6 - 8 December 2018 , Thu - Sat.
GALF 2018 : Speakers | Programme | Partners | Performances | Workshops | Exhibitions | Artwork | Press Release | Videos
Photo Gallery: Inaugural Day | Day 1 | Day 2
Perumal Murugan
Perumal Murugan is an Indian author, scholar and literary chronicler who writes in Tamil. He has six novels, four collections of short stories and four anthologies of poetry to his credit many of which are translated into English. The translated novels include Poonachi: Or the Story of a Black Goat (2018); Current Show (2017); Pyre (2016); One Part Woman (2015); and Seasons of the Palm (2017) which was shortlisted for the Kiriyama Prize in 2005. One Part Woman, his best-known work, was shortlisted for the Crossword Award and won the prestigious ILF Samanvay Bhasha Samman in 2015. Perumal has also received awards from the Tamil Nadu government as well as from Katha Books. He was earlier a professor of Tamil at the Government Arts College in Namakkal.
Savia Viegas
Savia Viegas holds a PhD from the University of Mumbai. She was awarded the Senior Fulbright Fellowship in 2003 with affiliation to the Smithsonian Museum. She has completed a project entitled ‘The Family Archive: A Study of Family Portraits of Goans” under the aegis of Ministry of Culture, Government of India; and her exhibition of collated and curated old Goan photographs ‘Moments, Memory and Memorabilia’ was shown at Sunaparanta, Carpediem, Xaviers Centre for Historical Research, and MOG in Goa. Savia’s novel Let me tell you about Quinta (Penguin, 2011) has been included in the teaching of Portuguese post-colonial fiction at William and Mary College, Virginia.
Ana Filomena Amaral
Ana Filomena Amaral is an award-winning Portuguese writer born in Avintes, Oporto, and now living in Lousã, Coimbra. She earned a master’s in contemporary economic and social history from the University of Coimbra with a specialization in documentary sciences. She is an experienced interpreter and translator in several European languages, particularly German, and works for the Ministry of Education in Coimbra. She has published 12 books of which six are novels with one of them – Vaulted Home: Those Who Cheated Death (2014) - also published in the US. Ana has also published historical monographs, including her master’s thesis about Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, the first and only woman prime minister of Portugal. Ana was the winner of the international award of Araçatuba tale in 2015, Brazil. Her 2014 novel O cassador de muros (Breaking Walls) will be translated into Russian. Earlier this year, she published O Diretor(The Director), the first book in the trilogy Mãe Nossa (Mother of ours) and alsocurated the international literary festival “Words of Fire.”
Ashley D'Mello
Ashley D'Mello spent over 30 years in daily journalism, 25 of them with the Times of India. He has been a media fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge University (2003); and a visiting scholar at the School of Journalism, University of California at Berkeley (2012-2014). In recent years, D’Mello has written primarily on city and community issues. He has been especially interested in writing on the urban transformations in Mumbai. He has also been a Times correspondent for Goa (1992-1994) and written at length on coalition politics and political instability, as also environmental problems thrown up by the construction of the Konkan Railway and tourism. He was the first to draw attention to the anti-Semitic tone of the feast of St Joao.
Pantaleão Fernandes
Pantaleão Fernandes is a Goa-based writer, photographer and ethnographer. His books include 100 Goan Experiences (2006); Goa Remembered (2011); Traditional Occupations of Goa (2015); and a children’s book Once Upon a Time in Goa (2015). His latest book Goa: Rare Portraits (2018) is a pictorial depiction of the tribal life of Goa. Pantaleão scours Goan villages, for hidden cultural stories which he tells with his short documentary films entitled ‘Untold stories from Goa’. He was recently conferred with an international award by the Instituto Felga I Gracias in Brazil for excellence for his contribution using photography towards the cause of preserving Goa’s art and culture. His photographs have been displayed at an exhibition ‘Goa – Fusao de Culturas’ at Lisbon.
Mangala Anavekar
Mangala Anavekar (Dange) was born in Satara (Maharashtra) and later studied at Grant Medical Collage, Mumbai for a medical degree. She taught in medical collages in Pune University for five years, first at the Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC) and then at Pravara Medical College. She worked with the Krishnamurti Foundation India in Banaras for four years where she came in contact with several eminent people like the quantum physicist David Bhom whom Albert Einstein considered his ‘intellectual son’. The discussions between him and Jiddu Krishnamurti made her views completely rational and scientific. Her close contact with Achyut Patwardhan, the scholars from Kashi Sanskrit Vidyapeeth, and Professor Venerable Samdhong Rinpoche, the former prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, and then the Director of Central University of Tibetan Studies, helped her study the ancient wisdom of the Vedas and Buddhism. She has wandered in Himalayas many times.
Max Rodenbeck
Max Rodenbeck is the South Asia Bureau Chief of The Economist. He was born in the US but has rarely lived there. He began writing for The Economist in 1989. He studied history in Egypt and previous to his current role he was a reporter in the Middle East and subsequently the Middle East Bureau Chief from 2000 to 2015, covering the region from Morocco to Iran, and topics ranging from wars and revolutions to radical Islam, Arabic pop culture and the ancient art of distilling arak. A frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, his own book Cairo: The City Victorious (2000) has been published in eight languages.
Suneeta Peres da Costa
Suneeta Peres da Costa was born in Sydney, Australia, to parents of Goan origin. She has published and produced across the genres of fiction, non-fiction, playwriting and poetry. Her debut novel, Homework, was published internationally by Bloomsbury in 1999; a novella Saudade, on the legacies of Portuguese colonialism and the Goan diaspora in Angola, was published by Giramondo in March 2018. Her literary honours include a Fulbright Scholarship, the Australia Council for the Arts BR Whiting Residency, Rome, and, recently, an Asialink Arts Creative Exchange to the Australian and New Zealand Studies Centre at Himachal Pradesh University, India. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Communication from the University of Technology, Sydney, and a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College, New York.
Dattaprasad Shetkar
Dattaprasad Shetkar is Goan by birth and heart. He has travelled extensively as a market researcher and brand consultant across India. Since childhood he was drawn towards artistic expression and appreciation, often dabbling in poetry, theatre, debate, elocution, and singing. Through Exemplar Strategic Solutions, a firm he co-founded, he has developed strategy and design for many brands and managed events like ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Little Champs’ and ‘Jitendra Abhisheki Sangeet Mahotsav’. He founded Susang, a not-for-profit dedicated to art, music, and culture, which has revived Konkani poetry and music from 1950s. He is the organiser and curator of TEDxPanaji, an independently-organised TED event in Goa.
Geeta Gopalakrishnan
Geeta Gopalakrishnan is Honorary Director-Donor Relationships at the Tata Medical Center, Kolkata. With over 20 years of experience in advertising, she has been Creative Director at Trikaya Grey and is also known for triggering Hinglish in advertising communication. Geeta has been recipient of many awards across product categories including the campaign of the year award for Aristocrat Suitcases. Throughout her professional life, she has also worked for Sadhana School for Special Children in Mumbai as a labour of love. For the past eight years, she has devoted herself fulltime to use the power of advertising in order to raise the bar in fundraising for the treatment of underprivileged children with cancer at Tata Medical Centre. Her book My Grandmother’s Tweets (2018) is a labour of love. All royalties from the sales will go towards children with cancer at Tata Medical Center.
