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 Sappho and the Virgin Mary: Same-Sex Love and the English Literary Imagination (1996); Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India (2005); Gandhi’s Tiger and Sita’s Smile: Essays on Gender, Sexuality and Culture (2005), Gender, Sex and the City: Urdu Rekhti Poetry in India 1780–1870 (2012); Dancing with the Nation: Courtesans in Bombay Cinema (2017). Her first novel, Memory of Light, appeared in 2020.
She is the author of over sixty articles on British and Indian literature, 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). 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.
Walter Russell Crocker was an Australian scholar and diplomat. He was born in 1902 and educated at the University of Adelaide, Balliol College, Oxford and Stanford University. From 1952 to 1970 Sir Walter served Australia with distinction for eighteen years as ambassador in a variety of countries including India (1952-1955 and 1958-1962), Indonesia, Canada, Nepal, Belgium and The Netherlands, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Italy. Following his retirement from the diplomatic service in 1970, Sir Walter returned home to Adelaide where he served as a member of the Council of Adelaide University from 1971-1978. In 1973 he was appointed lieutenant governor of South Australia, a position he held until 1982. He was appointed KBE in 1978. Sir Walter was a prolific writer publishing numerous magazine articles, lectures and books during his career. Nehru: A Contemporary’s Estimate was published in 1966.
Dr Zareer Masani has an Oxford D.Phil. in Modern History (with a thesis on Indian nationalism) and is the author of three very successful books on India: Indira Gandhi: A Biography; Indian Tales of the Raj; and From Raj to Rajiv: 40 Years of Indian Independence (with Mark Tully). He is the son of the late politician Minoo Masani and grandson of eminent historian and educationist, Sir Rustom Masani. His family memoir, And All Is Said: Memoir of A Home Divided, was published earlier this year to wide critical acclaim.
Soyna Owley is a member of the Society for Children’s Book Writers
and Editors, British Isles. This is her debut novel.
She lives in London with her family and keeps a jar of mint humbugs
on her desk for when writer’s block strikes.
Born in 1899 in Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh, Saradindu Bandyopadhyay started his literary career by writing poems when he was a student in Vidyasagar College, Calcutta. Subsequently, he studied law, and then dedicated himself to writing. By 1932, when the first Byomkesh mystery appeared, he was already an established writer. He went on to become a popular and renowned writer of ghost stories, historical romances and children’s fiction in Bengali. He was the recipient of the Rabindra Purashkar in 1967 for his novel Tungabhadrar Tirey. He also received several other awards before his death in 1970.
Vijaya Kumar Ivaturi is the co-founder and CTO of Crayon Data. Meena Ganesh founded and led, or co-promoted, some of India’s most disruptive start-ups. Alok Mittal is co-founder and CEO of Indifi. Sriram Subramanya founded Integra Software Services. Professor Sadagopan is the director of IIIT-Bangalore.
Radhika Chopra, formerly Professor of Sociology, is author of Amritsar 1984: A City Remembers and of Militant and Migrant: The Politics and Social History of Punjab. Deeply interested in visual cultures, she has edited Ways of Worship (2020), based on fieldwork photographs taken by anthropologists. She has published extensively on visual cultures, on migration and on gender and South Asian masculinities.
Makarand R. Paranjape is a critic, poet, novelist and public intellectual. He was educated at St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, and at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he earned a master’s and PhD in English. Currently Professor, Centre for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, he was the inaugural Erich Auerbach Visiting Chair in Global Literary Studies at the University of Tübingen in Fall 2014. His recent books include Making India: Colonialism, National Culture, and Indian English Literature and Swami Vivekananda: A Contemporary Reader.
