Rupleena Bose works as an associate professor at Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi. Her PhD is on urban music from nineties Calcutta. She has written several screenplays and a non-fiction film titled You Don’t Belong, which has won a National Film Award. She also writes on cinema and culture for The Hindu, BLink, Firstpost, the Economic and Political Weekly, Open, ThePrint and others.
She divides her life and livelihood between Aldona, Goa, and New Delhi with her family and her cats. Summer of Then is her debut novel.
She has been a Charles Wallace India Trust Scholarship Holder (2012) at the University of Edinburgh for creative writing. She is also an occasional actor and has co-written a non fiction book on the history of film festivals titled In the Life of a Film Festival (HarperCollins, 2018).
M.K. Ranjitsinh belongs to the royal family of Wankaner. He joined the IAS in 1961. As collector of Mandla, MP, he helped save the central Indian barasingha from extinction. As secretary, forests and tourism, in MP, he established fourteen new sanctuaries, eight new national parks and more than doubled the area of three existing national parks, a total addition of over 9000 sq. km. to the protected areas of the nation. He was the prime architect of the Wildlife (Protection) Act; was director of wildlife preservation twice and additional secretary in the Ministry of Environment and Forests. He was member secretary of the task force which initiated Project Tiger and he also initiated Project Snow Leopard; he helped save the Manipur sangai and other endangered species. The eastern subspecies of the barasingha is named after him. He worked with UNEP as senior regional advisor in Nature Conservation for the Asia-Pacific region. He has published numerous articles and two books, Beyond the Tiger and The Indian Blackbuck.
He has been awarded the Order of the Golden Ark by the Netherlands for ‘outstanding work on behalf of international conservation both in India and in South East Asia’; the Global 500 Roll of Honour of UNEP ‘in recognition of outstanding practical achievements in the protection and improvement of the environment’, and a number of other awards.
Sharankumar Limbale is a Dalit author and poet. He writes in Marathi and has forty-four published works to his name. His books have been translated into several Indian languages. He is widely known for his autobiography, Akkarmashi (The Outcaste). His book Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature is highly acclaimed in the academic world. He is the first Dalit writer to have received the Saraswati Samman, one of India’s highest awards for Indian literature. His work is taught at many universities.
Paromita Sengupta is director of studies of Griffith Institute of Language, Griffith College, Ireland. Her published works include a critical edition of The Persecuted, the first drama to be written in the English language by an Indian, and Bimukta, the Bengali translation of Volga’s The Liberation of Sita. She has a PhD in English from the University of Calcutta and taught English language and literature at graduate and postgraduate levels in various colleges in India between 2002 and 2019. In 2020 she was awarded the Government of Ireland International Education Scholarship to pursue a master’s course in media studies from Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland.
