Ruth Vanita (Author)
Ruth Vanita taught at Delhi University for twenty years and is now professor at the University of Montana. She was founding co-editor of Manushi, 1978-90. She is the author of several books, including Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriages in Modern India (2005); Gender, Sex and the City: Urdu Rekhti Poetry in India 1780-1870 (2012); and Dancing with the Nation: Courtesans in Bombay Cinema (2017). She is the co-editor of Same-Sex Love in India: A Literary History, and has translated many works of fiction and poetry from Hindi and Urdu to English, most notably Chocolate: Stories on Male-Male Desire by Pandey Bechan Sharma ‘Ugra’ (2008). This is her first work of fiction. She divides her time between Missoula and Gurgaon.
Saleem Kidwai (Author)
Saleem Kidwai is a historian and independent scholar, who taught at Ramjas College, Delhi University, for twenty years. He has published several academic essays on medieval and modern India, and translated several works, including Song Sung True: A Memoir by Malka Pukhraj and a collection of Syed Rafiq Hussain’s short stories, The Mirror of Wonders. Apart from the author herself, he is the only person to have translated the novels of Qurratulain Hyder, Chandni Begum and Ship of Sorrow.
Sanjoy Hazarika is an author, journalist, filmmaker and professor. He is the author of Bhopal: The Lessons of a Tragedy, Writing on the Wall: Reflections on the North-East and Rites of Passage, among other critically acclaimed books. Hazarika has been a consulting editor for the Statesman, and has previously worked for Associated Press and the New York Times, as well as a research professor at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. Hazarika is the international director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) and a former member of India’s National Security Advisory Board.
Attia Hosain was a British-Indian novelist, author, writer, broadcaster, journalist and actor. She was a woman of letters and a diasporic writer. She wrote in English although her mother tongue was Urdu.
Carl Muller (1935- ) is an unusual man. He is no academic; kicked out of three schools, he never went to university and served in the Royal Ceylon Navy, the Ceylon Army and the Port of Colombo as a pilot station signalman. In advertising briefly, he was also involved in the travel trade, and donned the robes of an entertainer. A pianist and a journalist, Carl Muller has a large number of published titles, ranging from poetry to science fiction, under his belt. But it is his ‘Burgher novels’ that have earned him special acclaim, especially the first one, The Jam Fruit Tree, which won the Gratiaen Memorial Prize, 1993, for the best work of English literature by a Sri Lankan. He has also won the State Literary Award for his historical novel, Children of the Lion.
He lives with his wife, Sortain, in Kandy.
