30 January - 3 February 2025 | Hotel Clarks Amer, Jaipur
Shinjini Kumar is co-founder of Indian Novels Collective, a not for profit collective to promote Indian storytelling in translation. After three decades in senior positions in banking, Shinjini is now co-founder of SALT (mysaltapp), a fintech platform for women. She writes short fiction and her stories have been published in Journal of Indian Literature, The Beacon Magazine, Out of print magazine and others.
Writer and academic Usha Priyamwada's iconic book, Pachpan Khambe, Laal Deewaarein, originally published in 1961, follows the journey of a young female professor and her role as the sole provider for her family. Translated into English as Fifty-Five Pillars, Red Walls, by writer and translator Daisy Rockwell, the tale poignantly unfurls the physical, mental and social paradigms within which women lock themselves. Together with actor Mita Vashisht and Indian Novels Collective’s co-founder Shinjini Kumar, Rockwell discusses this quietly intense and pathbreaking Hindi novel and the process of bringing it together in the 21st century.