Advisors

Regarded as one of the finest Kannada poets, he has been honoured with the Jnanpith Award, the eighth for Kannada. With a language that captures the flavour of north Karnataka, Dr. Kambara is also among the finest playwrights of our state.

Chairman, Manipal Global Education; former member of the Board and Head – Finance and HR, Infosys.

CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.; Entrepreneur, author and brand expert; former COO – Zip Telecom Limited and VP – Tata Coffee Limited.

Deepa Ganesh’s areas of interest are Literature, Languages, Music and Theatre. She served as Deputy Editor at The Hindu for two decades. Currently, she is Professor of Literature and Executive Director of the Centre for Visual and Performing Arts, RV University. She was the editor of the Sahitya Academy journal, Aniketana, for three years.

She has five published books: A Life in Three Octaves – The life and times of Gangubai Hangal, the doyen of Hindustani music; Hunt, Bangle, Chameleon, a collection of U R Ananthamurthy’s short stories which won the Sahitya Akademi award for translation; Just a Few Pages, a translation of the memoir of the early Kannada writer Saraswati Bai Rajwade by Vaidehi; a translation of Kaleye Kayaka as Art as Life, the autobiography of the harbinger of Kannada company theatre Gubbi Veeranna; and A Source Book of Kannada Theatre (1850-1950), co-authored with KV Akshara and Venkataramana Aithal. She has translated over 25 books for Tulika, a children’s publisher. Together with Vivek Shanbhag and KV Akshara, she has launched a publishing house, Bahuvachana, working on translations between Indian languages. She has written for several acclaimed journals, and has presented papers on all aspects of culture in various conferences.

Dr. Purushothama Bilimale has served for many years as Professor of Kannada at the Kannada University, Hampi, and then as a Director at the American Institute of Indian Studies, New Delhi. He established the Kannada Language Chair, Centre of Indian Languages, JNU and served as its first Professor.

Prof. Bilimale is a teacher, organizer, writer, and columnist, who helped students and researchers for over forty years.  He has had extensive experience in the area of Indian Language, Literature and culture. A long-time student of Yakshagana (a South Indian folk performing art), he has learned and performed Yakshagana for the last 30 years.

He has 28 books to his credit. His autobiography, ‘Kage muttida neeru’ (Crow-Touched Water) has received the Karnataka Sahitya Academy Award.

Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed is Deputy Editor at Frontline news magazine and is based in Bengaluru. In his career spanning 15 years at this magazine devoted to long-form journalism, Sayeed has reported on diversified themes, including politics, communalism, gender, rural and urban deprivation, agricgulture, caste, environment, literature, cinema, history and music. Sayeed has won several awards for his work. Prior to becoming a journalist, he studied South Asian history at the University of Oxford. When not scurrying around Karnataka in pursuit of an elusive story, Sayeed can be found explaining the social mores of the complex world of Peppa Pig to his two children aged six and two.

Vivek Shanbhag is a Kannada author, editor and playwright who has published 13 works of fiction. His critically-acclaimed novel Ghachar Ghochar has been translated into 20 languages worldwide. His recent novel ‘Sakina’s Kiss’ in English translation has just been published. Vivek is a Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at the Ashoka University. An engineer by training, he lives in Bangalore.