Vinod Bhardwaj was born in Lucknow in 1948 and completed his MA in psychology from Lucknow University in 1971. From 1967 to 1969, he was an editor of the acclaimed literary journal Aarambh and during 1973-98, was associated with the Hindi publications of the Times of India group as a journalist. After his initial training in Dharmayug, then edited by Dharmvir Bharati, for a number of years he worked with Dinaman, regularly writing on contemporary life, ideas, cinema and art under the editorship of Raghuvir Sahay. For three years in the 1990s, he was the features editor of Navbharat Times. He now works as an independent journalist, film-maker and art curator.
In 1989, he was on the jury of Leningrad’s first international festival of non-feature films. So far, he remains the only film critic from the world of Hindi literature to have received the rare honour of being selected as a member of an international jury. In 1981, he received the Bharat Bhushan Agrawal Award for the best poem of the year (chosen by Vishnu Khare) and in 1982, a jury presided over by Namvar Singh gave him the Sanskriti Award for the best creative writing.
He has published three collections of poetry, Jalta Makan, Hoshiyarpur and Hoshiyarpur Aur Anya Kavitayen, one collection of short stories, Chiteri, and two novels, Seppuku and Sachcha Jhooth. He has also written many acclaimed works on art and cinema. His Brihad Adhunik Kala Kosh, published by Vani Prakashan, remains a much-praised work. An English translation of Seppuku by Brij Sharma has been published by HarperCollins. Vinod Bhardwaj has also directed some art-related experimental films which are under contract with Alexander Street Press in the US for online distribution.After a desultory education in Dehra Dun in the schools for the underprivileged, Brij Sharma joined the Times of India as a trainee journalist in 1973. Six years later, soon after his return from a fellowship in West Germany, he left for the Gulf to spend eleven years with Khaleej Times in Dubai. He was editor of the Indian Express in Gujarat in the early 1990s and now lives and works in Bahrain. He has also translated Vinod Bhardwaj’s novel Seppuku into English, co-edited with him two F.N. Souza exhibition catalogues, and edited the autobiography of Jack Gibson, the last English principal of Mayo College, Ajmer, which was published in the US.