Archives: Authors

Rommel Rodrigues is an Indian author, film director, screenwriter and producer based out of Mumbai. He has worked in several Indian newspapers, writing on crime, business, politics and current affairs for over two decades. He has authored several books.

R.K. NARAYAN (1906-2001) began his writing career with Swami and Friends, and most of his work is set in the sleepy and picturesque fictional town of Malgudi. Narayan’s masterful stories are marked by irony, subtle humour, romance and artistry.

Rudyard Kipling was a British author best known for his children’s books including The Jungle Book and is regarded as one of the most important contributors to the short story form. Rudyard Kipling was born on December 30, 1865, in Bombay, India where his father, John Lockwood Kipling was an artist and teacher of architectural sculpture at the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy School of Art. He spent the first six of his life in India, where he was cared for by an Indian nanny, whom he later referred to as his ‘very dear friend’ who inspired many of his stories. Kipling returned to India in 1882, where he worked as a journalist and began to establish himself as a writer. Throughout his life, Kipling travelled extensively and lived in various countries and all of those experiences reflected in his work. His writing was highly popular in his time, and it earned him several awards and honours including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907.

Anita Nair is a bestselling and widely acclaimed novelist. Among her several books, The Better Man, Ladies Coupé and Mistress have been translated into over thirty languages around the world. For her total contribution to children’s literature in English, she was awarded the Central Sahitya Akademi Award in 2013. She has also published Malabar Mind, a collection of poems, and Goodnight and God Bless, a collection of essays. A playwright, she has written the screenplay for the film adaptation of her novel Lessons in Forgetting, which won the 2012 National Film Award for the Best Feature Film in English.

Anita conducts a creative-writing mentorship program in Bangalore called Anita’s Attic. To know more, visit her at www.anitanair.net and www.anitasattic.com or follow @anitanairauthor on Twitter and Instagram.

Anita Nair is the author of the bestselling novels The Better Man, Ladies Coupe, Mistress, Lesson in Forgetting Idris and Cut Like Wound. She has published a collection of poems titled Malabar Mind, a collection of essays titled Goodnight & God Bless and four books for children. Anita Nair has also written two plays and the screenplay for the movie adaptation for her novel Lessons In forgetting which was a part in Indian Panaroma at IFFI 2012 and won the film award in 2013. Among other awards , she was given Central Sahitya Akademi Award for contribution to children’s literature in English. Her books has been translated over thirty languages around the world. She is the founder of the creative- writing and mentorship programme Anita’s attic

Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, b. 15 October 1931, is one of India’s most distinguished scientists. He was responsible for the development of India’s first satellite launch vehicle, the SLV-3, development and operationalization of strategic missiles and their weaponization, and for building indigenous capability in critical technologies. As Chairman of the Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC), he guided a number of technology projects and missions to take India into the twenty-first century. The document on Technology Vision 2020 is a blueprint to make India a developed country. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam held various positions in ISRO and DRDO and became Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India holding the rank of a Cabinet Minister. He has the unique honour of receiving honorary doctorates from thirty universities and the country’s three highest civilian honours-Padma Bhushan (1981), Padma Vibhushan (1990) and Bharat Ratna (1997). He has done a short stint as Professor of Technology and Societal Transformation at Anna University, Chennai, and is at the halfway mark in meeting 100,000 high school students throughout the country.

Sundara Ramaswamy (1931-2005) was one of the most versatile and innovative of Tamil writers. A great modernist and a dazzling stylist, he wrote in many genres-poetry, novel, short story, play, personal essay and literary criticism-making real interventions in Tamil writing. Each of his three novels-Oru Puliamaratthin Kadhai (published in Penguin Classics as Tamarind History), JJ: Sila Kuripuggal (published in Penguin Classics as JJ: Some Jottings) and Kuzhandaigal, Pengal, Aangal (published in Penguin Classics as Children, Women, Men)-is recognized as path-breaking, and he also edited and published a notable literary magazine,Kalachuvadu, which has become a forum for new writing and literary debate.

A.R. Venkatachalapathy (b. 1967) studied in Chennai and took his PhD in history from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Now professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, Chalapathy has taught at universities in Tirunelveli, Chennai and Chicago, and has held research assignments at Paris, Cambridge and Harvard. He has published widely on the social, cultural, and intellectual history of colonial Tamilnadu, both in Tamil and in English. His publications include In Those Days There Was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History, The Province of the Book: Scholars, Scribes, and Scribblers in Colonial Tamilandu, a translation of Sundara Ramaswamy’s JJ: Some Jottings, as well as the edited volumes Chennai, Not Madras, and In the Tracks of the Mahatma: The Making of a Documentary. He has also edited two anthologies of Tamil Sangam poetry, translated by M.L. Thangappa-Love Stands Alone: Selections from Tamil Sangam Poetry and Red Lilies and Frightened Birds: Muttollayiram.