Archives: Authors

Ru Freeman is a Sri Lankan- American writer and activist. Her debut novel, A Disobedient Girl, was longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and translated into seven languages. She has been a fellow of the Bread Loaf Writers’Conference, Yaddo, and the Virginia Centre for the Creative Arts. She blogs for the Huffington Post on Literature and Politics and is a contributing editorial board member of the Asian American Literary Review. She calls both Sri Lanka and America home and writes about the people and countries underneath her skin .

Pradip Krishen gave up film-making to photograph and write about trees for a general audience. He published Trees of Delhi (Penguin/DK) in 2006 which has sold nearly 20,000 copies. He also practices as an ‘ecological gardener’ and is rewilding the unique landscape of Rao Jodha Desert Rock Park next to Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur.

Yashovardhan Birla is the chairman of the Yash Birla Group.

Born in France and raised in New York, Catherine Rubin Kermorgant studied Classics at Brown University and Anthropology at the London School of Economics. After working in film and television for a number of years, she began to research and write her own documentary films. One of her films, funded by the BBC and Canal Plus, led her to south India, where she spent several months learning about devadasis.

Catherine Rubin Kermorgant lives in Paris with her family.

Rosinka Chaudhuri is director and professor of cultural studies at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. Her books include Gentlemen Poets in Colonial Bengal: Emergent Nationalism and the Orientalist Project (2002), Freedom and Beef Steaks: Colonial Calcutta Culture (2011) and The Literary Thing: History, Poetry and the Making of a Modern Cultural Sphere (2013). She has edited many books, among which are Derozio, Poet of India: The Definitive Edition (2008), A History of Indian Poetry in English (2016), and most recently, George Orwell’s Burmese Days for Oxford World’s Classics (2021). Many of her journal articles, reviews and book chapters have been published worldwide, while her translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s letters, titled Letters from a Young Poet (1887–1895), was published as a Penguin Modern Classic in 2014.

Bapsi Sidhwa is an internationally acclaimed author. Raised in Lahore, Pakistan, she now lives in Houston, Texas. She has written five novels — Ice – Candy -Man, The Pakistani Bride, The crow Eaters, An American Brat, and Water — which have been translated and published in several languages. She has edited the anthology City of Sin and Splendour: Writings on Lahore which was published in 2006. Among her many honours Sidhwa received the Bunting Fellowship at Radcliffe/ Harvad, the Lila Wallace – Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award,the Sitara -i- Imtiaz, Pakistan’s higest national honour in the arts, and the LIBeraturepreis in Germany and the 2007 Primo Mondello Award in Italy.

Vikas Gopal Jhingran is an MIT-trained engineer and researcher who used to suffer from poor speaking skills, due in large part to being both an introvert and an immigrant. He studied public speaking to improve in this area and eventually won the Toastmasters 2007 World Championship of Public Speaking, the first East Indian and only the second Asian to do so in the 80-year history of the competition.

Vikas is an engineer with Shell Oil Company and uses his leadership and communication skills to manage multi-million-dollar projects. He also delivers keynotes and conducts workshops to help others become better speakers. He lives with his wife and two sons in Houston, Texas.

Vibha Batra is an author, graphic novelist, advertising consultant, poet, lyricist, translator, playwright, script writer, travel writer, columnist, speaker and creative writing mentor. She has published 23 books (and counting!), many of which have won prestigious awards, bestseller tags and readers’ hearts.

Joy Bhattacharjya used to play for the Kolkata Knight Riders team of IPL (Indian Premier League). He has been a part of IPL since it came into being in 2008. Nearly 20 years of his life were spent in the world of Indian sports and media. He has helped produced live international cricket and has also contributed towards creating programmes like ESPN School Quiz and Super Selector. Apart from this, he also writes quiz columns as well as magazine articles intermittently.