Salma is a writer of poetry and fiction. Based in the small town of Thuvarankurichi, she is recognized as a writer of growing importance in Tamil literature. Her work combines a rare outspokenness about taboo areas of the traditional Tamil women’s experience with a language of compressed intensity and startling metaphoric resonance. She has faced great adversity-including obscenity charges and violent threats for her erotic poetry, and living locked away by her family-to also become a major political leader and campaigner for women’s rights. She is the subject of an eponymous documentary film by Kim Longinotto. Her debut novel, The Hour Past Midnight, was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. Women, Dreaming is her second novel.
Meena Kandasamy is a poet, fiction writer, translator and activist who lives in Chennai and London. She has published two collections of poetry, Touch and Ms. Militancy, and the critically acclaimed novels The Gypsy Goddess and When I Hit You, Or, The Portrait of the Writer As a Young Wife, which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2018. She is the editor of the poetry collection Desires Become Demons (Tilted Axis Press 2019), in which her translations of four Tamil women poets are included alongside some by the late Lakshmi Holmström. Exquisite Cadavers is her latest novel.
Hamid Ansari has a master’s degree in management studies with a specialization in operations and supply chain management from Mumbai University. He has completed a second MBA in HR from NMIMS. Hamid has worked with NGOs like the Rotary Club and been a volunteer with the UN. He is currently part of the visiting faculty at a junior college in Mumbai, and is a motivational speaker who is working on becoming an entrepreneur.
Geeta Mohan has been a journalist covering international relations and diplomacy. She is currently the foreign affairs editor at India Today, TV Today Network. Apart from heading the desk, she also anchors the show World Today. Passionate about sharing real stories from the ground, she is widely recognized for her reporting.
Geeta Mohan has been a journalist covering international relations and diplomacy. She is currently the foreign affairs editor at India Today, TV Today Network. Apart from heading the desk, she also anchors the show World Today. Passionate about sharing real stories from the ground, she is widely recognized for her reporting.
Darius Foroux is the author of 7 books, and founder of The Sounding Board. A past student of business, he writes about productivity, habits, decision making, and wealth building His ideas and work have been featured in TIME, NBC, Fast Company, Inc., Observer, and many more publications. 500K+ people read his blog every month, which he started in 2015 and uses as his main platform to connect with individuals across the globe who read his work or need guidance.
Mainak Dhar is a cubicle dweller by day and author by night with seventeen books to his credit. Learn more about him and his writing at www.mainakdhar.com/
Archit Taneja is an adult male in his thirties. He enjoys watching cartoons and collecting shiny objects. He writes and doodles silly stuff in hope to reverse the aging process, because having grey hair wasn’t as cool as he thought it would be. When he is not writing detective novels, he designs tech stuff. The Case of the Nosy Time Travellers is his third book in the Superlative Supersleuths series.
Zainab Sulaiman is a special educator who has taught and raised funds in the non-profit sector. She enjoys writing fiction and hanging out with people far wiser than her, namely her children.
Aditi Krishnakumar
‘I can hardly imagine it, but everything will be different tomorrow. I’ve looked forward to it for years. I’ll truly be Sundaram’s wife, together in body as in spirit…’
But that tomorrow never comes, and at just fourteen, Aru is left a widow. Worse, the village whispers name Sundaram a drunkard and a thief?the thief who called down the wrath of the local goddess by stealing the most precious jewel from her temple. The future Aru once envisioned vanishes, leaving only bleak and endless days ahead. So when a ray of hope appears in the form of the landlord’s children offering her a job as their grandmother’s companion, Aru seizes the opportunity.
In the landlord’s house, Aru gains an education, finds that her charge is an unexpected ally, and dreams impossibly of having a profession of her own one day. But she also learns uncomfortable truths. Soon, her very life is in danger…
The White Lotus is a gripping murder mystery and a rich social portrait of the plight of widows in rural Tamil Nadu at the very start of the twentieth century.
Actor, scriptwriter, photographer, traveller, teacher, amateur geologist, furniture restorer, restaurant manager, and now storyteller, Rustom loves wearing many hats, which he has been shrewdly, sneakily, surreptitiously storing over the years. (He also admits he has a very bald head which needs covering!)
Priya Kuriyan is an independent animation film maker and illustrator based in Delhi. She has directed educational films for the Sesame Street show (Galli Galli Sim Sim) and has also codirected a short animation film for the CFSI. She has also been illustrating a number of children’s books and comics.
