Bio

Greystroke is a self-taught artist who’s been drawing ever since he can remember. He’s been a writer, illustrator, art director, photographer and filmmaker, even publisher, for over 20 years now.

Bio coming soon.

Bio

Santhini Govindan is a widely published, award-winning author of children’s literature in English. She has written more than fifty books for children of all ages, and her work includes poetry, picture books, and short stories. Santhini has been awarded two Fellowships in Literature from the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Department of Culture, Government of India – (Junior Fellowship (August 1996-August 1998) and (Senior Fellowship February 2002- February 2004) for research projects connected to children’s literature in India.
In 2001, she was the first Indian writer to be invited to attend the annual Highlights Foundation Writers Workshop, held at Chautauqua, New York, in the United States. Santhini Govindan has authored and edited several English language readers that are widely used in schools across India. She is a Consultant Editor for a well-known national children’s magazine, and has taught Creative Writing at the under-graduate level at Mumbai University.

Bio

In an age where electronics are taking over the society, PITARA brings back the classic magic of imagination in a new and exciting storytelling game. This creative, non-competitive storytelling game is for anyone above the age of 7. Players draw random story elements (icon tiles) and twist their best tale using each piece, often collaboratively. The only limit here is your imagination!

The game pays more emphasis on storytelling than on gameplay, hence can also be seen as a playtool and not a regular board game. It enables people to think visually and create stories using visual cues instead of the written word. It uses balanced pictorial elements without fixed character constraints or specific plot elements, which leave narrative options reasonably open while still providing a source from which the storyteller can draw ideas.

Additionally, the use of pictorial elements, icons in this case, eliminate dependency on the reading skills of the players, making this a visual literacy and verbal skill development tool useful for both adults and kids.

Bio

Aušra Kiudulaitė was born in 1978 in Vilnius, Lithuania. She has a master degree from Vilnius Academy of Arts (VAA) and is now working as a freelance illustrator and hold creative workshops for children. Aušra Kiudulaitė is actively participating in international exhibitions, festivals and book fairs. In 2015 Aušra Kiudulaitė was selected by Lithuanian Culture Institute to attend Bologna Children’s Book Fair and also finished second in the Women’s Illustration Competition „Womaninovation“ in Italy. In 2016 the first picture book by Aušra Kiudulaitė “Happiness is a Fox” was published (“Tikra knyga”, written by Evelina Daciūtė), which became a national phenomenon and also gained international attention, when it was published by Thames & Hudson in United Kingdom. “Happiness is a Fox” received The Best Book of the Year Award‘2017 in Lithuania, The Most Beautiful Book of the Year Award by Lithuanian Section of IBBY in 2016, Tallinn Illustrations Triennial „Power of pictures“ and Nami Concours diplomas in 2017 and Vilnius 2016 Book Art Competition diploma. The book was also included in the IBBY Honour List 2018 and international “White Ravens” catalogue in 2017. In 2017 Aušra Kiudulaitė has been selected for Bologna Children’s Book Fair Illustrators’ Exhibition.

Bio

Poile Sengupta is a novelist, poet, playwright and short fiction writer for both children and adults. As a writer for children, she has about a dozen books for various age groups and has been anthologized in some of the most prestigious anthologies for children in India. Her plays have been published by Seagull, Routledge and Puffin and include the award winning Mangalam, as also Keats Was a Tuber, and Samara’s Song which were shortlisted for BBC and The Hindu awards, respectively. She has recently concentrated on fiction for adults; her short story Ammulu was shortlisted for the 2012 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Her first novel for adults Inga was published in 2014 to critical acclaim. She has been on the Governing Body of the National School of Drama and several times on the jury of the Trinity College international play-writing competition for children. She has acted in several plays and in the award winning films The Outhouse and Shaitan.

Bio

Aparna Jain is the author of a previous book, Own It, which was shortlisted for the Tata Litlive Business Book of the Year prize in 2016. It also won her a Jury Appreciation Certificate at the First South Asia Laadli Media and Advertising Awards for Gender Sensitivity 2015-16. Aparna is a leadership coach and a vocal advocate of equal rights for women. She is also the author of The Sood Family Cookbook’. Her most recent book – Like A Girl: Real Stories For Tough Kids is about 56 inspirational women from India.

Bio

Harish Bhuvan, Founder Compassionate Clowns NGO was a Business development and a research associate, Head – Karnataka Region for an Educational startup at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay is a sensational performer.

Harish was educated in Psychology, Sociology & Economics from Christ University and has advanced training in Hypnosis from Indian Society of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (ISCEH) under the leadership of current President of ISCEH Mrs Radha. C. Mohan. He also is trained under NLP by NLP Master Practioner Ms Rachel Jayaseelan, Faculty of Christ University – Psychology Department and NFNLP Certified NLP Coach. He has also been trained in PREP and Cogent (Cognitive Enhancement) in helping the children with Dyslexia under the leadership of Dr JP Das, Emeritus Director, J.P Das Developmental Disabilities Centre, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.

Harish Bhuvan is a trainer, facilitator, and medical clown. He left his job at IIT Bombay to follow his passion of contributing towards the well-being of children. Since then he has been attached with esteemed hospitals and hospices of India working with terminally ill children and their caregivers. His unique mélange of clowning elements and counselling techniques to release the disease induced trauma in children has been admired by media and public alike. He founded an organization Compassionate Clowns which is doing a remarkable task of spreading love and laughter in the lives of vulnerable children. Harish wears various hats, he is dedicated towards the development of cause by bringing in like-minded collaborators together. He is also a master trainer and facilitator. He educates children and young adults on the field to resist sexual abuse. Going forward Harish aspires to blend in his clowning elements with the therapeutic essentials required to release the ordeal of childhood sexual abuse faced by survivors and victims.

Bio

Debleena is a Bangalore based entrepreneur, writer and storyteller. Weekdays find her investing in Education companies at Gray Matters Capital or writing articles for Economic Times Prime. She runs her own storytelling company, Kahaniyah where she turns data into stories. History and music fascinate her and she finds her stories sound best, when she shares them with children.

Bio

Santhini Govindan is a widely published, award-winning author of children’s literature in English. She has written more than fifty books for children of all ages, and her work includes poetry, picture books, and short stories. Santhini has been awarded two Fellowships in Literature from the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Department of Culture, Government of India – (Junior Fellowship (August 1996-August 1998) and (Senior Fellowship February 2002- February 2004) for research projects connected to children’s literature in India.
In 2001, she was the first Indian writer to be invited to attend the annual Highlights Foundation Writers Workshop, held at Chautauqua, New York, in the United States. Santhini Govindan has authored and edited several English language readers that are widely used in schools across India. She is a Consultant Editor for a well-known national children’s magazine, and has taught Creative Writing at the under-graduate level at Mumbai University.

Bio

Like Einstein said, “Learning is an experience, Everything else is just information”

Cilre focuses on empowering children to learn through these experiences. An introductory workshop helps instigating these traits. Like any habit, they need to be practiced regularly to make it last. Cilre offers these experiences on a regular basis across Bangalore. In the last 5+ years and working with over 10000 children, we have carved a niche in providing differentiated learning experiences, in a wide variety of disciplines. Our experiences are aimed at empowering children, in a collaborative and fun way.

Bio

Jimmy has been in the radio business for close to 17 years now. He started off as a freelancer with All India Radio Bangalore in 2001 after a somewhat failed attempt at doing a software job. He then got entagled in the web of private radio. He went to Chennai and was part of the launch them of Radio Mirchi there in 2002. He worked as a show producer there before being given the responsibility of launching the Bangalore Radio Mirchi station in 2006. He hired, trained and launched the Radio Station here. Through all of this his passion has been to be on air. He then joined another Radio Station in Bangalore to host the morning show. He has played multiple roles of programming head of a single station to the zonal programming head of the south. He has also been the head of Client Solutions, South creating campaigns for clients that leveraged the strength of radio.

For the last 2 years he has gone back to his passion. Hosting a show on air. He currently hosts the morning show on Mirchi 95 FM. You can hear him on air starting everyday at 7am

Bio

Meghna Singhee, author of P. I. POJO cares about words. ‘No shit, sherlock’, you might say. But no, really, she cares about words.. Like other people care about tigers and dams, flyovers and rights (all of which need words to fight for them), Meghna cares about saving words. She has an NGO called Grunt, dedicated to fighting emoticons. In other news, she likes technicolor ideas, scallywags, cold wind and armchairs in vanishing corners.

Bio

World-renowned cellist, composer, arts educator and writer Saskia Rao de Haas is a pioneer in the world of music. She is the creator of the Indian cello which is described as ‘string instrument that has a beauty unlike any other'(Edinburgh Festivals). Pt Hariprasad Chaurasia said about Saskia that ‘she has been taught by God and everyone should listen to her music.’ As the co-creator (together with Pt Shubhendra Rao) of the Sangeet4All music curriculum, India’s first music curriculum for children from 2 years old onwards, Saskia has written 8 books for children about music and is passionate about bringing classical music to children. She loves telling the stories of her books in ‘Sangeet Aur Katha’ while playing her unique cello.

Bio

Stephen Alter is the author of twenty books of fiction, non-fiction and children’s literature. His most recent novel, In the Jungles of the Night: A Novel about Jim Corbett was shortlisted for the 2017 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. His most recent non-fiction book, Becoming a Mountain: Himalayan Journeys in Search of the Sacred and the Sublime received the 2015 Kekoo Naoroji Award for Himalayan Literature. From 1995-2004 he was writer-in-residence at MIT and from 1988- 1994 he was director of the writing program at the American University in Cairo. From 2006-2016, he founded and directed the Mussoorie Mountain Festival. Among the honours he has received are a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Senior Research Grant and fellowships from the East-West Centre in Hawaii and the Banff Centre for Mountain Culture. He lives and writes in Landour.

Bio

Nithya J Rao, a rehabilitation psychologist and actor, has been working in the space of creating authentic living spaces inside and outside of oneself.

Co-founder at Lahe Lahe, Katharsis productions, and Founder at Heart It Out, her work has been at crossroads of performance art, design, sustainability and wellbeing.

Bio

Journalist, storyteller, knitter, author mom. Filter coffee. Cats. Photography. Write Opinion for online news portal Firstpost.com; write short stories and tech articles for Deccan Herald’s School Edition; edit books; and tell stories in schools.
Was a newspaper journalist (Economic Times, The Hindu Business Line, Deccan Herald, Deccan Chronicle, Indian Express) Covered riots, led campaigns on child rights, wrote editorials, opinion, popular columns and interviewed world leaders.
At Infosys – created the sustainability Policy and led a worldwide CSR program.
Wrote 150 stories for children for ISKCON; wrote 13 articles on the Rights of the Child for UNICEF.
Published Books: The Colour of Dawn; Following the Light Home – Lakshmi’s Story; Mica in Someplace Else and Gulu Naami and The Power of the Triad; Tender Tales, children’s stories serialised in Deccan Chronicle; Gulu Naami and the Power of the Triad and Gulu Naami and the Destiny Keepers serialised in Deccan Herald’s children’s newspaper; and several short stories published in magazines.

Bio

Arundhati (Aru) is seven years old and lives in Bangalore, India. She got inspired to tell stories aſter drawing her first storybook in a storytelling workshop conducted by #blrlitfest 2017. She loves telling new stories to her father while they both go for a walk in the evening. Aru and her father have taken this journey further and have successfully published 3 children storybooks which have captured the imagination of 7 years old and the professionalism of an adult. Aru creates her stories from her day to day incidents and most of them are treasured part of her childhood. She loves to play in the sand, color sketches and all her color sketches are available on her facebook page and website www.doodlesandtales.com

Bio

Children’s Movement for Civic Awareness (CMCA) is a non profit nurturing active citizenship and democratic values in children and youth.

Bio

Shikhandin is an Indian writer who writes for children as well as grownups. She was a winner in The Children First Contest curated by Duckbill in association with Parag and initiative of Tata Trust  India, and the prize-winning book “Vibhuti Cat” was published by Duckbill Books. Prior to that, Speaking Tiger published a collection of stories by her – “Immoderate Men.” She has won some prizes for her fiction and poetry in India and abroad. And her poems and stories have been widely published across the globe. She has grown up children. But no pets at present, which makes her sad. So she keeps making up stories about animals and birds among other things.  She would love to meet a real live ghost one day, and also wizards, witches and unicorns. She believes multi-tasking would be easier if humans had long prehensile tails.

Bio

Paro Anand is a Bal Sahitya Puraskar winner. She has written books for children, young adults and adults. She also works with children in schools and NGOs, through her program Literature in Action and holds a world record for helping over three thousand children make the world’s longest newspaper. She has been awarded for her contribution to children’s literature by The Russian Centre for Science and Culture. No Guns at my Son’s Funeral, opened to rave reviews, was on the International Board on Books for Young People Honour List, has been translated into German and French, and is being adapted for cinema. The Little Bird who held the Sky up with his Feet was on the 1001 Books to Read before You Grow Up, an international gold standard of the world’s best books ever. Wingless has been performed nationally and internationally. She has authored Like Smoke, The Other, Nomad’s Land and co-authored Two with Orjan Persson.

Bio

Anushka Ravishankar used to write computer programs before she switched to writing absurd verse for children. She has written over thirty books for children, including picture books in verse, chapter books, retellings of folk tales and non-fiction. Several of them have been published internationally and have won awards. Some of her books are: Catch That Crocodile, Moin and the Monster, To Market To Market and Tiger on a Tree. She has worked in an editorial capacity at Tara Books and Scholastic India. In 2012, she co-founded Duckbill Books, which publishes funny, edgy and exciting Indian books for children and young adults.

Bio

Stones2Milestones is on a mission to ‘Create a Nation of Readers’, gifting children the will and skill to read in English.

Children going to English medium schools are expected to learn, read and speak in English, a language that is aspirational yet alien to them and their surroundings. In India itself, an estimated 9 out of 10 children read below grade levels.

Stones2Milestones solves the problem by providing diagnostic, affordable, research-based and intuitive reading & literacy solutions for schools, teachers & parents.

They are systematic, culturally relevant and age-appropriate. They currently impact more than 200,000 children across 25 cities in India.

Bio

We are a Theater collective called Jugaad Company. Started by Jimmy and Anna. Jugaad Co. has a collective theatre experience of close to 25 years with close to 900 stage shows behind them.

Jugaad Co. was set up in 2012 and have performed award winning plays in the short theatre format. Their repertory has several short plays as well as plays in the long format and they have won awards for best acting, production and direction across multiple cities in India.

Both Jimmy and Anna are full-time working professionals in addition to what they do with Jugaad. They are also parents to a 5-year old. Jimmy is an RJ with Radio Mirchi and is a popular figure in Radio and Theater in Bangalore for many years now. Anna is an Analytics professional and partner in an Analytics company called Amplify.

Jugaad Co. has always attempted to tell stories that are urban and relevant to Indian audiences.

Their current offering is a children’s play called “The Day the Crayons Quit”. Realizing the gap of good entertaining theatre for kids in Bangalore, they adapted this play from the book of the same name. It is a very cute story about crayons having issues with the way they are being used and deciding to quit their owner. This adapted version has music dance and a lot of interaction with the kids.

The shows have run to packed houses and have been lapped up by both parents and kids equally.