Amit Chaudhuri is the author of five award-winning novels, two books of essays, a critical study, and a book of short stories. His sixth novel, Odysseus Abroad, is being published in the UK next year. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia. He is also an acclaimed musician who has performed all over the world.
Anand Thakore has written three collections of poetry: Waking in December (2001), Elephant Bathing (2012) and Mughal Sequence (2012). A Hindustani classical vocalist by profession, he trained for many years with Pandit Satyasheel Deshpande and has given concerts in various parts of the country. He is the founder of Harbour Line, a publishing collective, and runs Kshitij, an interactive forum for musicians. He lives in Mumbai where he teaches Hindustani vocal music.
A. K. Ramanujan (1929-1993) was a poet, translator, folklorist, philologist and Professor of Dravidian Studies at the University of Chicago. His translations include Speaking of Siva, and Hymns for the Drowning, selections from the Tiruviruttam and Tiruvaymoli of Nammalvar, and two collections of classical Tamil verse, The Interior Landscape (1967) and Poems of Love and War (1985). His poetry collections include The Striders (1966), Relations (1971), Selected Poems (1976), Second Sight (1986) and Collected Poems (1995). He received the Padma Shri in 1976.
Archana Venkatesan is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Religious Studies at the University of California, Davis. Her research interests are in the intersection of text and performance in South India, and the English translation of early and medieval Tamil poetry. She is the author of The Secret Garland: Andal’s Tiruppāvai and Nācciyār Tirumoḻi (2010) and A Hundred Measures of Time: The Tiruviruttam of Nammalvar. She is presently collaborating with Francis Clooney on an English translation of Nammalvar’s Tiruvāymoḻi.
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra is the editor of The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets (1992), Collected Poems in English by Arun Kolatkar (2010), and An Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English (2003), and the translator of The Absent Traveller: Prakrit Love Poetry (2008) and Songs of Kabir (2011). His essays are collected in Partial Recall: Essays on Literature and Literary History (2012). His Collected Poems 1969-2014 has been published recently.
Professor Amaresh Datta headed the Department of English, Guwahati University for a record period of two decades, first as a Reader till May 1963 and then as a Professor (January 1964– February 1980). Professsor Amaresh Datta was a close associate of Professor Maheswar Neog.
Barbara Stoler Miller (1940-1993) was a scholar of Sanskrit, well-known for her translation of the Bhagavad Gita (which became highly popular in the US). She also translated several works of Sanskrit drama and poetry, including the works of Jayadeva (Love Song of the Dark Lord: Jayadeva’s Gitagovinda), Bhartrihari, Bhilhana and Kalidasa. She became Head of Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard College in New York City in 1979.
B. K. Barua (1908-1964) was a scholar and litterateur from Assam. A pioneer in the study of North-eastern folklore in India, he was one of the many founders of Guwahati University. He has won acclaim for his contribution to Assamese letters as a novelist and literary critic.
David Shulman is Renee Lang Professor of Humanistic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. He specializes in the languages, literatures, and religions of southern India, particularly the medieval period. His many publications include collaborations with Velcheru Narayana Rao, Sanjay Subrahmanyam and Don Handelman, and extensive translations from Tamil, Telugu, and Sanskrit. Recent works include a volume of Hebrew translations of Tamil Sangam poetry and a monograph on the history of the imagination in South India.
Deben Bhattacharya (1921-2001) was an ethnomusicologist, filmmaker, writer, photographer, and radio producer. He produced several influential field recordings of music in Bengal, over a hundred records and twenty-odd films, besides writing extensively on folk music, poetry and dance, and his travels through South and Central Asia. His books include Songs of the Qawals of India, Songs of the Bards of Bengal and Love Songs of Vidyapati. He divided his time between Kolkata and Europe.
Dilip Chitre (1938-2009) was a poet, translator, critic, editor, painter and documentary filmmaker. He wrote in both English and Marathi, and translated extensively from the Varkari tradition. His book of translations of Tukaram, Says Tuka, received wide acclaim. He authored several poetry collections, his last in English being As Is, Where Is: Selected Poems (2008).
Gieve Patel is a poet, playwright, painter and translator. He has written three books of poetry: Poems (1966); How Do You Withstand, Body (1976); and Mirrored Mirroring (1991). He is also the author of three plays and has held several exhibitions of his paintings in India and abroad. He has been working on his Akho translations for several decades. He lives in Mumbai.
H. S. Shivaprakash is a poet, playwright and translator from Karnataka. His translations and adaptations of Shakespeare have been widely staged. He has also translated several well-known European, Latin American and African poets into Kannada and leading Kannada and Tamil poets into English. A former editor of the journal Indian Literature, he is Professor, Theatre and Performance Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is presently Director, The Tagore Centre, in the Embassy of India, in Berlin.
Indira Viswanathan Peterson specializes in Sanskrit and Tamil literature, Hinduism, South Indian performing arts and cultural history. She is David B. Truman Professor of Asian Studies at Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts. Her book, Poems to Siva: The Hymns of the Tamil Saints, a significant study and translation of Shaiva Bhakti poetry and its performance in South Indian temples, was published in 1989.
Jerry Pinto is a Mumbai-based poet. His Asylum and Other Poems was published in 2004. He has translated Sachin Kundalkar’s Cobalt Blue from Marathi (2013) and is working on a translation of Daya Pawar’s seminal autobiography, Baluta. He has edited Adil Jussawalla’s Maps for a Mortal Moon: Essays and Entertainments (2014) and is the author of the award-winning novel, Em and the Big Hoom (2012).
John Stratton Hawley is Professor of Religion at Barnard College. He has written and edited sixteen books, mainly on Hinduism and the Bhakti tradition of North India. These include Three Bhakti Voices: Mirabai, Surdas and Kabir in Their Times and Ours and The Memory of Love: Surdas Sings to Krishna, among others. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, received several awards and was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Keki N. Daruwalla, one of India’s distinguished litterateurs, writes poetry and fiction and lives in Delhi. His latest volume of poetry, Fire Altar: Poems on the Persians and the Greeks has just been published. His novel, For Pepper and Christ, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize for Asia-UK. He was a member of the Jury for the Montreal Poetry Prize.
Khushwant Singh (1915-2014) was a novelist, short fiction writer, journalist and columnist. He served as editor of several literary and news publications, including The Illustrated Weekly of India and Hindustan Times. Some of his major books include Train to Pakistan and A History of the Sikhs. His works ranged from political commentary and satire on current affairs to major translations of Sikh religious texts and Urdu poetry. He received the Padma Vibhushan in 2007.
Linda Hess is a scholar, writer and lover of Kabir. She is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University and Co-Director of Stanford’s Center for South Asia. She has been researching the oral traditions of Kabir in recent years.
Maheswar Neog (1915-1995) was a poet and scholar of Assamese literature and culture who authored numerous books on the subject. His book, Sankardeva and His Times: Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Assam, is considered a landmark work. A professor at Guwahati University, he helped open up North-eastern cultural history to the rest of India and the world. He received the Padma Shri in 1974.
Mark Juergensmeyer is Director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, Professor of Sociology and Affiliate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Califorina, Santa Barbara. He is an expert on religious violence, conflict resolution and South Asian religions and politics. He has published over two hundred articles and twenty books, including Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State.
Meena Desai has been translating Gujarati poetry since the 1980s, and retains a deep belief in translation as essential to human connection. Her doctoral research was about communication in drama. She worked in the telecommunications industry, and continues to devote herself to cross-cultural communication in various ways. She has translated several Gujarati ghazals to share major contributions that remain relatively unknown. For over ten years she has worked on Narsinh Mehta’s poetry for the same reason. She lives in the US.
Menka Shivdasani has authored two poetry collections, and is co-translator of an anthology of Sindhi Partition poetry. She has edited an anthology of poetry for www.bigbridge.org, and an anthology ofwomen’s writing for Sound and Picture Archives for Research on Women (SPARROW). She is the Founder—Member of Mumbai’s Poetry Circle, the Mumbai Coordinator for 100 Thousand Poets for Change, and a Founding member of Asia Pacific Writers & Translators Association.
Mohan Gehani is a Sindhi poet, playwright, writer and critic. He has been associated with various literary organizations and publications for over fifty years. His research on the history of Sind and his book, Brief Introduction: History of Sind, are widely acclaimed. His collection of plays, Ta Khawban Jo Cha Thindo... (What will Happen to Our Dreams), won the Sahitya Akademi award in 2011.
Mustansir Dalvi teaches architecture, and is a poet and translator. His English translation of Muhammad Iqbal’s work from the Urdu, Taking Issue and Allah’s Answer (2012), is described as ‘insolent and heretical’. This book was Runner-Up for Best Translation for 2012 at the Muse India National Literary Awards. His book of poems, brouhahas ofcocks, was published in 2013, and his translations of Marathi poet Hemant Divate, struggles with imagined gods, in 2014.
Neela Bhagwat is a classical khayal singer of the Gwalior gharana. She holds Master’s degrees in Marathi, Sanskrit and Sociology, and attempts to interpret medieval saint-poetry in the contemporary context and in humanitarian terms. Disturbed by the communal violence in Mumbai (1992-93) and Gujarat (2002), she chooses to sing the poetry of peace and love of Kabir, Mirabai, Tukaram, Chokhamela, Muktabai, Soyarabai, Janabai, Nirmala, Kanhopatra, and other Bhakti mystics.
Norman Cutler (1949-2002) was a scholar of Tamil literary history and Bhakti poetry, influential in presenting Tamil as a classical language to the Western world. Songs of Experience: The Poetics of Tamil Devotion was the title of his significant work on Tamil religious poetry. He was Chairman of the South Asian Languages and Civilizations Department at the University of Chicago where he spent his entire career.
Prabhanjan K. Mishra lives in Mumbai. He loves reading, writing and translating poetry and fiction across two languages: Oriya and English. He is a seeker, curious about both mysticism and physics. His poems in English are collected in three books: Vigil, Lips of a Canyon and Litmus. His poetry and short fiction have been widely anthologized and published in various journals. He has been President of Mumbai’s Poetry Circle.
Priya Sarukkai Chabria is a poet, novelist, essayist and translator with five published books. Her work has been translated into six languages, and published in journals, websites and anthologies. She is the recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to Literature award from the Indian Government. Miniature painting and cinema are her other passions. Forthcoming in 2015 are translations of the Tamil mystic poet Andal, with poet Ravi Shankar, and a short-story collection. She edits Poetry at Sangam (www.sangamhouse.org). For more information, please visit www.priyawTiting.com
Ravi Shankar is founding editor of Drunken Boat and author/ editor of eight books and chapbooks ofpoetry, including Deepening Groove, winner of the 2010 National Poetry Review Prize, and WW Norton’s Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East and Beyond. He has appeared in The New York Times and the BBC, won a Pushcart Prize, and teaches at CCSU and in the Master of Fine Arts Program at City University of Hong Kong.
Rahul Soni is a writer, editor and translator. He has edited Home from a Distance (2011), an anthology of Hindi poetry in English translation, and translated Magadh (2013), a collection of poems by Shrikant Verma, and The RoofBeneath Their Feet (2013), a novel by Geetanjali Shree.
Ranjit Hoskote is a poet, cultural theorist and curator. His collections of poetry include Vanishing Acts: New and Selected Poems 1985-2005 (2006) and Central Time (2014). His translation of the fourteenth-century Kashmiri mystic Lal Ded has appeared as I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded (2011). A long-time student of the Yogachara Buddhist and Kashmir Shaivite traditions, Hoskote applies their accounts of consciousness, temporality, memory and subjectivity to the urgencies of contemporary culture.
Sampurna Chattarji is a poet, novelist and translator. Her works of poetry include Sight May Strike You Blind (2007) and Absent Muses (2010); her two novels are Rupture (2009) and Land of the Well (2012). Dirty Love (2013) is her short-story collection about Bombay/Mumbai. Wordygurdyboom! (2004, 2008) is Sampurna’s translation of Sukumar Ray’s Bengali poetry and prose; and Selected Poems (2014), her translation of the Bengali poet Joy Goswami. For more information, please visit http://sampurnachattarji.wordpress.com
Shukdev Singh is an author and translator. He retired as a Professor at Banaras Hindu University.
Velcheru Narayana Rao is currently Distinguished Visiting Professor at Emory University, Atalanta, GA, USA. Earlier he served as Krishnadevaraya Professor ofLanguages and Cultures of Asia, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. His publications include Srinatha: The Poet who Made Gods and Kings (with David Shulman) and Textures of Time: Writing History in South India 1600-1800 (with David Shulman and Sanjay Subrahmanyam).
Vijay Nambisan is a poet, prose writer and translator. His works of poetry include Gemini (1992) and First Infinities (2014). As prose writer, he is the author of Bihar is in the Eye of the Beholder (2000). His essay, ‘Language as an Ethic’, was published in 2003. As translator, he is the author of Two Measures of Bhakti: Puntanam and Melpattur (2009).
Vinay Dharwadker, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Wisconsin—Madison, translates from Hindi, Marathi, Urdu, Punjabi, and Sanskrit. His collection of poetry is titled Sunday at the Lodi Gardens (1994). He has edited The Oxford Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry (1994), The Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan (1999) and The Norton Anthology ofWorld Literature (2012) and translated Kabir: The Weaver’s Songs (2003) for Penguin Classics. Forthcoming translations include Mohan Rakesh’s One Day in the Season of Rain and Kalidasa’s Shakuntala.