suman Bissa is a major literary figure of Rajasthan. Her favourite genres are poetry and childrens literature. She is associated with several literary organisations including the Rajasthan Sahitya Akademi and the Rajasthani Salahkaar Samiti of Kandriya Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi.At present, she is an associate Professor at the Hindi Department of Mahila Mahavidyalay, Jodhpur.

Sunil Sethi

Sunil Sethi, journalist , columnist and television presenter, has hosted the weekly literary show Just Books on NDTV since early 2005. He was one of the founding editorial team ofIndia Today and been a columnist for the Times of India and the Indian Express. He is a recipient of the Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University and the Japan Foundation fellowship. He is the author of Indian Interiors and Inside Asia. His new book The Big Bookshelf: Sunil Sethi in Conversation with 30 Famous Writers, published by Penguin India, will be launched at the Jaipur Literature Festival in 2011.

Surina Narula

Surina Narula has devoted almost two decades to highlight the plight of street children globally and has even provided them a platform at the United Nations. A recipient of several awards for her philanthropic work, she was commended for The Beacon Prize for her contribution to charitable and social causes in 2003. Surina was honoured with the Asian of the Year Award in 2005 and with an MBE in 2008. She has held several key positions including being the President of the Consortium for Street Children (CSC) which provides voluntary consultancy to NGOs internationally to being a member of the board of directors of PLAN International UK, a patron of PLAN INDIA and honorary patron of PLAN USA, to being on the Campaign Executive Committee for University College London. Surina is also an Advisor to the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival, a Trustee of ‘Unlimited' which encourages enterprises in India and a Patron of several initiatives including Hope for Children, International Childcare Trust, Independent Film Makers Association, World Action Forum and Motti Rotti .

Susanne Rudolph

Susanne Rudolph is Professor of Political Science Emeriti, University of Chicago. For many years, she along with husband Lloyd has been active in promoting the study of Rajasthan. In 1986, they helped to found the Rajasthan Studies Group [RSG] [www.rajstudies.org] in the USA. In 1992 they assisted the late Dr. Rajendra Joshi in establishing the Institute for Rajasthan Studies [IRS]. She has co-edited The Idea of Rajasthan: Explorations in Regional Identity with Lloyd Rudolph. They are the authors with Mohan Singh Kanota of Reversing the Gaze: Amar Singh's Diary, A Colonial Subject's Narrative of Imperial India, Essays on Rajputana and of the forthcoming Romanticism's Child: Essays on and Documents of James Tod. The Rudolphs are recipients of the 2007 Colonel James Tod award of the Maharana Mewar Foundation. Susanne Rudolph is a past president of the American Political Science Association and of the Association of Asian Studies. They spend three months in Jaipur each year.

Susheila Nasta

Susheila Nasta is the Founding Editor of Wasafiri, the Magazine of International Writing. Well-known as a critic and activist, her books include: Home Truths: Fictions of the South Asian Diaspora(2002) and Writing Across Worlds: Contemporary Writers Talk (2004). She is currently working on a group biography of Asian Bloomsbury. She lives in Britain and is Professor of Literature at the Open University.

Swapan Dasgupta

Swapan Dasgupta is a political columnist living in Delhi. Having spent his formative years in India and UK probing the past and espousing radical causes, he is now a lapsed historian and a refugee from the Left-liberal ghetto. His writings are centred on unpopular and quirky causes: a deregulated economy, Curzonian foreign policy, writing of narrative history, Raj nostalgia and an England that no longer exists. Perceived by the Left as belonging to the Right, he is regarded by India's Right as a friendly oddity and a heretical nationalist.

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Tarun Tejpal

In a 27-year career as a journalist, Tarun has been an editor with the India Today and the Indian Express groups, and the managing editor of Outlook. He is the founder of Tehelka - which has garnered international fame for its aggressive public interest journalism. In 2001, AsiaWeek listed Tejpal as one of Asia's 50 most powerful communicators, and BusinessWeek declared him among 50 leaders at the forefront of change in Asia. Tarun's debut novel, The Alchemy of Desire, was hailed by the Sunday Times as "an impressive and memorable debut", and by Le Figaro as a "masterpiece". In 2007 The Guardian, UK, named him among the 20 who constitute India's new elite. Tarun's second novel, The Story of My Assassins has been published in 2009 to rave reviews. Pankaj Mishra has said, "It sets new and dauntingly high standards for Indian writing in English", while Altaf Tyrewala has called it "an instant classic". For more: www.taruntejpal.com

Temsula Ao

Temsula Ao is a retired Professor of English, has written 5 books of poetry, 2 books of short stories, a book on Henry James and a book on her own culture called The Ao-Naga Oral Tradition. Her poems and articles have appeared in many anthologies and one of her short stories has been translated into German and published. Her first book of short stories calledThese Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone has been translated into Kannada and published. Received the Padma Shri in 2007 and the Nagaland Governor's Award for Distinction in Literature, 2009.

Tishani Doshi

Tishani Doshi is the author of two books - Countries of the Body, which won the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection in 2006, and more recently, The Pleasure Seekers, a novel, which has been translated into several languages. Since 2001 she has worked as a dancer with the Chandralekha Group in Madras.

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Urvashi Butalia

Urvashi Butalia is a writer and publisher. Co-founder of India's first feminist publishing house, Kali for Women, she is now Director of Zubaan, an imprint of Kali. She has written and published widely, and her best known work is the award winning oral history of Partition, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. She is currently working on several different books: a Reader on India's history, culture and politics, a family memoir about Partition and a book on sexuality and citizenship as seen through the life of a eunuch. She lives and works in Delhi.

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Vaiju Naravane

Vaiju Naravane is the Paris-based Europe Corresponent of The Hindu, India's most respected English-language daily. She is Foreign Fiction Editor with the French publishing house Albin Michel and has served as Director, Information and Public Relations with the United Nations' Geneva-based World Health Organisation. A frequent guest on radio and television talk shows, Ms Naravane also teaches a Masters' course at the School of Journalism, National Institute of Political Science, Paris.

Vikram Seth

Vikram Seth was born in India and educated here and in England, California and China. He has written acclaimed books in several genres: verse novel, The Golden Gate; travel book, From Heaven Lake; animal fables, Beastly Tales; epic novel, A Suitable Boy. His most recent novel, An Equal Music, was published in 1999. In a move which will cheer hundreds of thousands of his fans, Vikram Seth has announced that he is writing the long-awaited sequel to his much-loved million-copy bestseller A Suitable Boy. A Suitable Girl will be published by Penguin in Autumn 2013.

Vinod Kumar Shukla

Vinod Kumar Shukla was born in Rajnandgaon, Chattisgarh. He is one of India's best known contemporary poet/novelists. His novels, Naukar ki Kameez, Khilega toh Dhekhenge, Dewar mein ek khirki Rehti thi andHari Ghas ki Chhappar wali Jhonpadi aur Bona Pahad established him as a force to reckon with in Hindi writing. Besides this he has also published two collections of short stories and six poetry anthologies. Shukla has received many honours, including the Sahitya Academy Award and Rashtriya Maithilisharan Gupt Puruskar. His works have been translated into various languages. Several directors have interpreted his works for both Theatre and Cinema.

Vinod Padraj

Vinod Padraj is a prominent Hindi poet living in Sawaimadhopur. As a modern Hindi poet, his poems have been included in many collections such asBahar Sab Shant Hai & Ret Par Nange Paon. Bakhat a literary bulletin was published exclusively on his work. He has participated in many seminars and symposiums. His collection Koi To Rang Hai was widely appreciated. At present he is working as Branch Manager in Baroda Rajasthan Gramin Bank.

Vishvjit Prithvijit Singh

Vishvjit Prithvijit Singh, former Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha), was born in 1946 and was educated in Dehra Dun. He is the author of Kuch Shabd Kuch Lakeerein (Yatra Books 2010). He lives with his wife, Vijay Thakur Singh (IFS), and two dogs in New Delhi and at Village Barabhari District Sitapur.

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William Dalrymple

William Dalrymple is the author of seven acclaimed works of history and travel, including City of Djinns, which won the Young British Writer of the Year Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award; the best-selling From the Holy Mountain; The Age of Kali, which won the French Prix D'Astrolable;White Mughals, which won Britain's most prestigious history prize, the Wolfson, and The Last Mughal which won the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize & The Crossword Prize for Non Fiction. He divides his time between New Delhi and London, and is a contributor to The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The New Statesman and The Guardian. He published Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India to great acclaim in October 2009, the book went straight to the top of the Indian bestseller list & won the first Asia House Prize for Asian Literature. He holds honourary doctorates of letters from the Universities of St Andrews, Aberdeen and Lucknow, and has lived in Delhi on and off for the last 25 years. He is a founder and co- director of the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival.

William Fiennes

William Fiennes is the award-winning author of The Snow Geese and The Music Room. A former Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, he is also the director and co-founder of First Story, a charity that promotes writing in challenging UK secondary schools.

William Nanda Bissell

William Nanda Bissell is Managing Director of Fabindia, a company committed to the retail of products made by craft and small producer groups throughout India. Fabindia operates 135 stores and has a significant stake in East Limited a UK retailer with 78 stores. Fabindia is a pioneer in the Community Owned Company movement having converted all its small artisan clusters into Community Owned Companies(COCs). He is the author of Making India Work published by Penguin that outlines a plan for rapid environmentally sustainable growth for India.

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Zac O Yeah

Zac O'Yeah used to work at a theatre in Gothenburg - the harbor town where his futuristic detective novelOnce Upon A Time In Scandinavistan (Hachette, 2010) is set, a weird story of reverse colonialism. He toured with a Swedish pop group, Twice A Man, until he retired early at 25 and came to India. Since his debut as an author in 1995, he has published eleven books including the bestselling Gandhi-biographyMahatma! which was short-listed for the August Prize 2008 for best nonfiction book. He always works with a million different things at the same time, presently writing a couple of new books, the screenplay for an eco-friendly zombie film, he writes columns on detective fiction in the Mint Lounge newspaper supplement, and he's just co-written a song with the heavy metal group Freak Kitchen. He is married to Anjum Hasan. Literary rights are represented by Nordin Agency, Stockholm. More on www.zacoyeah.com

Zaheda Hina

Zaheda Hina was born in Sahasaram, Bihar and now lives in Karachi, Pakistan. Fiercely passionate in the causes she espouses, she locates herself to the left of the political spectrum. Her writing is scholarly and diverse, drawing on a range of philosophical and intellectual sources. Much of her work challenges the cultural and ideological underpinnings of the Pakistani State, attacking patriarchal attitudes to women and delving into the historical legacies of contemporary social configurations. She has on her credit 3 Short Stories Collections, I Novel and 5 Collections of Articles. Her books and Novel have been translated in Hindi & English and Sindhi. Her short stories are included in more than 35 Urdu and English Anthologies. Hina has contributed more than 2400 articles and columns in leading national and regional dailies and weeklies. Hina worked for BBC Urdu Service, Voice of America and Radio Pakistan. She has also written plays and serials for Pakistan Television.

Dates:
The 2013 DSC Jaipur Literature Festival, Asia-Pacific’s largest literary festival, will be for 5 days from 24-28 January.in Jaipur, India.

Venue:
The DSC Jaipur Literature Festival is held across multiple venues at one festival hub – Diggi Palace.

Address:
Diggi House, Sawai Ram Singh Road, Jaipur – 302004, Rajasthan (India)

Festival Venue:

Diggi House, Sawai Ram Singh Road, Jaipur, Rajasthan (India)

Music Stage Venue:

Hotel Clarks Amer, Jawaharlal Nehru Marg, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India

Entry Free

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