Introducing The Red Couch – Bangalore Literature Festival’s latest offering.
The Red Couch is our own part Speakers’ Corner, part Adda, part Speakeasy, part AMA – all rolled into one. Come hang out with the authors at the Festival – some favourites, some new, some young, some younger, as they open up about their books and the stories behind their books.
The Red Couch opens at 10am at the Festival bookstore.
Day 1 | 17 Dec
| Time | Day 1 | 17 Dec |
|---|---|
| 10am | Young Journalist Workshop Co Media Lab: A Radio Active and Citizen Matters Initiative. Registration required |
| 1030am | |
| 11am | |
| 1130am | |
| noon | Is Adultery Love? The Dilemma in Shadow & Soul Lakshmi Sankar in conversation with Nandita Bose |
| 1230pm | Want And Wonder Roswitha Joshi on cross-country relationships |
| 1pm | And This Is The Way The Kachori Crumbles Rachna Singh goes stand-up on Band Baja Boys |
| 130pm | The Art Of Not Reading Sabah Carrim |
| 2pm | My Miserable Life In Mysore: Readings from Technoshamans and A History of Objects Carlo Pizzati |
| 230pm | Out Of Bounds: Anglo-Indian Literature And The Geography of Displacement Alan Johnson |
| 3pm | On Forgotten Queens And Consorts Manu S. Pillai reads from The Ivory Throne |
| 330pm | The Sinister World Of Weather Weapons Aroon Raman reads from Pralaya |
| 4pm | Humour In The Age Of Intolerance A reading by Murzban F. Shroff |
| 430pm | Love Is A Four Letter Word A fiery chat between Andaleeb Wajid and Jane De Suza |
| 5pm | |
| 530pm | Why Good People Do Bad Things Madan Padaki in conversation with Anita Raghavan, author of The Billionaire's Apprentice |
| 6pm | What Do You Do Otherwise? A discussion on the realities of writing about music and dance Ashish Khokar, Kumudha BharathRam and Vasudev Murthy in conversatio |
Young Journalist Workshop
Co Media Lab: A Radio Active and Citizen Matters Initiative.
Registration required
Is Adultery Love? The Dilemma in Shadow & Soul
Lakshmi Sankar in conversation with Nandita Bose
Lakshmi Sankar
Bio
Lakshmi Sankar is the co-founder of Atta Galatta. She is a book-worm and, like most book lovers, dreamt of owning and running her own bookstore.
Nandita Bose
Bio
Nandita Bose explores relationships and social biases through her works of fiction. Her published works include: Tread Softly, The Perfume of Promise, If Walls could Weep and Shadow & Soul.
Want And Wonder
Roswitha Joshi on cross-country relationships
Roswitha Joshi
Bio
Roswitha Joshi was born in Hamburg, Germany, and acquired a translator’s diploma for English in 1989. She is the author of Life is Peculiar, On the Rocks and Other Stories, Once More!, Fool’s Paradise, Indian Dreams and Trapped in Want and Wonder.
And This Is The Way The Kachori Crumbles
Rachna Singh goes stand-up on Band Baja Boys
Rachna Singh
Bio
Rachna Singh is the author of Dating, Diapers & Denial, We Were Wrong About Hema, and her account of her battle with breast cancer, called ‘Mum’s Gotta Live’. Her novel, ‘Band, Baaja Boys’, has been adapted into a web series called Mannphodgunj Ki Binny, which is streaming on MX Player.
The Art Of Not Reading
Sabah Carrim
Sabah Carrim
Bio
Sabah Carrim has authored two novels: Humeirah and Semi-Apes. Both stories are set in Mauritius where she was born. She is a regular contributor to The Bangalore Review and has academic and fiction publications in various magazines and journals. She is currently writing a doctoral thesis on the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. Her first novel Humeirah, was the subject of a thesis by Masaryk University, Czech Republic. Her next book, a collection of short stories on Malaysian education, will be launched in 2017. She is a law lecturer and currently lives in Kuala Lumpur.
My Miserable Life In Mysore: Readings from Technoshamans and A History of Objects
Carlo Pizzati
Carlo Pizzati
Bio
Carlo Pizzati has published two novels, a collection of short stories and a non-fiction book. He writes about culture and politics for the Italian national newspaper La Stampa and teaches post-graduate level communication theory courses in different continents. His works appear in Italian, English and Spanish. Born in Switzerland, he grew up near the Dolomites Mountains north of Venice, Italy, then in Florida, Washington D.C. and New York City where, in 1987, he started to work as a foreign correspondent, which brought him to Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Madrid and since 2010 across Asia, based in a fishermen village in Tamil Nadu.
Out Of Bounds: Anglo-Indian Literature And The Geography of Displacement
Alan Johnson
Alan Johnson
Bio
Alan Johnson is a Professor of English at Idaho State University.
His expertise is in postcolonial literature and theory, with an emphasis on South Asia, especially India, where he was born. He teaches a variety of other courses besides his speciality area, such as the novel, major figures (e.g., Rushdie and Naipaul), literary theory, postcolonial ecocriticism, comparative literature, South Asian literature and popular culture, writing about literature, and honors humanities. In 2010, he was a Fulbright lecturer in India, focusing on globalization and the place of literature, and he’s traveled throughout India for research, conferences, and talks. His current project is an interdisciplinary study of literary and popular depictions of the jungle in Indian literature, which draws on, among other fields, postcolonial critique and ecocriticism. Other projects: Hindi (Bollywood) film studies; religion and literature in India. He has written two books, Postcolonial Literature Today, co-edited with Jagdish Batra (New Delhi: Prestige, 2015) and Out of Bounds: Anglo-Indian Literature and the Geography of Displacement. (Univ. of Hawai’i, 2011).
He is currently a Fulbright-Nehru Scholar based in Chennai.
On Forgotten Queens And Consorts
Manu S. Pillai reads from The Ivory Throne
Manu Pillai
Bio
Manu S Pillai is the author of the award winning The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore, which tells a social and political history of Kerala, from the dawn of colonialism in the sixteenth century till the rise of communism in the twentieth. Written over six years and researched in three continents, The Ivory Throneis his first book, which weaves themes of religious nationalism, matriliny, political economy, and feminism through the life and times of the last female Maharajah of Travancore. He is Chief of Staff to Dr Shashi Tharoor MP, and has worked at the House of Lords in Britain and with Sunil Khilnani and the BBC on their Incarnations Indian history series. He is also text contributor to Serena Chopra’s Bhutan Echoes (Tasveer, 2016), and is a columnist for Mint Lounge, as well as a contributor on history, politics, and culture to The Hindu, Open Magazine, and other major publications. He lives and works out of New Delhi.
The Sinister World Of Weather Weapons
Aroon Raman reads from Pralaya
Aroon Raman
Bio
Aroon has been lucky in having this wide-eyed view of the world where the smallest things of everyday life have their own magical qualities, and trigger journeys into make-believe worlds, releasing the Walter Mitty who lives within him.
In two of his novels –The Shadow Throne and Skyfire – he has explored the world of conspiracy thriller fiction. Set in the themes of Armageddon, mass destruction and apocalypse scenarios, the plot and pace in these novels is riveting.
Aroon’s third novel – The Treasure of Kafur – is a mystery set in Mughal times. He also enjoys exploring other genres including non-fiction travel and history writing. He is currently working on a non-fiction business book along with another thriller.
Humour In The Age Of Intolerance
A reading by Murzban F. Shroff
Murzban Shroff
Bio
Murzban F. Shroff is a Mumbai-based writer. He has published his fiction with over 50 journals in the U.S. and UK. He has won six Pushcart Prize nominations, the highest award for the short story in the U.S, and is the recipient of the John Gilgun Fiction Award. His debut short story collection, Breathless In Bombay, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in the best debut category from Europe and South Asia. It was rated by the Guardian as among the ten best Mumbai books. His recent novel, Waiting For Jonathan Koshy, was a finalist for the Horatio Nelson Fiction Prize and received high praise from two renowned American authors, one a Pulitzer Prize winner, the other a National Book Award Finalist and New York Times book reviewer. He has represented Mumbai at the London Short Story Festival and been invited to speak about his work at UCLA, California State University Monterey Bay, and Berkeley. He is currently at work on a larger-than-life India collection, and the third part in his Mumbai trilogy.
Love Is A Four Letter Word
A fiery chat between Andaleeb Wajid and Jane De Suza
Andaleeb Wajid
Bio
Andaleeb Wajid is a hybrid author, having published more than 45 novels in the past 15 years. Andaleeb enjoys writing in a number of different genres such as young adult, romance, and horror. Andaleeb’s YA novel Asmara’s Summer was adapted for screen to become Dil, Dosti, Dilemma on Amazon Prime and other works are in the process of being optioned or adapted. She has two Young Adult novels out in 2024 – Scare Walk, a horror graphic novel illustrated by Upamanyu Bhattacharyya, published by Harper Collins, and Everything Sucks, a YA romance published by Speaking Tiger. Her YA novel, The Henna Start-up has been shortlisted for the Neev Literature Festival Award 2024.
Jane De Suza
Bio
Jane De Suza’s latest novel Happily Never After is a hilariously honest love story. Earlier books include the detective-comedy The Spy who Lost her Head and the best-selling SuperZero series for children, among others. She is a management grad and an advertising consultant, and writes for magazines and anthologies across the world.
Why Good People Do Bad Things
Madan Padaki in conversation with Anita Raghavan, author of The Billionaire’s Apprentice
Madan Padaki
Bio
Madan Padaki is co-founder & CEO of 1Bridge, a last-mile services platform for Rural India and the co-founder & Trustee of Head Held High Foundation, a social organisation for eradicating rural poverty where he leads the Global Action on Poverty (GAP) Initiative. Madan is also an active angel investor in ed-tech start-ups along with other education sector leaders. In 2000, he co-founded MeritTrac Services, one of India’s largest Skills assessment company which was acquired by Manipal Global Education in 2007. Madan also serves as a Senior Advisor to Tata Trusts, is on the Governing Council of TiE Bangalore and is a Founding Partner of Social Venture Partners, Bangalore.
Anita Raghavan
Bio
Anita Raghavan was born in Malaysia but came to the United States in 1970. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, she spent eighteen years at the Wall Street Journal where she won the Overseas Press Club award for her coverage of the mergers and acquisition boom in Europe, and the New York Press Club award for her reporting on the the near death of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital. In 2008, she became the London Bureau Chief for Forbes. Currently she is a contributor to New York Times Dealbook and Forbes.
Anita is the author of The Billionaire’s Apprentice: The Rise of The Indian-American Elite and The Fall of The Galleon Hedge Fund.
What Do You Do Otherwise?
A discussion on the challenges of writing about music and dance
Ashish Khokar, Kumudha BharathRam and Vasudev Murthy in conversation
Ashish Mohan Khokar
Bio
Ashish Mohan Khokar is a reputed dance critic-historian with 43 published books to credit and over 4000 articles. He is the most widely read dance columnist of India on the internet too. A merit-lister in Indian History from Delhi University, he was also the first arts administrator of India in his generation, to have been nominated for a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship@Princeton in Public Admin. He is also interested in and expert of cultural policy matters. He served the Delhi State Akademi, INTACH and Festivals of India in France, Sweden, Germany and China in the 1980s. He made seminal dance TV programmes; hosted and curated many dance festivals and is on many boards and committees like ICCR, DD, IIC, BSM, to name a few. He visits many universities worldwide (Baroda, Berlin, Mauritius, Milan, Madras, Paris and Pune) teaching dance heritage and history. He edits and publishes India’s only yearbook on dance –attendance – now in its 18th year. (www.attendance-india.com). He is the Dance Critic of the Times of India, for last 20 years, first in Delhi, now Bangalore. He is a culture columnist for India Today. He is the inheritor-curator of India’s largest dance archives of India – the Mohan Khokar Dance Collection and elected Chairman of the Dance History Society. (www.dancearchivesofindia.com). He has instituted 5 awards annually, to help young dancers reach out. His academic Dance DISCourses for Alliance Francaise are very popular and is now in its 7th year. Over 700 dancers have been presented on this platform. He is hailed as “the gold standard in Indian dance documentation” (India Today) and serves dance field, selflessly.
Kumudha BharathRam
Bio
Kumudha BharathRam is a dancer and teacher from The Temple of Fine Arts (TFA), an international fine arts institution with the mission of the founder, ‘Art, just for the love of it’. She runs TFA’s BharataNatyam classes and co-curates a performance series ‘Yati Gati’ with a focus on “Staging the dialogue between the artist and the audience” at Atta Galatta, Bangalore. She believes in Inclusion and headed Project ‘ऋतं / RTAM (Reaching out Through Arts – Music & Movement)’, catering to about 200 children at Spastics Society of Karnataka. She writes/reviews for The Hindu on dance and areas of interest/work. She is currently pursuing advance studies in Dance Education at the Royal Academy of Dance, London.
Vasudev Murthy
Bio
Vasudev Murthy is a yoga enthusiast, violinist, animal rights activist and management consultant. He has written across Crime, Classical Music, Management and humour. His work has been published by Bloomsbury, HarperCollins, Sage, Poisoned Pen Press, Rupa and Jaico, and has been translated to Kannada, Hindi, Portuguese and Japanese. His latest book “Yogasutras simplified” was published in November 2022 by Jaico
Day 2 | 18 Dec
| Time | Day 2 | 18 Dec |
|---|---|
| 10am | Ask Me Anything: How Do I Become A Published Author Trisha De Niyogi, Nirmal Kanti Bhattacherjee (Niyogi Books) and Trisha Bora (Juggernaut) |
| 1030am | Blogs To Columns To Books: Writing As A Teenager Trusha Ganesh |
| 11am | Emerald Blades Poetry with Reijul Sachdev |
| 1130am | KR Meera reads from Aarachaar (Malayalam) |
| noon | The Cat in the Hat - Dr. Seuss Comes Alive with Kartik Iyer |
| 1230pm | Do You Really Die? A Talk by TS Viswanathan |
| 1pm | The Vernacular Life Of English Saikat Majumdar in conversation with Vivek Shanbhag |
| 130pm | Ask Me Anything: Love Me Tinder Kiran Manral and Sally Breen on dating woes |
| 2pm | Saving The Pillars Of Salzburg From Destruction Manjiri Prabhu |
| 230pm | An Indian Psychologist On A Children’s Playground Usha KR in conversation with author and child psychologist Dr. Malavika Kapur |
| 3pm | LitMart Finals Jury: Ajay Mago (Om Books), Ajitha GS (HarperCollins), Ashok Chopra (Hay House), Deepthi Talwar (Westland), Milee Ashwarya (Penguin Random House), Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee (Niyogi Books), Rashmi Menon (Amaryllis), Trisha Bora (Juggernaut) and Trisha De Niyogi (Niyogi Books), Sumant Batra and Sally Breen. |
| 330pm | |
| 4pm | |
| 430pm | |
| 5pm | Bookasura: Quizzes at BLF Full Meals - The Open Quiz hosted by Venky Srinivasan, Nexus Consulting |
| 530pm | |
| 6pm |
Ask Me Anything: How Do I Become A Published Author
Trisha De Niyogi, Nirmal Kanti Bhattacherjee (Niyogi Books) and Trisha Bora (Juggernaut)
Trisha De Niyogi
Bio
Trisha De Niyogi is currently heading the Strategic Planning and Marketing division at Niyogi Books. As a lead for strategic planning, her goal is to drive a portfolio diversification in alignment to the company’s long-term strategy. She began her career in publishing with SAGE Publications and has come a long way since then.
Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee
Bio
Born in 1947 at Silchar, Assam, Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee, an M.A. in English Literature from Gauhati University briefly taught English literature at G C College, Silchar, before joining the Editorial Department of the prestigious Encyclopedia of Indian Literature Project undertaken by the Sahitya Akademi. Later he took charge of Sahitya Akademi’s Eastern Regional Office at Kolkata as its Secretary where the nature of his work involved conceptualizing and publishing of books in five languages, organizing literary seminars, symposia, translation workshops etc. in the region.
In 1998, he was appointed Director of the National Book Trust (NBT), India.
In 2002, he rejoined the Sahitya Akademi and worked as Editor, Indian Literature, Akademi’s bi-monthly journal, till his retirement in 2007. Immediately thereafter, he was appointed Director of the K K Birla Foundation, a private trust devoted to the cause of art, literature and education. He worked in this capacity till 2013.
He has also regularly contributed articles and reviews for the literary pages of newspapers and journals including The Statesman, The Times of India, The Book Review and The Biblio.
An accomplished translator from Bengali into English and vice-versa, his English translations of Mahasveta Devi’s Armanian Champak Tree, Sunil Gangopadhyay’s The Dreadful Beauty, Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay’s The Ghost of Gosain Bagan and the Bengali translation of U R Anantamurthy’s short story collection Suryer Ghora O Anyanya Galpohave been critically acclaimed.
Since August, 2013 he has been working as the Editorial Director of Niyogi Books, a reputed publishing house based in Delhi.
Trisha Bora
Bio
Trisha is Editor – Love Sex Romance, at Juggernaut Books.
Blogs To Columns To Books: Writing As A Teenager
Trusha Ganesh
Trusha Ganesh
Bio
Trusha Ganesh is a 15 year old schoolgirl from Curtorim, Goa. An avid blogger, she loves writing on anything and everything. She started her first blog at the age of 9 and has since moved on to maintaining the following 4 blogs, each having its own sets of loyal followers.
In 2013, she was a “Grand First Prize Winner” at the nationwide “i-Genius Young Author’s Hunt”, which received over fifty thousand entries. Her story was one of the fifty short stories published in the book “i-genius A Twist in the Tale”, published by Rupa, making her the youngest published author in Goa at age 11. The selection jury included Chetan Bhagat and Ruskin Bond.
Trusha has authored several newspaper and magazine articles and her writing and interviews have been featured in the Times of India, Planet Goa and The Navhind Times. Her weekly column “Trusha‘s Two Bits” in the newspaper The Goan, completes a year soon. She has also been featured in the Author Speak section of AnuReviews.com, India’s most prolific book reviews’ blog.
Trusha is also a very passionate Karate and Kobodu exponent. She is a black belt and national level Karate champion. She “relaxes” by playing the piano, taking part in triathlons and dreaming of making a difference to this world.
Emerald Blades
Poetry with Reijul Sachdev
Reijul Sachdev
Bio
Reijul Sachdev is currently enrolled in the 4th year of a 5-year integrated MTech programme in Computer Science at IIIT-Bangalore. He also works part-time on research for the Human Dynamics and Changing Places groups at the MIT Media Lab. He is an avid debater and has won many debates, including TIMES NOW’s ‘I Lead India’ televised debate.
He is fond of reading, writing poetry and trekking. He loves the outdoors and adores Nature’s bounty. Being a juvenile diabetic and borderline schizophrenic, he finds an outlet for his emotions through his poetry. While he has often felt different, his friends and family are a constant support and reminder to him that in every freak, there lives a Superman.
KR Meera reads from Aarachaar (Malayalam)
KR Meera
Bio
K.R. Meera is a multi-award-winning writer and journalist who has published more than a dozen books, including short stories, novels and essays, and won some of the most prestigious literary prizes, including the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for short story and novel, the Vayalar Award and the Odakkuzhal Award. Last year, she won the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award for Aarachar, widely hailed as a contemporary classic and a bestseller in Malayalam with more than 120,000 copies in less than three years. It was published in English as Hangwoman and was short-listed for the DSC Literary Prize. Her other translated works include Yellow Is The Colour Of Longing, The Gospel of Yudas and And Slowly Forgetting That Tree. She lives in Kottayam.
The Cat in the Hat – Dr. Seuss Comes Alive
with Kartik Iyer
Do You Really Die?
A Talk by TS Viswanathan
TS Viswanathan
Bio
T.S. Viswanathan is presently engaged in spiritual and motivational speaking for the general public and corporates. During the last 12 months he has given over 50 lectures, including at Mylapore Club and the Sivanthi Aditinar Memorial Lecture. Has given several lectures in Sanskrit and English on the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and general Vedanta. Has written for Business Line, the Hindu and spiritual magazines and was instrumental in organising a Sanskrit meet in Chennai. His books include Divine Entrepreneur, A Search in Secret (Sacred) Hinduism and Do You Really Die?
The Vernacular Life Of English
Saikat Majumdar in conversation with Vivek Shanbhag
Saikat Majumdar
Bio
Saikat Majumdar is the author of five novels, most recently, The Remains of the Body, Penguin Random House’s 2024 Pride Month Selection, The Scent of God (2019), and The Firebird (2015). He has also published four books of nonfiction and criticism, including The Amateur (2024), and College (2018). He is Professor of English & Creative Writing at Ashoka University.
Vivek Shanbhag
Bio
Vivek Shanbhag writes in Kannada. He has published five short story collections, three novels and two plays, and has edited two anthologies, one of them in English. For 7 years from 2005 to 2012, he published and edited the literary journal Desha Kaala. His acclaimed novel Ghachar Ghochar was published in English translation in 2015. He was a Fall 2016 resident at the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. An engineer by training, he lives in Bangalore.
Ask Me Anything: Love Me Tinder
Kiran Manral and Sally Breen on dating woes
Kiran Manral
Bio
Kiran Manral worked as a journalist with The Times of India and The Asian Age and was among the top bloggers in India. Her books include The Reluctant Detective, Once Upon A Crush, All Aboard, Karmic Kids – The Story of Parenting Nobody Told You, The Face at the Window and A Boy’s Guide to Growing Up. She currently writes a column on sexuality in DNA and has previously been a columnist-blogger on gender issues with Tehelka. She was part of the core founding team of Child Sexual Abuse Awareness Month and Violence Against Women Awareness Month, two social media initiatives that ran for four years. She is also on the planning board of the Kumaon Literary Festival, Chair of the Women Unlimited Series of the Taj Colloquium, a mentor with Sheroes, Qween and Back 2 The Front, and is an advisor on the Board of Literature Studio, Delhi. She lives in Mumbai.
Sally Breen
Bio
Dr Sally Breen is the author of The Casuals (2011) winner of the Varuna Harper Collins Manuscript Prize and Atomic City (2013) shortlisted for Book of the Year QLD Literary Awards 2014. Her short form work has been published widely in Overland, Griffith Review, Meanjin, The Guardian London, The Age, Best Australian Stories, The Asia Literary Review, The Conversation and The Sydney Review of Books. Dr Breen has worked as associate editor of the Griffith Review, is executive director of Asia Pacific Writers and Translators and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Griffith University. She lives on the Gold Coast, Australia https://www.sallybreen.com.au
Saving The Pillars Of Salzburg From Destruction
Manjiri Prabhu
Manjiri Prabhu
Bio
Manjiri Prabhu holds a doctorate in Communication Science and is an independent film-maker for television, a writer/ novelist in English and also the founder/director of a literary festival. She has directed over 200 children’s TV programmes, more than 50 short fiction and travel films and has authored 9 books. Her unpublished psychological thriller novel was adapted into a Hindi feature film by NFDC, titled Kuchh Dil Ne Kaha. Her thesis, converted into a book, titled Roles: Reel and Real, has become a rare reference book for students of Hindi cinema. She has been acknowledged as a pioneer in India among women writers of mystery fiction and is the first female mystery author to be published outside India and has been labelled as the ‘Desi Agatha Christie’. Her novel ‘The Cosmic Clues’ was selected as a Killer Book, by Independent Mystery Booksellers of America, and ‘The Astral Alibi’ was honoured as a ‘Notable Book’ in the Kiriyama Prize. She is the founder/director of the Pune International Literary Festival.
An Indian Psychologist On A Children’s Playground
Usha KR in conversation with author and child psychologist Dr. Malavika Kapur
Usha K. R.
Bio
Usha K R has been writing fiction in English for over three decades now. She began by writing short stories, which were published in various Indian magazines and newspapers. Her short story, Sepia Tones won the Katha Award for Creative Writing in English. Usha K R is the author of the novels ‘Monkey-man’ (2010/ Penguin India), ‘A Girl and a River’ (2007/Penguin India), ‘The Chosen’ (2003/Penguin India) and ‘Sojourn’ (1998/EastWest Books). Her novels have been listed for several awards including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Crossword Award, the Man Asia and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. ‘A Girl and a River’ won the Vodafone Crossword Award, 2007. ‘Monkey-man’ was short listed for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2012.
Malavika Kapur
Bio
Malavika Kapur is a Visiting Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) Bengaluru, after retiring as head of the Clinical Psychology department at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences I (NIMHANS). Kapur has published 20 books and over 100 articles and received the Fellowship of the Indian Association of Clinical Psychologists, Indian Association of Child & Adolescent Mental Health, and British Psychological Society, and Lifetime Achievement awards from the National Academy of Psychology. Her husband and collaborator, late R. L. Kapur, was a renowned professor of Psychiatry who shared her interests.
LitMart Finals
Jury: Ajay Mago (Om Books), Ajitha GS (HarperCollins), Ashok Chopra (Hay House), Deepthi Talwar (Westland), Milee Ashwarya (Penguin Random House), Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee (Niyogi Books), Rashmi Menon (Amaryllis), Trisha Bora (Juggernaut) and Trisha De Niyogi (Niyogi Books), Sumant Batra and Sally Breen.
Ajay Mago
Bio
Armed with an MBA from UCLA, and a home-grown flair for the book trade, Ajay Mago, Publisher, Om Books International (OBI), started the publishing arm of the 58-year-old book distribution outfit, Om Book Shop. He implemented a strategically planned expansion on the retail front as well. He was instrumental in shaping OBI—its fiction and non-fiction lists; Spotlight, its cinema imprint and OmKidz, its children’s imprint. He is also a consultant with a European publishing house.Today OBI counts amongst its authors Rohit Bal, Maria Goretti, Kris Gethin, Rauf Ahmed, Mushtaq Shiekh, Anupama Chopra, Nasreen Munni Kabir, Bikram Grewal, Khalid Mohamed, Raghu Rai, Vir Sanghvi and William Dalrymple.
Ajitha G.S.
Bio
Ajitha G.S. has been an editor in various media and formats for the past 17 years. She is currently senior commissioning editor, HarperCollins Publishers India.
Ashok Chopra
Bio
Ashok Chopra, author-publisher, has occupied some of the hottest seats in the Indian book trade – executive editor of Vikas Publishing House, vice-president of Macmillan India, publishing director of UBS Publishers, executive director and publisher of the India Today Book Club and Books Today as well as chief executive and publisher of HarperCollins Publishers India. Currently, he is the Chief Executive of Hay House Publishers India. He is the author of the bestseller – A Scrapbook of Memories and his latest book – Of Love and Other Sorrows – has just been published by Penguin India. He lives in Gurgaon.
Deepthi Talwar
Bio
Deepthi Talwar is Executive Editor at Penguin Random House India. She has been a part of the publishing industry for two decades and has published fiction and non-fiction writers across genres. She also spearheads Penguin Eight, an imprint dedicated to writings from the Northeast of India.
Milee Ashwarya
Bio
Milee Ashwarya is the Publisher of the Adult Publishing Group at Penguin Random House India.
During her career, she has published a range of bestsellers across genres. An award-winning publisher, her focus has been on championing diverse voices, discovering talented debut writers, and building on the inclusive programme at Penguin Random House India.
Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee
Bio
Born in 1947 at Silchar, Assam, Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee, an M.A. in English Literature from Gauhati University briefly taught English literature at G C College, Silchar, before joining the Editorial Department of the prestigious Encyclopedia of Indian Literature Project undertaken by the Sahitya Akademi. Later he took charge of Sahitya Akademi’s Eastern Regional Office at Kolkata as its Secretary where the nature of his work involved conceptualizing and publishing of books in five languages, organizing literary seminars, symposia, translation workshops etc. in the region.
In 1998, he was appointed Director of the National Book Trust (NBT), India.
In 2002, he rejoined the Sahitya Akademi and worked as Editor, Indian Literature, Akademi’s bi-monthly journal, till his retirement in 2007. Immediately thereafter, he was appointed Director of the K K Birla Foundation, a private trust devoted to the cause of art, literature and education. He worked in this capacity till 2013.
He has also regularly contributed articles and reviews for the literary pages of newspapers and journals including The Statesman, The Times of India, The Book Review and The Biblio.
An accomplished translator from Bengali into English and vice-versa, his English translations of Mahasveta Devi’s Armanian Champak Tree, Sunil Gangopadhyay’s The Dreadful Beauty, Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay’s The Ghost of Gosain Bagan and the Bengali translation of U R Anantamurthy’s short story collection Suryer Ghora O Anyanya Galpohave been critically acclaimed.
Since August, 2013 he has been working as the Editorial Director of Niyogi Books, a reputed publishing house based in Delhi.
Rashmi Menon
Bio
Rashmi Menon is Executive Editor at HarperCollins India. She has been a part of the publishing industry for more than fifteen years, commissioning and editing many bestselling works of fiction and non-fiction. Rashmi loves acquiring books that are both timely and timeless. When reading too many manuscripts makes her go cross-eyed, she switches to audiobooks in her non-stop quest to decode bestsellers.
Trisha Bora
Bio
Trisha is Editor – Love Sex Romance, at Juggernaut Books.
Trisha De Niyogi
Bio
Trisha De Niyogi is currently heading the Strategic Planning and Marketing division at Niyogi Books. As a lead for strategic planning, her goal is to drive a portfolio diversification in alignment to the company’s long-term strategy. She began her career in publishing with SAGE Publications and has come a long way since then.
Sumant Batra
Bio
Sumant Batra is an insolvency lawyer of global eminence. Distinguished Fellow of the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs, the Ministry of Corporate affairs, and Visiting Professor of National Law University, Delhi, Batra is ranked amongst the top 30 restructuring lawyers.
He holds the distinction of being the only International Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy from India. Sumant has been deeply engaged in shaping the insolvency policy in India. Batra’s book, Corporate Insolvency Principles and Practice is considered amongst the most authoritative scholarly work on insolvency. His book The Jaypee Infra Insolvency Saga, released recently, has generated rave reviews.
Sally Breen
Bio
Dr Sally Breen is the author of The Casuals (2011) winner of the Varuna Harper Collins Manuscript Prize and Atomic City (2013) shortlisted for Book of the Year QLD Literary Awards 2014. Her short form work has been published widely in Overland, Griffith Review, Meanjin, The Guardian London, The Age, Best Australian Stories, The Asia Literary Review, The Conversation and The Sydney Review of Books. Dr Breen has worked as associate editor of the Griffith Review, is executive director of Asia Pacific Writers and Translators and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Griffith University. She lives on the Gold Coast, Australia https://www.sallybreen.com.au