Amin has worked at various publications, namely Amrita Bazar Patrika, The Asian Age, The Pioneer, The Indian Express, Sahara TV, Zee Sports and, most recently, The Times of India in Delhi, where he served as Asst. Editor for six years before moving to Qatar. Now based in Doha, he focuses on interacting with the who’s who of World Football.
As a writer, his analysis of the game has gained him much appreciation from players, readers and critics, in India as well as abroad. He has published a book titled The World Cup 2002 on behalf of The Indian Express. He writes his column as Footballwallah for Sportskeeda. He also shares his views and thoughts about the game, along with his expert analysis of the growth of Indian football on his blog, http://footballwallah.blogspot.com
He has given a number of expert interviews: for instance, a BBC interview in London and another one for AFP. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football and http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article)
Amin was voted the best Indian football columnist in 2012.
V.R. Ferose is Senior Vice President and Head of Globalization Service for SAP AG and former Managing Director of SAP Labs India. Deeply sensitive to the unequal world in which we live, Ferose founded the ‘India Inclusion Summit’, a unique platform that focuses on the need for inclusion in our lives. He is a Director on the Board of Specialist People Foundation, a not-for-profit foundation with the goal to create one million jobs globally for people with autism and is on the panel of ‘The Vision Group on Information Technology’, Government of Karnataka. He is also co-founder of the Karnataka chapter of Global Shapers, which works to create leadership among the youth. For his professional accomplishments, commitment to society, and potential to contribute to shaping the future of the world, Ferose was honored as a ‘Young Global Leader’ in March 2012 by the World Economic Forum. In a study published by the Economic Times and Spencer Stuart, Ferose was selected as one of the leaders in ‘Indian’s Top 40 under 40’, 2014. This study is considered to be India’s most authentic leadership study and it lists 40 extraordinary business leaders under the age of 40.
Sudhir Kakar is a distinguished psychoanalyst and writer. He has written seventeen highly acclaimed books of non-fiction, which include, among others, The Inner World (now in its sixteenth printing since its first publication in 1978), Shamans, Mystics and Doctors, Intimate Relations, The Colours of Violence and, most recently , Young Tagore : The Makings of a Genius.
Rajendra Yadav (1929-2013) was among the most important and famous modern Hindi authors and intellectuals. Raised and educated in Agra, he wrote his first and greatest novel, Sara Akash, in 1951 (first published as Pret Bolte Hain). Never out of print since, it has sold over 500,000 copies, and was made into a film directed by Basu Chatterjee in 1969. Along with Kamleshwar and Mohan Rakesh, Yadav started the Nayi Kahani movement which transformed the Hindi literary scene in the 1950s and ’60s. Author of seven novels and twelve short story collections, Yadav reinvented himself as an editor, political commentator and translator. In 1986, he re-launched Premchand’s magazine Hans, and, with assistance from associate editor Archana Varma, turned it for over a decade into Hindi’s most prominent literary journal. Yadav ran his own publishing house Akshar Prakashan, where his office became a centre for literary debate, and he developed Hans into a controversial forum for women’s and minority voices. He is survived by his wife, well-known Hindi fiction writer Mannu Bhandari, and their daughter Rachna.
Ruth Vanita, raised and educated in Delhi, taught at Delhi University for twenty years and now teaches at the University of Montana. Founding co-editor of Manushi, India’s first nationwide feminist magazine, she is the author of several books, most recently Gender, Sex and the City: Urdu Rekhti Poetry 1780-1870, and co-editor of Same-Sex Love in India: A Literary History. She has translated many works of fiction and poetry from Hindi to English, most recently Alone Together: Selected Stories of Mannu Bhandari, Rajee Seth and Archana Varma.
Monabi Mitra was born in Calcutta and educated at Loreto House, Presidency College and Jadavpur University. She teaches English at Scottish Church College, Calcutta. As the wife of an Indian Police Service officer she has developed a keen interest in police procedure. This has led to the writing of the DSP Bikram series.
Diptakirti Chaudhuri is a salesman by day and writer by night.
This is his third book, and the second on Hindi cinema. He is currently working on a biography of India’s most explosive screenwriters, Salim-Javed.
He lives in Gurgaon with his wife, a son and a daughter. They don’t share his obsessive love for the movies. Yet.
Taslima Nasrin (Author) was born in the city of Mymensingh, Bangladesh. After graduating from Mymensingh Medical College, she worked as a government doctor in public hospitals until 1993. When ordered by the government to
choose between her job and writing, she chose to resign from public service to continue her literary pursuits.
Nasrin is one of the most uncompromising feminist writers of the Indian subcontinent. Her writing has earned her immense popularity but
also controversy. In advocating for women’s rights, she has not only faced attacks from religious fundamentalists but also encountered opposition from the State and patriarchal society at large. Fundamentalist groups
demanded her execution and even placed a bounty on her head. As a result, she was exiled from her beloved homeland in 1994. Fatwas and numerous lawsuits against her freedom of expression still hang over her in Bangladesh. After years of exile in Europe, she settled in West Bengal, India, but was later expelled from that state as well. This Bengali writer has found
no refuge in either part of Bengal. Several of her books have been banned by the Bangladesh government, including Lajja (a fact-based novel in defence of humanity), Amar Meyebela
(a memoir of her childhood), Utal Hawa (about her teenage and early adult years), and the third and fourth parts of her autobiography, Ka (translated as Split: A Life) and Sei Sob Andhokar. West Bengal’s government also
banned Ka, although the Calcutta High Court overturned the ban two years later.
Nasrin has received numerous awards and honours. In India, she won the Ananda Purashkar twice: for Nirbachito Kolam and Amar Meyebela. She received the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European
Parliament, the UNESCO Prize for promoting tolerance and peace, the French government’s Human Rights Prize, the Simone de Beauvoir Prize and the Edit de Nantes Prize from France for her fi ght against religious extremism. Other honours include the Academy Award from the Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium, and the Kurt Tucholsky Prize from PEN Sweden. She has also received honorary doctorates from Ghent University and the University of Leuven in Belgium, the American
University of Paris and Paris Diderot University. She has held fellowships at Harvard and New York University.
Nasrin has authored over fifty books across poetry, short stories, novels, essays and autobiographies. Her works have been translated into twenty-five languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Finnish, Dutch, Arabic and Turkish.
A vocal advocate for humanism, human rights, women’s liberation and free thought, she has delivered speeches around the world, including at prestigious institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Edinburgh and the Sorbonne. Globally, she has become a symbol of the fight for freedom of expression.
Pavit Kaur lives in Chandigarh. This is her first book.
Gary J. Bass is a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of Freedom’s Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention and Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals. A former reporter for the Economist, he has written often for the New York Times, as well as writing for the New Yorker, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New Republic, Foreign Affairs, and other publications.
Saskya Jain was born in Ahmedabad and grew up in New Delhi. Educated at Berlin’s Free University and at Columbia University, she holds an MFA in Fiction from Boston University, where she received the Florence Engel Randall Award and the Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship. Her writing has appeared in numerous literary magazines, and one of her stories was a finalist in the 2011 Asian-American Short Story Contest. She lives in New Delhi and Berlin. Fire Under Ash is her first novel.
