ARVIND KRISHNA MEHROTRA was born in Lahore in 1947 and grew up in Allahabad and Bhilai. While a student at the University of Allahabad he, along with two friends, started damn you / a magazine of the arts. Later, in Bombay, he edited ezra and brought out mimeographed pamphlets from the ezra-fakir press, one of them, in 1966, his own Howl-inspired poem, bharatmata: a prayer. Along with Adil Jussawalla, Arun Kolatkar, Gieve Patel, and Eunice de Souza, he has come to be known as one of the so-called Bombay Poets. The author of six collections of poems, he is the editor of, among other books, The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets, A History of Indian Literature in English, and Collected Poems in English by Arun Kolatkar, and the translator of The Absent Traveller: Prakrit Love Poetry, Songs of Kabir (NYRB Classics), and (with Sara Rai) Blue Is Like Blue, the stories of Vinod Kumar Shukla. His two volumes of essays are Partial Recall: Essays on Literature and Literary History and Translating the Indian Past. He taught for many years at the University of Allahabad and lives in Dehra Dun.

VIDYAN RAVINTHIRAN is the author of Grun-tu-molani and The Million-Petalled Flower of Being Here, as well as a critical study of Elizabeth Bishop. He teaches at Harvard University and is an editor at Prac Crit.

AMIT CHAUDHURI is a novelist, essayist, poet, and musician. He lives in Calcutta and the United Kingdom, where he is a professor of contemporary literature at the University of East Anglia. Among Chaudhuri’s works are seven novels, the most recent of which is Friend of My Youth (NYRB); three books of essays; a book of short stories; a work of nonfiction, Calcutta: Two Years in the City; and two volumes of poetry, including Sweet Shop.