Archives: Authors

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.

Hajra Masroor (1930-2012) is remembered as one of the most celebrated Pakistani writers of Urdu short stories and narrative fiction. Deeply influenced by the Progressive Writers’ Movement, she made a place for herself among writers like Ismat Chughtai, Saadat Hasan Manto, Krishan Chander, and Rajinder Singh Bedi. Masroor wrote with great energy and wit. Her stories possess an elegant prose style, strong female characterization, and a little twist at the end that keeps her readers baffled and engaged.

IRA PANDE started her career as a lecturer in Panjab University, later switching to editing and publishing, and later worked with several prominent English-language publishing houses. Her last editorial stint was as chief editor of the India International Centre’s (IIC) Publication Division. In 2005, she wrote a memoir of her mother titled Diddi: My Mother’s Voice, documenting the life and times of Shivani. In 2010, she got the Sahitya Akademi Award for her translation of Manohar Shyam Joshi’s T’ta Professor, which also won the Crossword Book Award for translation. She writes a regular column for the Tribune.