Contributors
POETRY
Priya Sarukkai Chabria
Sampurna Chattarji
Charles Adès Fishman
Dipika Mukerjee
Menka Shivdasani
Arundhati Subramaniam
Laura Traister
Sophia Naz
Anjali Purohit
Bahinabai Choudhary
Suchi Govindarajan
Jayanta Mahapatra
Yasmeen Hameed
Tanveer Anjum
Afzal Ahmed Syed
Nadia Niaz
Mrinalini Harchandrai
Sena Chang
Barnali Ray Shukla
Devanshi Khetarpal
Matt Pasca
PHOTOGRAPH
Poornima Kumar
NON FICTION
Ranjit Hoskote
Nancy Adajania
Aparna Karthikeyan
Gauri Lankesh
Chandan Gowda
Nzanmongi Jasmine Patton
Pervin Saket
Kaushiki Saraswat
Shikhandin
Manabika
FICTION
Tanuj Solanki
Xu Xi
Indira Chandrasekhar
Anil Menon
Namita Waikar
Madhulika Liddle
Priya Sarukkai Chabria
Sucharita Dutta-Asane
Neera Kashyap
Vasudha Rungta
Kinshuk Gupta
Michelle D’costa
Tapan Mozumdar
Praveena Shivram
Lina Krishnan
Priya Sarukkai Chabria
Priya Sarukkai Chabria is an award winning translator, poet and writer acclaimed for her radical literary aesthetics. Her books include speculative fiction, literary non-fiction, two poetry collections, a novel and translations from Classical Tamil of the mystic Andal’s songs. Awarded for her Outstanding Contribution to Literature by the Indian government, she has attended prestigious writers’ residencies and presented her work worldwide; it’s widely anthologised. She edited possibly the largest archive of Indian Anglophone poetry Talking Poetry (India) and now edits Poetry at Sangam. http://poetry.sangamhouse.org. Another version of her speculative fiction novel titled Clone is forthcoming with Zubaan, New Delhi in 2018 and University of Chicago Press, 2019; the French translation by Editions Banyan is scheduled for 2019. Also forthcoming in 2018 (Ed.) Fafnir’s Heart World Poetry in Translation with Bombaykala Books. She’s translating sacred songs from Old Tamil. www.priyawriting.com
Sampurna Chattarji
Sampurna Chattarji is a poet, fiction-writer and translator. Her fifteen books include the poetry titles Absent Muses (Poetrywala, 2010); The Scorpion (HarperXXI, 2013) and Space Gulliver: Chronicles of an Alien (HarperCollins, 2015); the novels Rupture and Land of the Well (both from HarperCollins); a short-story collection about Bombay/Mumbai, Dirty Love (Penguin, 2013); and a translation of Joy Goswami’s Selected Poems (Harper Perennial, 2014, 2018). She has co-authored Elsewhere Where Else/ Lle Arall Ble Arall with Eurig Salisbury and is currently Poetry Editor of The Indian Quarterly.
Charles Adès Fishman
Charles Fishman’s books include The Death Mazurka, which was nominated for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, and In the Language of Women (2011), recipient of the Paterson Award for Literary Excellence. The revised, second edition of his anthology, Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust, was published in 2007 by Time Being Books, which released his Selected Poems, In the Path of Lightning, in 2012. Charles is poetry editor of Prism: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Holocaust Educators and, with Smita Sahay of Mumbai, India, co-edited Veils, Halos & Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women. His most recent collection is In the Wake of the Glacier: New Selected Poems (Kasva Press, 2018).
Dipika Mukherjee
Dipika Mukherjee has her home in Chicago but trawls the world for fabulous stories and smelly food (the durian is a favourite). You can read about her work at www.dipikamukherjee.com.
Menka Shivdasani
Menka Shivdasani is the author of four collections of poetry, with her most recent being Frazil (1980 – 2017). She has edited two anthologies of contemporary Indian poetry for the American e-zine www.bigbridge.org, and an anthology of women’s writing, If the Roof Leaks, Let it Leak (SPARROW). She is co-translator of Freedom and Fissures, an anthology of Sindhi Partition poetry (Sahitya Akademi). She has been conducting a four-day poetry festival in Mumbai for the global movement 100 Thousand Poets for Change since 2012, and in 1986, she had played a key role in founding the Poetry Circle in Mumbai. Her work as a journalist includes 14 books as co-author/ editor.
Arundhathi Subramaniam
Arundhathi Subramaniam is the author of four books of poems, most recently When God Is a Traveller (Bloodaxe Books, 2014) and Where I Live: New & Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2009). Her prose works include the bestselling biography of a contemporary mystic Sadhguru: More Than a Life, Penguin and Book of Buddha, Penguin Books (reprinted several times). As editor, she has worked on a Penguin anthology of essays on sacred journeys in the country (Pilgrim’s India), and a Sahitya Akademi anthology of Post-Independence Indian Poetry in English (Another Country). She has co-edited a Penguin anthology of contemporary Indian love poems in English (Confronting Love).
Laura Traister
Laura Traister served as a Fulbright-Nehru English Teaching Assistant in Mumbai in 2016–17 but now lives in the mountains of North Carolina, USA, where she works as a textbook editor. Her poems and essays have been published in the US, UK, and now India. In addition to reading and writing, she enjoys traveling, connecting to nature through daily walks, and bouncing between practicing Spanish and Hindi. You can read more about her work and contact her through LinkedIn.
Sophia Naz
Sophia Naz is a bilingual poet, essayist, author, editor and translator. he has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, in 2016 for creative nonfiction and in 2018 for poetry. Her work features in numerous literary journals, including Poetry International Rotterdam, The Adirondack Review, The Wire, Chicago Quarterly Review, Blaze Vox, Scroll, The Daily O, Cafe Dissensus, Guftugu, Pratik, Gallerie International, Coldnoon, VAYAVYA, The Bangalore Review, Madras Courier, etc. Her Urdu/Hindi poetry appears in the anthology Raushniyan(2018). Her poetry collections are Peripheries (2015) Pointillism (2017) and Date Palms (2017). Naz is a regular contributor to Dawn, Poetry Editor and columnist at The Sunflower Collective, editor of the journal City, as well as the founder of rekhti.org, a site dedicated to contemporary Urdu poetry by women. Shehnaz, a biography on her mother's life is forthcoming from Penguin Random House in 2019. www.trancelucence.net.
Anjali Purohit
Anjali Purohit is an artist, writer, poet, translator and curator. She is the author of two books, Ragi Ragini: Chronicles from Aji’s Kitchen (Yoda Press, 2012) and Go Talk to the River: the Ovis of Bahinabai Choudhari (Yoda Press, 2019). Her writing has featured in several anthologies and literary journals including International Gallerie, Coldnoon, Anthology of Contemporary Indian Poetry II, Four Quarters Magazine, Indian Cultural Forum: Guftugu, The Bombay Review, Antiserious, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Desilit, Chowk, Teksto, Indian Writing from Around the World, Urban Voice Indiaand Suvarnarekha. She is the founder and curator of The Cappuccino Adda. She is presently working on her forthcoming book of poetry.
Songs of the Soil - Ovis by Bahinabai Chaudhary Translated by Anjali Purohit
Bahinabai Choudhary
Bahinabai Choudhary (1880-1950) was an unlettered peasant poet from the Khandesh region of Maharashtra who has authored a collection of poems in the form of ovis. An ovi is verse in couplet form that are set to an easy tune and sung by women in this state as they go about their work. So, in a sense, they can be regarded as ‘work songs’ not unlike the blues. However, while most ovis that have been popularly sung were about God, stories and characters from mythology, festivals or moral precepts, Bahinabai’s ovis were about her work both in the home as well as a farmer; they were about the village, people around her, incidents and about her maher (maikaor her childhood home that she missed so much having been married at the age of 13 (as most girls were in that period) and sent to her saasar (sasural or matrimonial home).
Bahinabai is not remarkable only because she ‘wrote’ (authored) these poems inspite of being unschooled but, to me, she is exceptional because she was perhaps the first Marathi poet to have written so well and so consistently about a woman’s work and experience. Her ovis also show us how she coped with adversity and reveal to us the personality of a woman of great resolve who took life head on, turned it into song and, in doing so, left us a treasure in the form of her ovis that were at once simple, earthy, full of with and also deeply meaningful.
Songs of the Soil - Ovis by Bahinabai Chaudhary Translated by Anjali Purohit
Suchi Govindarajan
Suchi Govindarajan works as a technical writer and pretends to be a photographer. In her spare time, she enjoys writing humour pieces and poetry. She hates brinjals. You can Read at http://www.suchiswriting.com. She also posts as @suchiswriting on Instagram.
Jayanta Mahapatra
Jayanta Mahapatra (1928) is a bilingual poet and has published over 40 volumes of poetry in English and Odia, translations, short stories, essays, and memoirs, and has been featured in numerous anthologies. In the late seventies, he founded and edited Chandrabhaga, a literary magazine dedicated to Indian writing. The first Indian poet writing in English to be awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for Poetry in 1982, he is also the recipient of numerous awards and honours, such as, the Jacob Glatstein Memorial Award for Poetry in 1975, the Allen Tate Poetry Prize from The Sewanee Review, the SAARC Literary Award, and the Padma Sri by the President of India in 2009, which he returned in 2015 as a mark of protest against the growing ‘moral asymmetry’ in the country. In 2017, he was awarded the Kanhaiyalal Lifetime Poetry Award at the Jaipur Literature Festival. He currently lives in Cuttack, Orissa.
Suneetha Balakrishnan
Suneetha Balakrishnan is a writer, translator and journalist working in English and Malayalam. She lives in Thiruvananthapuram, her hometown.
Ranjit Hoskote
Ranjit Hoskote is a leading Anglophone Indian poet, and has also been acclaimed as a seminal contributor to Indian art criticism.He is the author of 30 books, including Vanishing Acts: New & Selected Poems 1985-2005 (Penguin 2006),Central Time (Penguin/ Viking 2014), and Jonahwhale(Penguin/ Hamish Hamilton 2018); and the monographs Zinny & Maidagan: Compartment/ Das Abteil (Museum fürModerneKunst, Frankfurt/ Walther König 2010) and AtulDodiya (Prestel 2014). He has translated the 14th-century Kashmiri mystic Lal Ded’s poetry as I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded (Penguin Classics 2011). He curated India’s first-ever national pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2011).
Nancy Adajania
Nancy Adajania is a cultural theorist and curator based in Bombay. Since the late 1990s, she has written consistently on the practices of four generations of Indian women artists. Her book, The Thirteenth Place: Positionality as Critique in the Art of Navjot Altaf (The Guild Art Gallery, 2016), goes beyond the mandate of a conventional artist monograph to map the larger histories of the Leftist and feminist movements in India. She was the juror for Video/Film/New Media fellowship cycle of the Akademie Schloss Solitude (2015 - 2017). She will be curating a retrospective of the artist Navjot Altaf at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Bombay, in December 2018.
Aparna Karthikeyan
Aparna Karthikeyan is a writer, an independent journalist and a volunteer at the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI). Aparna was awarded the 2015 National Media Award by the National Foundation for India for her work on "Vanishing livelihoods of rural Tamil Nadu".
Gauri Lankesh
Gauri Lankesh (1962-2017) was the editor of the Gauri Lankesh Patrike. Starting her career as an English language print journalist, she worked for the Times of India, Sunday magazine and the chief of bureau, ETV News, New Delhi, in the 1990s. In 2000, after her father P. Lankesh's death, she took over the editorship of Lankesh Patrike, the weekly tabloid that he had founded in 1980. She became a recognizable figure in the social movements of Karnataka after joining the Karnataka Communal Harmony Forum in 2003. As an activist and journalist, she stood at the forefront of several struggles for justice, equality and love. She was shot dead outside her home in Bengaluru on 5th September 2017 by unidentified gunmen.
Chandan Gowda
Chandan Gowda teaches at Azim Premji University, Bangaluru. He has translated U. R. Ananthamurthy's Bara (OUP, 2016) and edited Theatres of Democracy: Selected Essays of Shiv Visvanathan (HarperCollins 2016).
Tanuj Solanki
Tanuj Solanki’s first novel, Neon Noonwas short-listed for the Tata Lit Live First Book Award. His collection of short stories Diwali in Muzzafarnagarhas been receiving critical acclaim post its release in 2017.His short fiction has been published in the Caravan, Hindu Business Line, DNA, Out of Print, and several other publications. He lives in Mumbai with his wife.
Xu Xi
Xu Xi is the author of thirteen books, including five novels, six collections of short fiction & essays and most recently Insignificance: Hong Kong Stories, released June 15, 2018 by Signal 8 Press; the memoir Dear Hong Kong: An Elegy for a City (2017), as part of Penguin's Hong Kong series for the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China. She is also editor of four anthologies of Hong Kong writing in English. Forthcoming from Nebraska University Press in March 2019 is an essay collection This Fish Is Fowl.
Indira Chandrasekhar
Indira Chandrasekhar started writing fiction with an increasing focus on the short story upon returning to India after more than seventeen years abroad. She has a PhD in Biophysics and, prior to committing to fiction writing, studied the dynamics of biological membranes at research institutes in India, the United States and Switzerland. Links to her published work are available on her blog. She co-edited the anthology Pangea, Thames River Press, 2012. A collection of her short stories Polymorphism was published by HarperCollins in 2017.
Anil Menon
Anil Menon’s short fiction have appeared in a variety of international magazines including Albedo One, Interzone, Interfictions, Jaggery Lit Review, Lakeview Review, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, and Strange Horizons. His stories been translated into Chinese, Czech, French, German, Hebrew, and Romanian. His debut YA novel The Beast With Nine Billion Feet (Zubaan Books, 2010) was short-listed for the 2010 Vodafone-Crossword award and the Carl Baxter Society’s Parallax Prize. Along with Vandana Singh, he co-edited Breaking the Bow (Zubaan Books 2012), an anthology of speculative fiction inspired by the Ramayana. His most recent work, Half Of What I Say, (Bloomsbury, 2015) was shortlisted for the 2016 Hindu Literary Award. He currently resides in India and can be reached at: iam@anilmenon.com
Namita Waikar
Namita Waikar is a writer, translator, and the Managing Editor of People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI). She is a partner in a chemistry databases firm, and has worked as a biochemist and a software project manager. She’s most recently the author of The Long March, a novel, Speaking Tiger Books
Ruby Hembrom
Ms. Ruby Hembrom is the founder and director of Adivaani (first voices), an archiving and publishing outfit of and by Adivasi (the indigenous peoples of India). A trained instructional designer, editor and book designer, Hembrom’s documentation initiative grew out of a need to claim Adivasi stake in historical and contemporary social, cultural and literary spaces and as peoples. She is the author of Adivaani’s Santal Creation Stories for children and the prize-winning Disaibon Hul, on the Santal Rebellion of 1855–57.
Madhulika Liddle
Madhulika Liddle is best known as the creator of the fictitious Mughal detective Muzaffar Jang. She also writes short stories and novels in other genres, including humour, feminist issues, and history. In addition, she maintains a blog, www.madhulikaliddle.com, which is devoted to some of her main passions in life: writing, reading, history, old cinema, travel, and food.
Sucharita Dutta-Asane
Sucharita Dutta-Asane is author and independent book editor. At present she edits the online literary journal Kitaab (www.kitaab.org). In 2018 she published her collection Cast Out and Other Stories. She was the recipient of the inaugural Dastaan Award, 2013, for her short story Rear View. In 2008, she received the Oxford Bookstores debuting writers’ (second) award for her collection The Jungle Stories.
Her short stories have appeared in various national and international anthologies including Juggernaut Books, the Africa-Asia anthology Behind the Shadows (2012); Zubaan Books’ Breaking the Bow, (2012); Unisun Publications’ anthology Vanilla Desires; APK Publishers’ anthology of short stories by Indian women writers titled Ripples. Her stories and book reviews have also appeared in online literary journals including Dwarts (Nigeria), Bhashabandhan Literary Review, The Four Quarters Magazine (TFQM), Café Dissensus, The Bangalore Review (TBR), the Out of Print Blog, Earthen Lamp Journal, Open Road Review, and Asian Cha among others.)
Scherezade Siobhan
Scherezade Siobhan is a psychologist, writer and a community catalyst who founded The Mira Project and runs The Talking Compass?—?a therapeutic space dedicated to providing mental counseling services and decolonizing mental health care. She is an award-winning author of “Bone Tongue” (Thought Catalog Books, 2015), “Father, Husband” (Salopress, 2016) and “The Blues Kali” (Forthcoming, Lithic Press). Find her @zaharaesque on twitter. Send her chocolate and puppies?—?nihilistwaffles@gmail.com. Tweet at her @zaharaesque.
Rochelle Potkar
Rochelle Potkar: An alumna of Iowa’s International Writing Program, and Charles Wallace Writer’s fellowship, Rochelle Potkar was the winner of the 2016 Open Road Review contest for The leaves of the deodar. Her poem The girl from Lal Bazaar was shortlisted for the Gregory O' Donoghue International Poetry Prize, 2018. Her poem Place won an honorable mention at Asian Cha’s Auditory Cortex. Her poem Skirt was made into a poetry film by Philippa Collie Cousins for the Visible Poetry Project. Her latest book is Paper Asylum (Copper Coin). (https://rochellepotkar.com)
Vinita Agrawal
Vinita Agrawal Author of three books of poetry, Vinita is an award winning poet and editor. Recipient of the Gayatri GaMarsh Award for Literary Excellence, USA, The TallGrass Writers Guild Award, Chicago, Hongkong Proverse Prize, her poems have appeared in Asiancha, The Fox Chase Review, Open Road Review, Mithila Review, Bombay Review, Mascara Literary Review, Blue Fifth Review among others. She has read at Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, SAARC, 100 thousand Poets, Lucknow Literature Festival, Cappucino and Women Empowerment events. She is on the Advisory Board Of The Tagore Literary Prize.
Love, Lust and Loyalty by Yuimi Vashum reviewed by Vinita Agrawal
Varsha Tiwary
Varsha Tiwary finds her material and insights from being on the other side of the table - that the act of writing confers. All fodder for more stories. Her works are forthcoming in Shenandoah, Gargoyle and Caitlin Press.
Yasmeen Hameed
Yasmeen Hameed is a Pakistani Urdu poet, translator and an educator. Yasmeen Hameed’s original literary contributions are her five books of poetry published in Urdu in 1988, 1991, 1996, 2001 and 2007. She has contributed to English writing through translation of contemporary Urdu poetry into English She has edited (in English), issues of Pakistani Literature published by the Pakistan Academy of Letters.[2] She has written scripts in English for cultural/fashion shows sponsored by the Government of Pakistan, performed in London in 1995 and Washington in 1996 and in the World cup cricket Cultural Festival in Pakistan in 1996. She has also contributed a monthly column to the "Books & Authors" supplement of The Daily Dawn newspaper. She has won Tamgha-e-Imtiaz (Medal of Distinction) for Literature awarded by the Government of Pakistan in 2008[2] Fatima Jinnah Medal for Literature awarded by the Government of Punjab, Pakistan on International Women’s Day, 8 March 2006[2] Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi Award for Poetry (2001) for the collection, Fana bhi eik saraab Iffat Saeed is a writer and a translator based in Lahore Pakistan. He has translated the works of Yasmeen Hameed, Ada Jaffery, Munir Niazi amongst others.
Nzanmongi Jasmine Patton
Nzanmongi Jasmine Patton is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English, Gargi College, Delhi University. She has translated and compiled the first anthology of Lotha-Naga folktales entitled A Girl Swallowed by a Tree: Lotha Naga Tales Retold.
Excerpt from the introduction of ‘A girl swallowed by a tree’ by Nzanmongi Jasmine Patton
Tanveer Anjum
Tanveer Anjum holds a masters in English literature and has a doctorate in applied linguistics. She has been writing poetry for several decades. Her collections of poetry are Undekhi Lehren (1982), Safar aur Qaid mein Nazmein (1992), Toofani Barishon mein Raqsaan Sitaare (1997) and Sar-o-Barg-e-Aarzoo (2002). She is a recipient of the Presidential Award, Izaz-i-Fazeelat (2000).
Tanveer Anjum translated from the Urdu by Tanveer Anjum and Afzal Ahmed Syed
Afzal Ahmed Syed
Afzal Ahmed Syed is a contemporary Urdu poet and translator, known for his mastery of both classical and modern Urdu poetic expression. He is the author of the modern nazm collections(An Arrogated Past, 1984),(Death Sentence in Two Languages, 1990), and (Rococo and Other Worlds, 2000). Another collection of classical ghazals is titled (The Dark Pavilion, 1988). Syed has translated a wide and important body of works by contemporary poets, playwrights and novelists. He was the one of the first Urdu translators of Gabriel García Márquez and Jean Genet. His work has been widely published in leading Urdu literary periodicals such as Shabkhoon, Aaj, and Dunyazad. He currently teaches at Habib University.
Tanveer Anjum translated from the Urdu by Tanveer Anjum and Afzal Ahmed Syed
Nadia Niaz
Nadia Niaz is a writer, editor and academic ‘from’ Melbourne via Pakistan and many other places. She has a PhD in Creative Writing and Cultural Studies and teaches at the University of Melbourne. A simultaneous trilingual third-culture kid herself, Nadia is interested in multilingual creative and poetic expression, the practicalities and politics of translation, and language use among third culture kids and other globally mobile cohorts. In 2018 she founded the Australian Multilingual Writing Project. Her most recent work can be found in The Polyglot, Not Very Quiet, Peril, and Pencilled-In. Nadia is a member of the West Writers Group.
Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay
Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay is a Bengali novelist. She has published nine novels and over fifty short stories since her debut, Shankini. A newspaper columnist and film critic, Sangeeta lives and works in Kolkata.
An Excerpt from The Yogini by Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay, translated from the Bangla by Arunava Sinha
Ranendra
Ranendra is the author of three critically acclaimed books in Hindi: a collection of short stories, "RaatBaakiEvam Anya Kahaniyaan", published by RajkamalPrakashan, and two novels, "Global GaonKeDevta", published by BharatiyaGyanpeeth, and "GaayabHotaDesh", published by Penguin Hindi. "Global GaonKeDevta" was recently published in English translation, "Lords of the Global Village" (translator: Rajesh Kumar), by Speaking Tiger.
Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar
>Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar translates between English, Hindi, and Santhali, apart from being the author of three books written originally in English: "The Mysterious Ailment of RupiBaskey" (a novel), "The Adivasi Will Not Dance" (a collection of short stories), and "Jwala Kumar and the Gift of Fire: Adventures in Champakbagh" (a novel for children).
Mrinalini Harchandrai
Mrinalini Harchandrai is the author of 'A Bombay in My Beat', a collection of poetry. Her poem won first prize in The Barre (2017) and she was a finalist for the Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize 2019. Her unpublished novel manuscript was selected as Notable Entry for the Disquiet International Literary Prize 2019. Her short fiction has been longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2018 and Columbia Journal Spring 2020 Contest. Her work has been anthologized in RLFPA Editions’ Best Indian Poetry 2018 and The Brave New World of Goan Writing (2018, 2020).
Pervin Saket
Pervin Saket is the author of the novel ‘Urmila’ and of a collection of poetry ‘A Tinge of Turmeric’. Her novel has been adapted for the stage, featuring the classical dance forms of Kathak, Bharatnatyam and Odissi. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in 'The Indian Quarterly', 'The Joao-Roque Literary Journal', 'Paris Lit Up', ‘The Madras Courier’, 'The Punch Magazine', ‘Cold Noon’, ‘Earthen Lamp Journal’, 'Breaking the Bow', 'Kritya', ‘Veils, Halos and Shackles – International Poetry On the Oppression and Empowerment of Women’, and others. She is co-founder and instructor at the annual Dum Pukht Writers’ Workshop held at Pondicherry, India.
Neera Kashyap
Neera Kashyap has worked on social communications, specifically health and environment. As an author, she has published a book of stories for young adults titled ‘Daring to dream’ (Rupa & Co., 2003) and contributed to five prize-winning anthologies published by Children’s Book Trust. As a literary writer of short fiction, poetry, essays, story/book reviews and creative non-fiction, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in South Asian journals – both online and print – which include Kitaab, Papercuts, Out of Print Magazine and Blog, Earthen Lamp Journal, Muse India, Indian Review, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Verse of Silence, Erothanatos and Indian Literature. She lives in Delhi.
Sena Chang
Sena Chang is a musician, poet, and artist. In addition to writing poetry related mainly to her Asian heritage and Kafkaesque scenarios, Chang is the founder of The Pandemic of ‘20 Project. There, she seeks to give a voice to Tokyo's youth through creative writing and other mediums of art. Her most recent works have appeared or are forthcoming in Raised Brow Press and The International Educator, amongst others.
Barnali Ray Shukla
Barnali Ray Shukla is an Indian writer, filmmaker and poet. Her work has been featured in many national and international journals and anthologies, and her maiden poetry collection, Apostrophe, won the RLFPA 2016. Barnali has written and directed one full length feature, two documentaries and one short film. She lives in Mumbai with her books, plants and a husband.
Hussain Haidry
Hussain Haidry, is a poet, screenwriter and lyricist, who shot to fame when his poem Hindustani Musalmaan went viral on social media. Hussain switched out of a successful career in Finance in Kolkata, and moved to Mumbai to become a full-time writer. He has written lyrics for films like Gurgaon, Qarib Qarib Single, and Mukkabaaz; and many popular web series. As a screenwriter, he has co-written the web series, Laakhon Mein Ek Season Two, on Amazon and is presently working on several films.
Snakes (“Dogle” by Hussain Haidry) Translated by Kartikay Agarwal
Kartikay Agarwal
Kartikay is a bilingual poet from Kanpur (UP, India) with his heart sitting by the sea in Mumbai. Returning to the fold of poetry after a hiatus of half a decade, he is currently traversing voices, themes and forms – while finding ties between his two languages, English & Hindustani.
Snakes (“Dogle” by Hussain Haidry) Translated by Kartikay Agarwal
Vasudha Rungta
Vasudha Rungta is an Executive Producer and Director. She is the founder of 'Melting Clock' ; a production house that produces tv commercials, digital video content, music videos, documentaries, etc. She has been part of international feature film and video collaborations and to her privilege, worked with Brad Pitt and Dede Gardner's company, Plan B Entertainment on a feature called 'A Mighty Heart' that tells the story of American Journalist 'Daniel Pearl', with eminent screenwriter/ actor, Dan Futterman. She has extensively worked in advertising for 15+ years and has recently directed animated videos on topics of social class prejudice, class/caste discrimination and the current Covid scenario. She is a creative writer by passion and is slowly reaching her goals of transforming this passion into a more professional arena. Her submission 'Kites' embodies class prejudice and the second submission 'An Arranged Marriage Diary' is a more colloquial inspection of the Indian Arranged marriage landscape today with its casteism, beauty myths and narrow minded prejudices.
Kinshuk Gupta
Kinshuk Gupta, assistant editor of poetry at Human/Kind, uses the scalpel of his pen to write about his experiences as an undergraduate medical student. His work can be read or forthcoming in The Hindu, Joao Roque Literary Journal, American Writer's Review, Cafe Dissensus, The Bengaluru Review, Mad in Asia Pacific, Modern Haiku, Haiku Foundation, Under the Basho, Stardust Haiku, Failed Haiku, Cattails, Eunoia Review, Presence among others. He lives in Delhi, India.
Michelle D’costa
Michelle D'costa works for Bound, a literary company in Bombay. Her prose and poetry have been published in journals like Out Of Print Magazine, Eclectica, Litro UK among others. https://michellewendydcosta.wordpress.com/
Praveena Shivram
Praveena Shivram is an independent writer based in Chennai, India, and, over the past 15 years, has written for several national publications. Till recently, she was the editor of Arts Illustrated, and is currently curating and editing the Lockdown Journal Chennai. Her fiction has appeared in the Open Road Review, The Indian Quarterly, Himal Southasian, Out of Print, Jaggery Lit, Desi Writers’ Lounge, Spark, Chaicopy, and Helter Skelter’s anthology of New Writing Volume 6. Read her work at www.praveenashivram.com
Manabika
Manabika is a queer individual, trying to negotiate their space in this cis-heteronormative world. They are a researcher with a public interest oriented group, and enjoys making sense of the world through pictures.
Devanshi Khetarpal
Devanshi Khetarpal is from Bhopal, India, but currently lives in New York, where she is a BA-MA candidate in Comparative Literature at New York University. Her poetry collection, 'Small Talk,' came out in 2019 from Writers Workshop, and her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Bombay Literary Magazine, Diacritics, Vayavya, and Transom, among others. Her website is: www.devanshikhetarpal.co.
Matt Pasca
Matt Pasca is a poet, teacher and traveler who believes in art’s ability to foster discovery, empathy and justice. He has authored two poetry collections—A Thousand Doors (2011 Pushcart nominee) and Raven Wire (2017 Eric Hoffer Book Award Finalist)—and serves as Assistant Poetry Editor of 2 Bridges Review. In his corner of New York, Matt curates Second Saturdays @Cyrus, a popular poetry series, and spreads his unwavering faith in critical thought and word magic to his Poetry, Mythology and Literature students at Bay Shore High School, where he has taught for 23 years and been named a New York State Teacher of Excellence. Pasca is currently at work on his third poetry collection, tentatively titled Traitor. www.mattpasca.com