Archives: Authors

Sulaiman Ahmad is an ex-banking executive who decided, post-retirement, to indulge in his passion-Urdu poetry and prose. He has adapted the story of Tilism-e-Hoshruba for children in Amar Aiyyar: King of Tricksters and combined a re-telling of two satirical works by Krishan Chander in A Tree on Its Head. His own anthology of Urdu verse is titled Khama-e-Mani.

Himansu S. Mohapatra is a literary critic and translator. He has produced, with Paul St-Pierre, an edited volume of Odia stories in English translation, entitled The Other Side of Reason (2008), and, two fiction translations: Basanti: Writing the New Woman (2019)-it is the first woman-oriented Odia novel written by nine authors in 1931-and Letters to Jorina (2021), an epistolary novella by Ganeswar Mishra. A selection of his literary journalism has been published as Model of the Middle (2014). He studied at Sambalpur Univerisity, Odisha and University of East Anglia, Norwich, and taught English at Berhampur University and Utkal University, Odisha.

Hemang Ashwinkumar is a bi-lingual poet, translator, editor and critic working in Gujarati and English. His poetry and translations have appeared in places like World Literature Today, Indian Literature, New Quest, Cerebration, Kitaab, Maple Tree Literary Supplement, Marg, The Four Quarters Magazine, Indian Cultural Forum, The Beacon, Out of Print, Guftugu, Museindia, etc., read in literary festivals like HLF, SIWE, Piccolo Museo della Poesia, etc. and translated in Maithili, Italian and Greek. Hemang has rendered into English the literary works of a number of eminent Gujarati writers like Gulammohammed Sheikh, Himanshi Shelat, Nazir Mansuri, Mona Patrawala, Babu Suthar, Dalpat Chauhan, Kanji Patel, Piyush Thakkar, Manisha Joshi, Rajesh Pandya, Rajendra Patel, etc. He has also rendered world poets like Forough Farrokhzad, Mahmoud Darwish, Adam Zagajewsky, Abdellatif Laabi and others into Gujarati. From Indian languages, he has brought into Gujarati works of Arun Kolatkar, Dilip Chitre, Nabarun Bhattacharya, Varvara Rao, Hemant Divate, and other contemporary Marathi poets. He has published around twenty-five academic research papers, guided five doctoral research students and completed three research projects funded by different funding agencies. He works at Central University of Gujarat.

Durjoy Datta was born in New Delhi and completed a degree in engineering and business management before embarking on a writing career. His first book–Of Course I Love You . . .–was published when he was twenty-one years old and was an instant bestseller. His successive novels–Now That You’re Rich . . .; She Broke Up, I Didn’t! . . .; Oh Yes, I’m Single! . . .; You Were My Crush . . .; If It’s Not Forever . . .; Till the Last Breath . . .; Someone Like You; Hold My Hand; When Only Love Remains; World’s Best Boyfriend; Our Impossible Love; The Girl of My Dreams; and The Boy Who Loved–have also found prominence on various bestseller lists, making him one of the highest-selling authors in India.
Durjoy also has to his credit nine television shows and has written over a thousand episodes for television. Durjoy lives in Mumbai. For more updates, you can follow him on Facebook (www.facebook.com/durjoydatta1) or Twitter (@durjoydatta) or mail him at durjoydatta@gmail.com.

KK (Kamalakanta) Mohapatra is a well-known Odia writer and has published three collections of stories, a novel, two books of essays and three books of memoirs including the bestselling Janamaru Maran. He has also translated selected works of William Shakespeare, Franz Kafka, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and others into Odia.

Leelawati Mohapatra published her first novel, Hanging by a Tail, in 2008, and after a long interlude is currently at work on her next.

Paul St-Pierre taught translation in Canada. He has collaborated on translations of literary texts from Odia into English. Among these are: Six Acres and a Third (by Phakirmohan Senapati, co-translated with R.S. Mishra, S.P. Mohanty and J.K. Nayak and published by University of California Press: 2005 and Penguin: 2006; a later translation [Six and a Third Acres] in collaboration with Leelawati and K.K. Mohapatra, was published by Aleph in 2021); Atmacharita (also by Phakirmohan Senapati,; National Book Trust of India, 2016; translated with D.R. Pattanaik and B.K. Tripathy). Oxford University Press published in 2019 his co-translation, with Himansu S. Mohapatra, of Basanti, and Aleph has published his translation with Leelawati and K.K. Mohapatra of The Greatest Odia Stories ever Told (2019)

XAVIER COTA’s translated fiction
and other articles have appeared in publications
like the Week, Man’s World, Katha Prize Stories and
Sahitya Akademi. He has won the 2005 Katha
Award for Translation. His Konkani-to-English
translations of Damodar Mauzo’s works include the
short story collections These Are My Children and
Teresa’s Man and Other Stories from Goa, and the
novel Tsunami Simon. He lives in Betalbatim, Goa.

Gauri Khan is known for her work in design and eclectic taste in transforming spaces. Over the past decades, she has been making waves with her designs. She is the founder and chief executive officer of Gauri Khan Designs (GKD), and has established herself as a designer who can work across a wide range of projects with equal élan. Gauri Khan is also the go-to interior designer for some of the most notable names in the Indian film industry and business personalities.