Abhay Sardesai has been the Editor of ART India, the premier art magazine of India, since November 2002. He has been a Visiting Faculty in Aesthetics at the Department of English, University of Mumbai; and the Chair of Humanities, Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture, Mumbai. Abhay has also taught at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS); the Bhau Daji Lad Museum (BDLM); and Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey (SNDT) Women’s University. He writes in English and translates from Marathi, Konkani and Gujarati. Abhay has written widely on art and literature and read from his work at various places.

Akshay Singh received the Mohammed S Farsi Foundation Scholarship for Arts to pursue an MA in Screenwriting from the National Film & Television School, UK. Back in India he wrote and produced the feature films – The Gold-Laden Sheep and The Sacred Mountain & Mehsampur. An enthusiast of stories on the fringes, Akshay was born in Varanasi and now calls Goa home.

Albertina Almeida is a lawyer, human rights activist, independent researcher and rights sensitiser. She holds a doctorate in law and teaches Gender, Human Rights and Law for the MA in Women’s Studies programme at Goa University. She is also a member of the Board of Studies, Department of Women’s Studies, Goa University. Albertina engages and addresses meetings, symposia and workshops on social justice and rights issues. Among others, she is a Focal Point of the Feminist Law Programme of the Asia-Pacific Forum on Women Law and Development. She writes regularly for local periodicals and occasionally for the national media. Her writings can be accessed on the website of The Alzulaij Collective. She is the author of Tug and Tear: Dealing with Child Sexual Abuse(2008). Albertina has co-founded several rights initiatives and groups interrogating development, including Bailancho Saad, Citizens Initiatives for Communal Harmony, Saad Aangan, and SEZ Watch. She is also a legal consultant to various organizations working on gender and child rights issues, migrant concerns, transgender rights, and human rights. She has also been a part of official and civil society committees for advocacy and drafting of laws for women and children.

Pogoat is a Goan writer, wrecked by the resource curse upon Goa. Nonetheless, he has never participated in a protest march, nor filed a complaint or even donated money for any environmental restoration. Pogoat finds it disgusting to live in a society where on a regular basis we need to brutally protest and protect our basic human necessities. Immersed in a world building project of an equal world with the guiding light of Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Kerouac, Hemingway, Dr. Thompson and Bob Marley. He’s regularly tormented by his own characters, their deceptions, their lies, their truth and their lust for everything.

Amita Kanekar is a novelist, an independent researcher in architectural history, a columnist on issues of history, politics, and architecture, and guest faculty at the Goa College of Architecture. She has written an architectural guidebook, The Portuguese Sea Forts of Goa; with Vasai, Chaul and Korlai (Deccan Heritage Foundation 2015), and two novels, A Spoke in the Wheel (HarperCollins 2005, and Navayana 2014), which is about the Buddha and set in the time of Emperor Ashoka, and Fear of Lions (Hachette 2019), the story of a peasant rebellion in the Mughal era.

Writer-painter, Amruta Patil is India’s first female graphic novelist. She is the author of Kari and the Mahabharata-based Parva duology (Adi Parva & Sauptik). Her recent book is Aranyaka: Book of the Forest. She is a Nari Shakti Puraskar awardee.

Anand Teltumbde is a writer, columnist, political analyst, and civil rights activist associated with many civil society organizations. He is published regularly by all popular newspapers and progressive periodicals including EPW in which he wrote a column Margin Speak. His recent books are Republic of Caste (Navayana, 2018) and The Radical in Ambedkar (Penguin, 2018), Mahad: The Making of the First Dalit Revolt (Aakar, Delhi 2017) and Dalits: Past, Present and Future (Routledge, 2017). An alumnus of IIM, Ahmadabad, he has held top management position in the corporate world. As an academic, he taught in IIT, Kharagpur, and currently heads Big Data Analytics Programme at Goa Institute of Management.

After completing a BTech in Aeronautical Engineering from IIT Madras in 1987, Aniruddha Sen Gupta worked as a journalist with a couple of path-breaking but not very widely-circulated Delhi city magazines, City Scan and First City, before getting sidetracked into communications design. Since moving to Goa 12 years ago, he has returned to writing, and has had books published by Scholastic and Sage Publications, as well as a number of short works of fiction, non-fiction, and graphic literature in anthologies from Penguin, HarperCollins, and other prominent as well as less well-known publishers. He has also done some occasional journalistic writing, for magazines such as Down to Earth, Himal, and ‘Indian Quarterly’.

Annu Palakunnathu Matthew’s photo-based artwork is a striking blend of still and moving imagery and draws on archival photographs as a source of inspiration to re-examine historical narratives. Her recent solo exhibitions include the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada, Nuit Blanche Toronto, and sepiaEYE, nyc. Matthew has also exhibited her work at the RISD Museum, Newark Art Museum, MFA Boston, San Jose Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts (TX), Victoria & Albert Museum (London), 2018 Kochi-Muziris Biennale, 2018 Fotofest Biennial, 2009 Guangzhou Photo Biennial as well as at the Smithsonian. Grants and fellowships that have supported her work include a MacColl Johnson, John Guttman, two Fulbright Fellowships and grants from the Rhode Island State Council of the Arts.
Annu Palakunnathu Matthew is Professor of Art at the University of Rhode Island. She was also the Director of the Center for the Humanities from 2014-2019 and the 2015-17 Silvia Chandley Professor in Peace Studies and Non-violence. Matthew is represented by sepiaEYE, NYC.

Antara Dev Sen is the founder editor of The Little Magazine, an independent journal of ideas and letters, and the first Indian magazine to focus on contemporary South Asian literature and offer it in English translation. Sen is also a literary critic and translator, a newspaper columnist and commentator on the media, politics and culture. She has edited several books including the TLM Short Stories from South Asia series. Earlier, Sen was Senior Editor of the Hindustan Times and the Indian Express in Delhi. She has also been a Reuters Fellow at Oxford University. Sen is associated with other media, literary, educational, and voluntary organisations in India and overseas. She lives in Delhi.

Anungla Zoe Longkumer can best be described as a free individual discovering her way through creative pursuits in music, writing, filmmaking, and folk traditions.
Having travelled widely and lived outside Nagaland for most of her life, she is currently based in Dimapur, Nagaland, where she freelances doing some content editing, music, and filmmaking. She is the author of Folklore of Eastern Nagaland (2017) which contains translations of folktales, folk songs and real life accounts, collected from the six tribes who inhabit the more remote parts of Eastern Nagaland.
She has also recently made a short documentary film Shot Awake – The Making of Changlangshu’s New Logdrum which was released on 2^nd May 2019 in Kohima, Nagaland, and screened at the Bali Indigenous Film Festival in May, 2019, and at the Rainforest Fringe Festival in Sarawak, Malaysia, in July 2019.

Air Vice Marshal Arjun Subramaniam is a retired fighter pilot from the IAF who has flown MiG-21s and Mirage-2000s. He is also a military historian, academic and strategic commentator with an interesting post-retirement career. He has been a Visiting Fellow at Harvard and Oxford universities and Visiting Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He is currently a Visiting Prof at Ashoka and Jindal Universities and has lectured extensively at war colleges in India and the US and at a wide range of Universities and think tanks in the US and UK including Harvard, MIT, Georgetown University, Oxford, Carnegie Endowment, RUSI and IISS. He is the author of India’s Wars: A Military History 1947-1971 with the sequel being published next year. He writes extensively in the public domain on diverse strategic and national security issues.

Arti Das is a freelance journalist based in Goa. She mainly writes about Goa’s art, culture, and ecology for various publications like The Hindu, Deccan Herald, Scroll.in, Mongabay India, to name a few. In her career span of around 15 years now, she has interviewed well-known artists, poets, and authors like Ramchandra Guha, Githa Hariharan, Damodar Mauzo, Anjum Hassan, Mahesh Rao, Amruta Patil among others. Along with this she is also involved in documentation of Goa’s culture and was recently part of the three-day Inter-disciplinary Narrative Writing and Photography Residency in Goa, from February 22-24, 2019; organised by Goa Chitra Museum, Benaulim.

Admiral Arun Prakash was India’s 20th Naval Chief and served concurrently as Chairman Chiefs of Staff 2004-2006.   A naval aviator by specialization, he commanded a fighter squadron as well as a number of warships, including the aircraft-carrier Viraat. In flag-rank he commanded the Eastern Fleet, the Andaman & Nicobar Joint Command and the Western Naval Command. He served on staff, as head of the navy’s Aviation and Personnel branches, and as the Vice Chief.   Post-retirement, he served two terms in the National Security Advisory Board and headed the National Maritime Foundation. He writes and speaks on maritime and strategic issues and currently holds a Distinguished Chair in India’s Naval War College.

Aruna Ganu is a retired teacher, Department of Marathi, from St. Xavier’s College, Mapusa. She is also involved in translation of poems from Hindi to Marathi and has also written weekly columns for a Marathi daily, Goan Varta.

Described as ‘one of the finest poets writing in India today’ (The Hindu, 2010), Arundhathi Subramaniam is an award-winning Indian poet. Widely translated and anthologised, her book, When God is a Traveller (2014) was the Season Choice of the Poetry Book Society, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Her new book of  poems, Love Without a Story, was published this year with Westland Amazon.   As editor, her most recent book is the acclaimed Penguin anthology of medieval Indian sacred poetry, Eating God. As prose writer, her books include The Book of Buddha; the bestselling biography of a contemporary mystic, Sadhguru: More Than a Life; and most recently, Adiyogi: The Source of Yoga (co-authored with Sadhguru).   She is the recipient of various Indian and international awards and fellowships, including the inaugural Khushwant Singh Prize, the Raza Award for Poetry, the Zee Women’s Award for Literature, the International Piero Bigongiari Prize in Italy, the Mystic Kalinga award, the Charles Wallace, Visiting Arts and Homi Bhabha Fellowships, among others. She has written extensively on culture and spirituality, and has worked over the years as poetry editor, cultural curator and critic.

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.

Astri Ghosh is an actor, writer and translator who has translated twelve plays by Henrik  Ibsen into Hindi. In a project initiated by the Centre for Ibsen Studies, Oslo, she collaborated with nine other translators who were translating Henrik Ibsen’s contemporary prose plays into Arabic (Classical Arabic and Egyptian Arabic), Spanish, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese and Russian. Astri has translated 20 books into Hindi, English and Norwegian, and her translations have been included in three anthologies. She is currently translating a novel from Urdu to English. A former journalist, she also does poetry performances and has acted in two films.

Augusto Pinto is an Associate Professor of English at Dempo College in Goa. He is a book reviewer, essayist and translator from Konkani into English. He has translated several important Konkani writers over the last 30 years, most recently the short stories of Jayanti Naik in The Salt of the Earth (2017) and the poets Ramesh Veluskar, Soter Barreto and Vishnu Wagh in Goa: A Garland of Poems (2017). He is currently working on a book of plays on the eminent Goan dramatist Pundalik Naik. He is also a member of the Organising Committee of the Ambedkar Memorial Lecture Series that are conducted during GALF.

Dr. Brian Mendonca currently serves as Assistant Professor of English at Carmel College for Women, Nuvem, Goa. His career in teaching includes working at institutions such as NIOS and Government College, Quepem. Before joining Carmel College he held a number of positions in publishing as a Senior Editor and Consultant for various publishing houses in New Delhi. He holds a Master’s in English from Bombay University and was awarded a Ph.D in English Literature from EFLU, Hyderabad. Dr. Brian is the author of several research papers on film, literature, and music. He is a published writer having two books of poems to his credit. Last Bus to Vasco: Poems from Goa was published in 2006 followed by A Peace of India: Poems in Transit in 2011. He contributes a Sunday column for Gomantak Times Weekender. On Teachers  day, last year, he was awarded a Certificate of Excellence for Outstanding Contribution in the Field of Education by the Rotary club of Margao Midtown. Dr Brian is passionate about music and plays the piano and guitar. He is an avid blogger and blogs at lastbustovasco.blogspot.in He savours life with his wife and son in Porvorim.

Clara Astarloa (Buenos Aires, 1980). Grade on History (Argentina), Master on Creative Writing (Spain) has worked and published in the areas of History and Literature in Latin America and Spain. She is currently Assistant professor at the Centre for Latin American Studies, Department of International Relations, Goa University. She has published the poetry book Mandalay (2017) in Spain which was awarded by PROSUR, Argentine Government (2019). She has also published short stories and poems in several anthologies such as Time of Short stories (Planeta Publishing, 2010), The Best Poems (Imagenta Publishing, 2014), Stories in 35mm (El Sendero Publishing, 2015), About Shakespeare (Samarcanda, 2017). She also won literary accesits such as the XXII Hispanic Literary Competition of the University of Seville (2016) and VII Young Talent Competition Planeta Publishing House (2010). She has also done literary, historical and documentary translations. She recently translated the poetry book A Poet in New York by Federico Garcia Lorca (Lantia Publishing, 2018). Poems of her book Winter Garden were made into musical-coral works by the Spanish composer Javier Busto.

Clarice Vaz born in Kampala, Uganda in 1964 returned to Goa – Moira ,her ancestral home with her family in 1970. Although she excelled academically …..she chose nursing as a profession after desiring a career in serving others working in Bangalore and Mumbai briefly, eventually going back to her childhood passion of painting due to a health condition
Being self taught she has had several solo exhibitions in Goa. Today she is a contemporary Abstract Artist working primarily with acrylics constantly experimenting with colours, textures, mediums, gels using non traditional tools and even tools of her trade namely the syringe and different gauge needles, tubes etc. Her unique style of syringe painting which involves caressing the surface of the canvas with short bursts of spirals, dots, lines and curves have become popular with her clients. It’s a tedious process. She also uses acrylic paste giving her paintings a 3D effect. Her creative endeavours include photography, writing short real life stories about village life.
Her love for her heritage drove her to create her first visual story book ” A Song for Saligao.”
She now resides with her family and two dogs in her pristine village of Saligao.

Dadu Mandrekar is an Ambedkarite activist, writer, poet, photographer, journalist, and editor of two journals Prajasattak and Paryavaran. He has authored many books, including Bahishkrut Gomantak (a survey and study of Goan Dalits), Shapit Surya (a poetry collection), Satyacha Shodh (a study of the Buddha), Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar: Antarashtriya mahatva ani mahatmya (a study of Dr B R Ambedkar), Bharatiya Savidhan: Antarashtriya Prabhav ani Parinam (On the importance of the Indian Constitution) and two more poetry collections: Umbartha and Onjal Lavachi. His book Shapit Surya won the Goa Marathi Academy literary award, while Bahishkrut Gomantak won the Mahatma Phule ani Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Vichar Pracharak Sanstha literary award. He has won many other awards, for literary works, civil rights, and handicraft production as well, including the Namdeo Dhasal Kavya Puraskar for poetry, Sanvidhan Ratna Puraskar for work on the constitution, Goa Sudarop America award for civil rights, Norman Dantas award for transformative work in Goa, Samrat Ashoka Smriti Mahanayak award from the Mahanayak newspaper, and First Class Award in Handicrafts from the Directorate of Industries and Mines, Goa.

Damyanti Biswas is a writer, editor and social activist. Her literary crime novel You Beneath Your Skin published by Simon & Schuster is just out. Damyanti is also one of the editors of the international Forge Literary Magazine and works for a charity helping Delhi’s underprivileged children. She speaks passionately on the subjects of gender, violence, race and poverty. Earlier drafts of You Beneath Your Skin, were long-listed for the Mslexia Novel Competition and the Bath Novel Award, and the writing was helped by a grant from the National Arts Council of Singapore. Damyanti’s short stories have been published in anthologies and journals around the world, including Litro, Griffith Review, Bluestem and others. She has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

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 into 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, 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.

Author and journalist, David Devadas is an authority on Kashmir. His books, `The Generation of Rage in Kashmir (OUP, 2018) and `The Story of Kashmir (2019) are eye-openers. Distinguished Fellow of the Institute for Social Sciences, he has been Senior Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Visiting Professor at Jamia Millia Islamia, and Political Editor of Business Standard. He has made critically acclaimed presentations at international conferences at the universities of Heidelberg and Zurich, and has been an Erasmus Mundus scholar at Humboldt University in Berlin.
Professor Devadass predictions have proved consistently accurate during more than three decades of reporting and analysing Kashmir. He has lived with families in rural, urban, and suburban Kashmir for long periods over the past quarter-century.
As a journalist, he covered the first Reagan-Gorbachev detente summit in Geneva in 1985, the Conference on Disarmament which drafted the CTBT in 1996, the UNGA in 1997, and the Vajpayee-Sharif Lahore summit in 1999.

Derek Mascarenhas is the author of the acclaimed debut linked short story collection,Coconut Dreams(Book*hug, 2019). A graduate of the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies Creative Writing Program, Derek is a finalist and runner up for the Penguin Random House of Canada Student Award for Fiction, and a nominee for the Marina Nemat Award. He has works published in places such as The Dalhousie Review, Switchback, Maple Tree Literary Supplement,Joyland, and The Antigonish Review. Derek is one of four children born to parents who emigrated from Goa, India, and settled in Burlington, Ontario, Canada. A backpacker who has traveled across six continents, Derek currently resides in Toronto.

Dhruba Hazarika was born in Shillong and educated in St. Edmund’s School & College. He served as a lecturer in economics for a brief period before joining the Assam Civil Service in 1983. In 1999, he was inducted into the Indian Administrative Service, serving in various capacities, and retired while in the rank of Commissioner and Secretary to the Government of Assam in early 2016. Post retirement, he was appointed as Member of the Assam Public Service Commission from where he retired in July 2018. Dhruba Hazarikas first step into the literary world began early in life, influenced as he was by his mother’s wide reading as well by the encouragement that he received from his teachers. From being the editor of the college magazine to his many published works over the years Dhruba Hazarika has written over a 100 short stories, essays published in various journals and newspapers. Till date, Penguin has published three of his books comprising two novels, A Bowstring Winter and Sons of Brahma; and a short story collection, Luck. His next collection of short stories Savage Men is due for release later by Speaking Tiger this year. He has been a regular contributor during the last thirty years to The Sentinel, The Telegraph and, presently, to The Assam Tribune as well as to various magazines. Several universities in India have included his works in their academic syllabi. He has addressed various gatherings, academic and non-academic, on the art and craft of creative writing. Dhruba Hazarika is a recipient of the DY365 Literary Award and the All-India Katha Award for fiction in English. He is a founder member of the vibrant North-East Writers Forum and is presently its President. Apart from reading and writing, his other interests include painting, woodwork, trekking and cosmology. He has travelled widely both at home and abroad but is happiest when with his family.

Dhruv Bogra is the author of the adventure travel, non fiction book, Grit, Gravel and Gear Four Hundred days on a bicycle from the Arctic to the Andes. In 2016, Dhruv undertook a 14 month long transcontinental bicycle odyssey fraught with adventure, exploration and peril when he chose to plunge into the far end of the planet to fulfill a childhood dream of exploring the lands and indigenous culture of the Arctic, the Maya, Zapotec and Aztec in Mexico and Central America and the Inca in Peru. As he cycled alone for 15,000 kilometers across ten countries from the cold and barren wilderness of the unforgiving arctic tundra to the thin air of the Andes at 4500 metres he endured hardship, misery, catharsis, happiness, and unbridled joy. He continues to be an adventure and endurance cyclist who has cycled extensively in the Indian Himalayas in Ladakh, Himachal, Uttarkhand, and Sikkim and the Western Ghats on his mountain bike.

Dilip D’Souza was educated in Pilani, Providence, Delhi, Rishi Valley, Bombay, Cambridge, Austin and places in between. Once a computer scientist, he now writes for a living. To Dilip, the switch seemed natural. Computer science stresses clear thinking, reason, logic and getting to the heart of matters. Maybe those things shape his writing.
He writes about political and social issues, travel, sports and mathematics. His writing has won him several awards, including the Statesman Rural Reporting award, the Outlook/Picador nonfiction prize and the Newsweek/Daily Beast South Asia Commentary Prize; he has also twice been Writer-in-Residence at IIT Kanpur. He has published seven books, a monograph of essays on patriotism, and has contributed to a number of anthologies. His most recent book is Jukebox Mathemagic: Always One More Number.
Dilip lives in Bombay with his wife Vibha, children Surabhi and Sahir and cat Cleo. He misses his Rhodesian Ridgeback, Shaka.

Born c. 1949, Kilfinane, Co. Limerick, in postcolonial Ireland. Poet, tankaist, haikuist, novelist, essayist, playwright, author/translator of over 180 books, mostly in Irish (Gaelic). Member Aosd�na (Irish academy of arts & letters).Former Chairman Poetry Ireland. Prolific translator into Irish of international poetry (among others Ko Un, Seamus Heaney, K. Satchidanandan, Rabindranath Tagore, Muhammad Iqbal, Hilde Domin, Peter Huchel etc.); plays (Beckett, Frisch, Yeats); songs (Bob Dylan, Kate Bush, The Pogues, Leonard Cohen, Bob Marley, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Nick Drake etc. He initiated the anthology Goa: A Garland of Poems,ed. Rochelle Potkar(The Onslaught Press). Rosenstock’s creative, collaborative work with visual artists and photographers has featured on many platforms, such as The Culturium:https://www.theculturium.com/author/gabriel-rosenstock/ His latest book is Walk with Gandhi, illustrated by Masood Hussain.

Hanuman Kambli teaches art at the Goa College of Art. He is one of India’s foremost print makers and widely regarded as an outstanding artist, painter, and teacher. His works address his personal experiences of Indian mythology and philosophy. Hanuman enjoys an international reputation, and his works have been exhibited in major centres in India and abroad. He is the recipient of several awards and honours. He was a Fulbright Scholar at Western Michigan University (1999); an Artist-in-Residence at the Wimbledon School of Art (1994-95); Lincoln University (2003); and the Central TAFE, Western Australia (2005); and an International Visiting Scholar at the Montclair State University (2009). In 2012, he was conferred with the Rashtriya Swasti Samman (Ujjain, M.P.) for his consistent contributions in the field of visual art form; the Goan Achievers Awards by Navhind Times and Viva Goa for his contributions in the field of art and culture; and in 2013, the Government of Goa conferred its highest award for cultural excellence in the field of fine art. He was a juror for the Seventh Bharat Bhavan International Print-Art Biennial (2006) at Bhopal; and for the 53^rd National Exhibition of Art organised by Lalit Kala Academy. Hanuman prepared the original artwork for the eighth edition of the Goa Arts & Literature Festival (GALF).

Harish Trivedi was formerly Professor of English at the University of Delhi and has been a visiting professor at the universities of Chicago and London. His research interests include Postcolonial Literature and Theory, Translation Studies, Comparative Literature and World Literature, and he is currently the contributing editor for South and Southeast Asia of an international project based in Stockholm for writing a history of World Literature. His publications include Colonial Transactions: English Literature and India(1995), Post-colonial Translation: Theory and Practice (1999), and an edition of Kim (2011) by Rudyard Kipling. He has written on and translated various Hindi, Urdu and Sanskrit writers, including Ashvaghosha, Premchand, Manto, and Ajneya. He has edited and contributed two chapters to a book in Hindi on the poet Rahim, a Muslim bhakti poet more formally known as Abdur-Rahim Khan-e khana (1556-1627), who was also a prominent courtier of the Emperor Akbar and the commander of his army.

Harshad Santosh Pore is an academic, translator and a soft skills trainer. He completed his MA (Honors with Research) in English from University of Mumbai and Otto von Guericke University of Magdeburg, Germany.
Harshad loves to learn and likes to teach what he learns. He conducts workshops on Public Speaking. He is currently associated with Department of English, University of Mumbai as a trainer for Certificate Course for Professional Proficiency in English. He is pursuing a PhD in Postcolonial Science Fiction. His first translation The Pursuit of Lilliput was published recently. He is currently working on translation of another popular Marathi novel.

Hema Myer Sood released her first book at 29. The Eternal Ocean of Brahma depicts the wisdom of the Bhagavad Geetha imbibed through intuitive perceptions of the waves of the ocean. She received notable reviews and was compared to Newton and Archimedes for her unprecedented perceptions. Another two books successfully followed within a few years.
Two decades later, The Karmic City trilogy was released in the genre of New Age Philosophy. Karmic Cords is a poignant narrative of the author’s personal loss of her only sibling.
Her foray into historical fiction interwoven with New Age Philosophy created a unique thriller – The Crown of Tijara which will be released in 2020.

Hemant Divate is a poet, editor, publisher and translator. He is the founder-editor of the Marathi little magazine Abhidhanantar, which was published uninterruptedly for 18 years. Abhidhanantar has been credited for providing a solid platform to new poets and for enriching the post-nineties Marathi literary scene. Divate is credited with changing the Marathi literary scene through Abhidhanantar and the Indian English poetry scene through his imprint Poetrywala. He is the author of six poetry collections in Marathi. Divate’s poems have been translated into French, Italian, Slovak, Japanese, Persian, Maltese, Serbian, Turkish, Slovenian, Greek, Galician, Hindi and many Indian languages. In translation, he has a book each in Spanish, Irish, Arabic, German and Estonian apart from four in English. His poems figure in numerous anthologies in Marathi and English. Divate has participated in numerous international poetry and literature festivals across the globe. His publishing house, Paperwall Media & Publishing, has published (under its imprint Poetrywala) more than 100 poetry collections. Hemant lives and works in Mumbai.

Heta Pandit worked with Dr Jane Goodall on chimpanzee research in Tanzania, East Africa. In 1983, volunteered with an NGO in Bombay advocating heritage conservation. She came to Goa in 1995 and continued writing on heritage. A founder member the Goa Heritage Action Group, she has written 9 books: – Houses of Goa, Hidden Hands, Dust & Other Short Stories from Goa, Walking in Goa, Walking in Old Goa, Walking with Angels, There’s More to Life Than a House in Goa and Grinding Stories-Songs from Goa. Heta is fluent in Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi, and English. She also translates Goan literature from the Marathi language into English to enable this genre to reach a wider audience.

Ibha Gupta is a doctoral research scholar with the Dept. of English and an assistant professor in the Dept. of French, at Goa University. She specializes in the area of Crossover Fiction, Narratology and Dialogic Criticism. She has presented papers at universities like Jawaharlal Nehru University, Pondicherry University, and St. Aloysius, amongst others. Her paper on the construction of girlhood in the 21^st century was published in the book Young Adult Literature: Issues and Trends. She also works with Goan Writing in English. Her paper on Lambert Mascarenhas has been published in a book titled Goa Matters in Lore and Letters: Writings of Land, Loss and Longing, and her paper on Mahabaleshwar Sail has been published in a book titled Probing Perspectives. She has completed a course on Literary Theory under Prof. Roland Greene (Stanford) and Prof. Galin Tihanov (Queen Mary) at Indian and Foreign Languages University. She is also a member of the NGO, Goa Heritage Action Group, and has previously organized talks and events on aspects of Goan Heritage.

A young passionate entrepreneur and a prolific story-teller is what would best describe Mr Inacio A Fernandes. He comes with a rich IT experience, working with IT Majors like Wipro Infotech, CGI and OPSPL. He has a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from Goa Institute of Management and Masters of Computer Application degrees to his credit. A vociferous reader and a budding author by passion and a techie by qualifications, Inacio inspires youngsters through his workshops and motivational talks to explore their imaginations and handholds them to into writing short stories in fiction. Inacio Fernandes is currently the CEO, and Founder Director of Criador Solutions and Curator of Novella Short Stories- an online portal for authors to publish their work in short story fiction. (https://novella.co.in)

Ivo de Figueiredo (b. 1966) is the critically-acclaimed biographer of Norway’s treasured cultural icon, Henrik Ibsen (Yale University Press, April 2019), and his next book is the official biography of Edvard Munch, commissioned by the Munch Foundation. In 2002, he was awarded the Brage Prize for a biography of Johan Bernhard Hjort, the co-founder of the Norwegian Fascist Party. A Stranger at My Table was influenced by such authors as W.G. Sebald and Daniel Mendelsohn. The book received one of the highest non-fiction honors in Norway, the 2016 Language Prize and was nominated for the Brage Prize that same year. Figueiredo works as a critic at Morgenbladet and Aftenposten and is a member of the Norwegian Academy.

Jerry Pinto is a much-awarded author, poet and editor. His works include Em and the Big Hoom for which he was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for Fiction and the Windham-Campbell Award from Yale, USA. He has also won the Crossword Award, the Hindu Lit for Life Award, the REC-Valley of Words Award and the Bangalore Festival Prize for Translation. His translated works include the seminal Baluta by Daya Pawar, the first Dalit autobiography in Marathi; I want to destroy myself by Mallika Amar Sheikh; Half-Opened Windows by Ganesh Matkari; I, the salt doll by Vandana Mishra; Strike a blow to change the world by Eknath Awad and When I hid my caste and other stories by Baburao Bagul. His first translation from Hindi, I have not seen Mandu by Swadesh Deepak, is expected next year.
Mr Pinto has taught journalism for more than 25 years at the Social Communications Media department of the Sophia Polytechnic, which is consistently ranked as one of the top ten media departments in India. He sits on the board of MelJol, an NGO that works in the sphere of child rights and represents it on the international board of Aflatoun in the Netherlands. He is a trustee of the People’s Free Reading Room & Library, one of the city’s oldest libraries. He is on the Board of Studies of the English Department of the Sophia College.
He has been a Visiting Fellow at the Suzy and Donald Newhouse Centre at Wellesley College, USA and a Fellow of the Raza Foundation.

Jugneeta Sudan considers herself a global citizen and a humanist with passion for literature and the arts. She is the Art Review Editor of Joao Roque Literary Journal (JLRJ) and was awarded JRLJ  Non-fiction award, 2018. Her critical writing has appeared in Art India and international publications. She is presently working on a research project on the international artist FN Souza. At Serendipity Arts Festival 2017-18, she presented her critical writing on The Social Revolution coded in FN Souza’s Art. The exhibition Souza in the 40s at Sunaparanta Gallery Goa, invited her to present her essay titled, Rethinking Representation: The Female Nude in FN Souza’s Early Art. At TIFA Studios Pune, Jugneeta shared her perspective on Souza’s figurative art. Presently she is focusing on the artist’s growing up years in Goa /Bombay. Her display and talk A Look Back at Souza as a Young Artist is something to look forward to at GALF, 2019.

Katherine M. Hedeen is a translator, literary critic, and essayist. A specialist in Latin American poetry, she has translated some of the most respected voices from the region. Her publications include book-length collections by Jorgenrique Adoum, Juan Bauelos, Juan Calzadilla, Juan Gelman, Fayad Jam’s, Hugo Mujica, Jos Emilio Pacheco, Victor Rodriguez N��ez, and Ida Vitale, among many others. She is a recipient of two NEA Translation grants in the US and a PEN Translates award in the UK. She is the Associate Editor for Action Books and the Poetry in Translation Editor at the Kenyon Review. She resides in Gambier, Ohio, where she is Professor of Spanish at Kenyon College.

Kaustubh Naik is has an MA in Performance Studies from Ambedkar University Delhi and is currently a research scholar in Theatre and Performance Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU, New Delhi. He was named the DD Kossambi Fellow by the Directorate of Art and Culture, Govt of Goa for the period 2016- 18. His op-eds on Goan politics and culture have been published in The Goan, The Caravan, Firstpost, and Aksharnama. He is also a theatre maker and currently heads the Hauns Sangeet Natya Mandal, the oldest running theatre company in Goa. His stage adaptation of Amita Kanekar’s ‘A Spoke In The Wheel’ recently opened to critical acclaim and has won several awards.

Keki N. Daruwalla writes poetry and fiction and lives in Delhi. His last poetry volume is Naishapur and Babylon (2018 Speaking Tiger), which includes work between 2006-2017. His last novel is “Swerving to Solitude” (2018 , Simon and Schuster). His last award was Poet laureateship of the Literature Live Festival in Bombay, 2017.

Keshava Guha is a writer and editor. His novel Accidental Magic (HarperCollins, 2019) is set in Boston in the early 2000s, in a community of adult Harry Potter obsessives. He is the fiction editor at Juggernaut Books in New Delhi.
He was raised in Bangalore and educated at Harvard and at Goldsmiths, University of London. His literary and political journalism has appeared in The Hindu, Scroll.in, Wall Street Journal, Die Welt, Literary Review and Caravan, among other publications.

Kiran Budkuley

Kiran Budkuley is a critic, poet and translator who works from/into English, Hindi, Konkani, and Marathi. The areas of her research are Culture and Gender Studies, Konkani Literature, Folklore, and Translation Studies. Her articles have appeared in reputed journals, and her poems and general articles are published in well-circulated magazines. Some of her well-known books are: Sahitya Niyaal: Antarang ani Kayarupaam (1998); Samikshekaden Ishtagat (1998) Akshar-Sarita (2009); Mapping the Mosaic of Culture (2009); and Musings in the Meadows (2012). She has several edited volumes and translations to her credit as well. Budkuley retired from Goa University as Professor of English and Head of the Department and Dean, Faculty of Languages and Literature. She is a public speaker and conducts regular workshops on translation, and creative and critical writing. She is Visiting Research Professor, Kavivarya Bakibab Borkar Chair for Comparative Literature at Goa University.

Krupa Ge is a writer and editor from Madras. Rivers Remember, her first book, on the floods of 2015 in Chennai, was published in June 2019 by Context. She is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Silverscreen.in. Her reportage and cultural writings have appeared in publications such as The Hindu, The Caravan, The Wire, Firstpost, Ladies Finger, The New Indian Express, etc, over the last eleven years. Her short fiction has appeared in Indian and international publications. She has a novel forthcoming in 2020.

M. Mukundan is one of the reputed fiction writers in Kerala, India, today. He writes in Malayalam language. Author of over forty books comprising novels, collections of short stories, a play and a study of modernity, his best-selling books include On the banks of the Mayyazhi, God’s Mischief, Kesavan’s lamentation, and Delhi Ballads. He pioneered modernity in Malayalam fiction.
He is recipient of Sahitya Akademi Award, for his novel God’s Mischief. Four of his novels were adapted to feature films, God’s Mischief winning the State Award for the best film. He is recipient of over twenty awards and honours including The Chevalier of the Arts and Letters conferred by the French Government, the First Crossword Award for Indian language fiction and the Gold Medal of Saddana Cultural Foundation, Dubai. His novel Kesavan’s Lamentation also won the Crossword Award. He was President of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi for three years.
His stories and novels have been widely translated into various Indian languages, English and French : On the Banks of the Mayyazhi (Manas, Chennai/DC Books, Kottayam), Gods Mischief (Penguin India), The train that had wings  Selected stories (Michigen University Press, USA), Kesavan’s Lamentation (Rupa & Co, Delhi) and Sur les rives du fleuve de Mahe (Actes Sud, Paris).
He lives in New Delhi and Kerala alternately.

Maaz bin Bilal

Maaz bin Bilal is a poet, translator, and academic. His first collection, Ghazalnama: Poems from Delhi, Belfast, and Urdu, was published in 2019 by Yoda Press. He has translated Fikr Taunsvi’s journal of partition, The Sixth River, from Urdu into English (Speaking Tiger, 2019). Maaz received the Charles Wallace India Trust fellowship in writing and translation for Wales, 2018-19. He is an associate professor of literary studies at the liberal arts school of Jindal Global University, and holds a PhD from Queen’s University Belfast for his thesis on the politics of friendship in E. M. Forster’s work, which he is reworking into a monograph. Maaz also enjoys football.

Born in 1962, Mahendra Caculo has always lived in Goa. He is a civil engineer by training and valuer of real estate. A renowned writer / speaker and much awarded personality in the field of valuation, he regularly conducts workshops on valuation all over the country under Knowledge Series by Mahendra Kakule. These workshops have received great response from the fraternity of valuers.
Mahendra started writing poetry at the age 54 on a dare by his childhood friend and has now published a book of poems in English aptly called Late Blooms which was well accepted and widely acclaimed. His style of writing is simple, vivid and touches the hearts of the readers.
He has a faithful band of followers who liken his poetry to that in local Indian languages.
He is influenced by Kahlil Gibran, Pablo Neruda, Dilip Chitre and Arun Kolatkar.

Mamata Verelekar is an assistant professor in Hindi at Government College of Arts, Science and Commerce, Sanquelim, Goa. She has done her masters in Hindi from Goa University. She recently presented a paper at a national seminar held at Goa University which spoke about cinematic translation of literature where she focused on films by filmmaker Mani Kaul. She is passionate about literature and blogs about Konkani poems on her blog-Mhajokonso.wordpress.com

Manohar Shetty has published ‘Full Disclosure: New and Collected Poems (1981-2017)’. His new book of poems is ‘Borderlines’. His anthology: ‘Ferry Crossing: Short Stories from Goa’ has gone into several reprints. He has lived in Goa since 1985.

Maria Aurora Couto

Maria Aurora Couto was born in Goa and studied in Dharwar and New Delhi (where she later taught English literature at Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University). She is the author of the widely acclaimed Goa: A Daughter’s Story and Graham Greene: On the Frontier, and has translated, from Portuguese, A.B. Braganza Pereira’ s Ethnography of Goa, Daman and Diu. In 2010 the Government of India honoured her with the Padma Shri for her contributions in literature and education. She lives in Aldona, a village in North Goa.

Martin Macwan is a human rights activist based in Gujarat. He has devoted his life and has been working for eradication of untouchability and caste-based discrimination. He is the founder of Navsarjan Trust and many other institutions. He also writes books for children on the issues of equality and non-discrimination. He has been awarded with Robert Kennedy award for human rights; the Gleitsman activist award; and recognized by the Human Rights Watch and others for his work. Through Navsarjan Trust, Martin has been able to do pioneering work for the eradication of Manual scavenging.

Born in Jaipur, Meenal Shrivastava now lives in North Saanich, British Columbia where she is a writer and a professor of political economy and global studies at Athabasca University. Currently, aside from serving on several professional boards, Shrivastava regularly speaks on the erasure of women in historical narratives and issues in the global political economy. Her research has led to more than thirty peer-reviewed publications, more than seventy paper presentations, and two books. In Amma’s Daughters, her first work of creative non-fiction, Shrivastava weaves together interviews, her mother and grandmother’s writings, and archival research to tell the story of her remarkable family. The stories in the book show that the personal and the political are relentlessly interconnected, both in how our lives unfold and in how we curate human history(s). Individual stories make these connections immediate and personal by revealing the continuum between past and present, local and global, and us versus them.

Mini Krishnan edits translations for Oxford University Press(India), sourcing fiction, plays, travelogues, autobiographies and biographies from 16 Indian languages. (more than 100 translations, to date).   *She was Consulting Editor , Malayalam University for a translation programme working with multiple publishers to promote Malayalam works in English (2015-18) and is presently advising the T.Nad Textbook Education Services Corporation about a programme of Tamil-to-English translations modeled on the Malayalam University’s project . She was the Project Editor of the Modern Indian Novels in Translation published by Macmillan India Ltd 20 years ago, a series that covered 11 languages and 37 volumes and the Founding Editor of the South Asia Women Writers Website hosted by the British Council, member, Advisory Panel Indian Literature Abroad (2010-13) and on the Advisory Board of the National Translation Mission (2006-13)   *She is the Series Editor of Living in Harmony (classes 1-10) India’s first Peace Education programme for schools. She was member, Peace Education, NCERT, (NCF 2005) and member, Curriculum Advisory Board 2006-2009) . She contributes regularly to Teacher Plus   *She writes two monthly columns for The Hindu: (1) This Word for That in the Literary Review and (2) Ethics & You in Education Plus. She also selects translated short fiction for the Frontline.

Dr. Miniya Chatterji is CEO of Sustain Labs, a company based out of India, France, and New Zealand that turns around large traditional organisations to make them more sustainable. Sustain Labs current portfolio consists of large infrastructure companies, leading universities, government infrastructure projects in India, Europe, Africa, and Asia Pacific. Miniya was Chief Sustainability Officer of Jindal Steel & Power group of companies 2014 – 2017, and prior to that she was in the senior management of the World Economic Forum 2011-2014 in Geneva where she led the WEF in Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. Before that, Miniya was managing a Eur 200 million hedge fund in Paris for a few years. She started as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs in 2006 in London. Earlier, Miniya worked as policy analyst with Jerome Monod the Chief Counsellor to the President of France Jacques Chirac 2003 – 2006. Miniya is a frequent speaker at Davos and at other World Economic Forum regional summits. She is a Jury Member for the Million Dollar Global Teacher Prize and for The Circulars award that is given away each year at Davos. Miniya is a member of the parliament of Francophone writers.
She is a columnist for The Harvard Business Review, The Indian Express and The Pioneer.
Indian Instincts – essays on freedom and equality in India is Miniya Chatterji’s first book. The book was published by Penguin Random House and launched in India in March 2018. The book is a best seller in India and was reviewed by all leading publications. Additionally, it was launched and distributed in Switzerland, Singapore, and Sri Lanka. The book is being translated in to several languages. The Bengali language edition of the book, published by Sampark Publishing House will be out in November 2019. The French language edition of the book, published by Penguin Random House will be out in April 2020.
Miniya has a PhD from Sciences-po Paris. She was a research fellow at Columbia University and Harvard University. She is a Global Leadership Fellow alumna of the World Economic Forum.

Mitra Phukan is a writer, translator and columnist who lives in Guwahati, Assam. Her published literary works include four children’s books, a biography, two novels, The Collector’s Wife and A Monsoon of Music, several volumes of translations of other novels and a collection of fifty of her columns, Guwahati Gaze. Her most recent works are a collection of her own short stories, A Full Night’s Thievery, (Speaking Tiger 2016) and another translated book, Aghoni Bai and Other Stories ( 2019). She writes extensively on Indian music as a reviewer and essayist. Her works have been translated into many languages, and several of her works are taught in colleges and Universities. As a translator herself, she has put across the works of some of the best known writers of fiction in Asomiya into English. Her column All Things Considered in The Assam Tribune is very widely read.

Mona Zote is a poet living in Aizawl. Her poetry has appeared in various journals including the Cordite Poetry Review, Indian Literature, IQ Magazine, India International Centre Quarterly, Carapace, Sangam House as well as in anthologies such as Dancing Earth: An Anthology of Poetry from North-East India, the Oxford Anthology of Writings from North-East India, and The Borderlands of Asia: Culture, Place, Poetry.

Mustansir Dalvi is an anglophone poet, translator and editor. He has two books of poems in English, brouhahas of cocks (Poetrywala, 2013) and Cosmopolitician (Poetrywala, 2018). His poems are included in the anthologies: These My Words: The Penguin Book of Indian Poetry (Eunice de Souza and Melanie Silgardo, editors); Mind Mutations (Sirrus Poe, editor); The Dance of the Peacock: An Anthology of English Poetry from India (Vivekanand Jha, editor) and To Catch a Poem: An Anthology of Poetry for Young People (Sahitya Akademi, Jane Bhandari and Anju Makhija, editors. His poems have been translated into French, Croatian and Marathi. Mustansir Dalvi’s 2012 English translation of Muhammad Iqbal’s influential Shikwa and Jawaab-e-Shikwa from the Urdu as Taking Issue and Allah’s Answer (Penguin Classics) was awarded Runner Up for Best Translation at the Muse India National Literary Award in 2012. He is the editor of Man without a Navela collection of new and selected translations of Hemant Divate’s poems (2018, Poetrywala). He has translated the poems of Hemant Divate from the Marathi in struggles with imagined gods and other poems published by Poetrywala in 2019. Mustansir Dalvi was born in Bombay. He teaches architecture in Mumbai.

Mukul Kumar is a bureaucrat and and an author as well. He belongs to the 1997 batch of the Civil Services. An Indian Railway Traffic Service officer, he is at present working in New Delhi. He has studied Humanities from Delhi University, graduating from Kirori Mal College. He has also studied Public Administration at the prestigious Indian Institute of Public Administration, New Delhi, which got him Master of Philosophy in Social Sciences.
He has been honoured with the National award for outstanding service to the Indian Railways .
His works as an author include two novels, As Boys Become Men published in 2016, and Seduction by Truth in 2018.
Mukul began his literary journey with the publication of an anthology of English poems The Irrepressible Echoes in 2012.
Tweet the author at @writermukul, mail him at mail him at mukulkumar1703@gmail.com, message him at https://www.facebook.com/ writermukulkumar/ and visit http://www.authormukul.com.

Nandita Haksar was a journalist before her involvement in the women’s rights movement forced her to take to law. For the past three decades she has worked as a human rights lawyer, campaigner. She has set many precedents in human rights and refugees law. She has taken up cases in the courts in India as well as appearing before international courts and committees. She has evolved and taught courses on human rights in various universities.
She was awarded a Degree of LL.D. (Honoris Causa) from NALSAR in recognition of her work in the field of human rights.
Haksar is no longer practicing law and has devoted her time to writing. She writes for various national and international journals including Scroll.in, Newsclick and Aawaz. She has published more than 15 books. Her publications include:
Framing Geelani, Hanging Afzal: Patriotism in the Time of Terror (2007) in which she writes about her experience of defending two Kashmiri Muslims accused of attacking the Indian Parliament, and Rogue Agent: How India’s Military Intelligence Betrayed the Burmese Resistance (2009) in which she exposed the RAW, Indian’s external intelligence agency ; The Judgement That Never Came: Army Rule in North East India (with Sebastian Hongray, 2011); ABC of Naga Culture and Civilization (2011) which has been taught in schools for Naga children and;  Across the Chicken Neck: Travels in North East India (2013); The Many Faces of Kashmiri Nationalism: from Cold War to the present Times (2015) and Framed as a Terrorist (with Mohammad Aamir Khan) (2016), The Exodus Is Not Over: Migrations from the Ruptured Homelands of Northeast India (2016), Antarctica: profits of Discovery Nationalism Beyond Borders (2018) and Kuknalim Naga Armed Resistance testimonies of leaders, pastors healers and soldiers (2019; co-authored).

Namit Arora is a writer, humanist, travel photographer, and former internet technologist. He grew up in Gwalior, studied at IIT Kharagpur, worked in Silicon Valley for two decades, took courses of dubious practical value at Stanford, and visited scores of countries before moving to Delhi NCR with his partner in 2013. He writes essays, reviews, criticism, travelogues, fiction, memoir, and history, often merging many forms at once, and tackling subjects as diverse as identity politics, artificial intelligence, Indian-Americans, eating animals, and cryptocurrencies. He is the author of The Lottery of Birth (2017), A California Story (US) / Love and Loathing in Silicon Valley (India) (2019), and an upcoming book on travel and history (2020). His home on the web is shunya.net.

Naresh Fernandes is the author of Taj Mahal Foxtrot: The Story of Bombay’s Jazz Age and City Adrift: A Short Biography of Bombay. He is the editor of Scroll.in, a digital news publication.

Niraja Gopal Jayal is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her most recent publication (edited) is Re-Forming India: The Nation Today. (Penguin Random House, 2019) Her book Citizenship and Its Discontents (Harvard University Press, 2013) won the Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Prize of the Association of Asian Studies in 2015. She is also the author of Representing India: Ethnic Diversity and the Governance of Public Institutions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) and Democracy and the State: Welfare, Secularism and Development in Contemporary India (OUP, 1999). She has co-edited The Oxford Companion to Politics in India, and is the editor/co-editor of, among others, Democracy in India (OUP, 2001) and Local Governance in India: Decentralisation and Beyond (OUP 2005). She has held visiting appointments at, among others, King’s College, London; the EHESS, Paris; Princeton University; and the University of Melbourne. In 2009, she delivered the Radhakrishnan Memorial Lectures at All Souls College, Oxford. She was Vice-President of the American Political Science Association in 2011-12.

Nilankur Das spearheads the organisation ‘thus’ to add value to the increasing social capital of Goa, through managing, organising, and curating interdisciplinary programmes that foster critical growth and understanding. Starting at the People Tree shop at 6 Assagao, these events now are held in venues across Goa. The events are multidisciplinary in nature, on the likes of – presentations, lecture demonstrations, theatres, live acoustic and original music gigs, documentary and indie film screenings, book releases, and others. The idea is to create spaces for art and activism related programmes that constantly inspire conversations on rights based and contemporary social issues. For more –thuscritique.wordpress.com

Nirmala Govindarajan is an author, journalist and social sector documentarian. She endeavours to build an equitable world through her writing. Her new novel Taboo (Picador, Pan Macmillan, 2019) is inspired by under-aged girls who are kidnapped and trafficked. Her recent novel Hunger’s Daughters (Om Books International, 2019) is born out of her experience of documenting in India’s rural heartland. Nirmala has authored The Community Catalyst, recommended reading for civil services aspirants (Sapna Book House, 2016), and co-authored Mind Blogs 1.0 (Write Wing Media, 2010). In 2014, Nirmala co-curated the debut Times Literary Carnival, Bangalore, and in 2016, debuted the Literary Lounge series at the British Council, Bangalore. Most recently, Nirmala has pioneered the Writer’s Yatra and Reader’s Yatra experiences in offbeat locations. Nirmala dabbles in theatre, plays the western classical piano and violin. www.nirmalagovindarajan.com

Nishant Saldanha is an independent comics artist and filmmaker with degrees from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (London) and the California Institute of the Art’s School of Film/Video (Los Angeles). This year, he became the first South Asian artist to be included in the prestigious Best American Comics anthology. After 5 years in Los Angeles, Nishant has moved back to his ancestral land, Goa to pursue an independent arts practice, working primarily in the medium of comics and book making, writing and photography. He self-publish his comic series Mr. Good Guy online.

Omaid Sharifi is a patron of the arts, Co-Founder and President of ArtLords, Founder of Wartists and Rebel Group. Mr. Sharifi is a fellow with Atlantic Council, Asia Society and American Foreign Relations Council/Rumsfeld Fellowship. Mr. Sharifi started his career as a kid selling cookies and cigarettes in the streets of Kabul, he was part of the small team and aide to President of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan Mohammad Ashraf Ghani at Transition Coordination Commission and a Program Manager for Tawanmandi  a multi-million-dollar challenge fund for strengthening civil society in Afghanistan.

Nupur Anand is a Mumbai-based journalist from Patna, Bihar. She completed her early education from Notre Dame Academy and St. Joseph’s Convent, Patna. Literature being her favourite subject in school, she actively participated and won several creative writing competitions. She studied English Honours at Miranda House, in Delhi University. Here, theatre struck a chord with her and she joined Anukriti the Hindi Dramatics Society as an actor and scriptwriter. During the three years in college, she and her team bagged over 60 awards. After post-graduation in Journalism from the Indian Institute of Journalism & New Media, Bengaluru, she worked at Bloomberg TV, where within six months, she became the key producer for the primetime news anchored by the channel’s Editor-In-Chief. The shows produced by her were always amongst the top-rated shows of the channel. Eventually, she decided to shift gears and move to print journalism. She kicked off her career with The Economic Times, where she was a part of the team that launched India’s first personal finance newspaper, ET Wealth. Next, she joined DNA, where her stories regularly made front-page news, after which she moved to Business Standard in 2014. Currently, she is a writer with Quartz India. Mehboob Murderer is Nupur Anand’s debut work of fiction.

P. Sivakami is a prolific writer and a social activist. She has to her credit six acclaimed novels, more than hundred short stories, two poetry collections and several essays and articles.. Born in Tamil Nadu, India, she obtained a master’s degree in history. She served the Government of India and the State Government of Tamil Nadu for 28 years as a member of the Indian Administrative Service. She took voluntary retirement in 2008 to serve the poor and the disadvantaged. She is the founder of Dalit Land Right Movement, The Women’s Front, South India Dalit Writers and Artists Forum, Forum for Indian Women intellect and Founder President of Samuga Samatuva Padai ( Party for Social Equality ), a political party. She served the Sahitya Akademi ( Academy of Letters ) Government of India as its advisory member. She was awarded Fulbright fellowship to undertake research on the effective participation of women in the political process and governance in the USA between 2017 – 18.

In the Learning and Development profession since more than 44 years, Parimal is a results-oriented, innovative, gifted and acclaimed international facilitator, consultant, speaker and author. By now, he has trained over 100000 participants and 1000 trainers. His abiding interest lies in the application of timeless philosophies to human life for holistic learning, development, performance and happiness. With academic backgrounds in Chemical Engineering, Literature and several international certifications, he orchestrates heart-felt learning experiences in his areas of interest: Leadership, Spirituality, Teams, Customer Service, Innovation, Time Management and Trainer Training. His client list ranges from Fortune 500 companies to small and tiny industries and families. He has spoken at several international conferences and works in India, Mexico and USA.
He has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Indian Society for Training and Development and the V Care Foundation Award for facing cancer four times with indomitable courage and resilience.

Pantaleao Fernandes is a Goa-based writer, photographer and ethnographer. Very passionate about Goa and her vibrant culture, he spends most of his time exploring villages in the deep hinterlands, to experience firsthand the warm spirit and culture of the villagers and document these experiences.
These excursions brought about his earlier books, 100 Goan Experiences, Goa Remembered and the ethnographic book, Traditional Occupations of Goa which is a rich documentation of the ancient crafts of Goa. His latest book is entitled,  Goa  Rare Portraits – is a pictorial depiction of the tribal life of Goa. He has authored a few children’s books including Once Upon a Time in Goa and a bilingual book, Ful  A Story.

Patricia Mukhim is currently Editor of The Shillong Times, the second oldest English language daily from the North Eastern Region of India. She writes regularly for the national dailies in order to better interpret India’s North East to readers outside the region. She has recently compiled a series of articles on gender concerns in the Khasi matrilineal society and in the North Eastern states in a book titled, “Waiting for an Equal World.” This book dismantles the assumptions about matriliny being naturally empowering for women and exposes the fallacies surrounding this social practice. This book was released on March 30, this year. She calls herself an activist-journalist. She has received several journalistic awards and the Padmashri in 2000.

Patricia Pereira-Sethi is an award-winning international journalist who worked for two decades as correspondent, editor and the United Nations Bureau Chief for Newsweek magazine in New York. She was the first Indian and youngest ever correspondent to be named the United Nations Bureau Chief of an American organisation. She has conducted one-on-one interviews with more than 45 heads of state during her career, including Indira Gandhi, Morarji Desai, Fidel Castro, George Bush Sr, Augusto Pinochet, Daniel Ortega, Olaf Palme, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Robert Mugabe, Pham Van Dong. And others. Patricia has been felicitated for her career by Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar and the Goa Union of Journalists after her return to Goa. She has authored the biography of industrialist Ramesh Chauhan Thunder Unbottled: From Thums Up to Bisleri (2013). She lives in Dona Paula and is a Special Columnist for the Sunday Panorama section of the Navhind Times as well as the magazine Viva Goa. Fluent in Spanish, she has lectured at Goa University’s Centre for Latin American Studies to PhD students.

Piya Bahadur went to the US to do her master’s and lived there for several years until, one day, she felt that her two daughters needed to be closer to their grandparents and moved back to India. Before the motorcycling bug bit her, Piya was Regional Officer at the US-India Education Foundation and had also worked at the Indian School of Business. Piya is currently working on her startup, which makes software to help small businesses, especially women-owned, run more efficiently. She is happiest when she is on long walks with her children, or on the road, singing along to Kishore Kumar songs. Now that both her daughters are in college, Piya lives in Hyderabad with her husband, their cocker spaniel, and a black cat that pretends to be their pet.

Prajwal Parajuly (b. 1984) is the son of an Indian father and a Nepalese mother. The Gurkha’s Daughter: Stories, his literary debut, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in the UK and longlisted for The Story Prize in the US. Land Where I Flee, his first novel, was an Independent on Sunday book of the year and a Kansas City Star best Book of 2015. Parajuly’s writings have appeared in The New York Times, Guardian, Los Angeles Times, New Statesman and been performed on the BBC. He is the Clayton B. Ofstad endowed distinguished writer-in-residence at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri

Prava Rai has lived in Goa since 1994 with her family. They found a piece of heaven tucked away in a corner of Chorao Island where they built their home and moved their in 1998.
Prava studied in Mt Hermon School Darjeeling and joined Lady Shri Ram College to study English Honours then spent five years at Jawaharlal Nehru University completing Masters in English Language and Literature from the School of Languages and an M.Phil from the Centre for American Studies, School of International Studies.
Prava edited The Book Review for four years, taught for two years at the Institute of Mass Communication in Delhi and worked in the PRADAN , an organization devoted to rural development.
In Goa, she edited the Goa Heritage Action Groups journal PARMAL for six years and is a member Goa Writers Group. In 2015 she edited a special issue on Sikkim’s culture and art for MARG Publications, Mumbai and has researched and written two volumes of coffee table books The Land and the People for the Department of Culture, Government of Sikkim.
Her latest project has been to build the Reading Room, a library in the village of Dumigaon, in South Sikkim. Now she divides her time between Goa and Sikkim.

Poonam Trivedi taught English at Indraprastha College, University of Delhi. She has specialised in Shakespeare Studies with a Ph.D from the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham. She has published articles and books in this area, especially on women in Shakespeare, on stage and film performance of Shakespeare in India, including India’s Shakespeare: Translation, Interpretation and Performance (2005), Re-playing Shakespeare in Asia (2010) and Shakespeare and Indian Cinemas: Local habitations (2019).
Her larger interests extend to Indian theatre and women in the performing arts.
She has been the recipient of Fellowships at Queen Mary College, University of London, University of Hyderabad, Jadavpur University and has lectured at Rhodes College, Memphis, University of San Francisco among others. She has led seminars and panels at World Shakespeare Congresses, and has been invited to deliver many plenary lectures, including at The Globe, London, the latest being at Paul Valery University, Montpellier (Sept. 2019), and Queen’s University, Belfast (Oct. 2019).

Priya Kuriyan is a children’s book author and illustrator and comics maker based in Bangalore. She has directed educational films for the Sesame Street show (Galli Galli Sim Sim) and has worked on various TV commercials. She has illustrated many comics and children’s books including ‘Ammachi’s glasses’ and ‘Princess Easy Pleasy’. She was part of the Indo German collaboration ‘Elephant in the room’ published by Zubaan books and has collaborated with the writer Devapriya Roy on a graphic biography of Indira Gandhi for young adults.

Priyamvada Gopal is Reader in Anglophone and Related Literatures at the University of Cambridge, UK and Fellow, Churchill College, Cambridge.
She is the author of Literary Radicalism in India (2005) and The Indian English Novel: Nation, History, and Narration (2009). Her new book is Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent (2019). She writes often for the Guardian, al-Jazeera and the Independent and has appeared on the BBC, Democracy Now! and Al-Jazeera English.

R. Benedito Ferrao has lived and worked in Asia, Europe, N. America, and Oceania. He is an Assistant Professorof English and Asian & Pacific Islander American Studies at The College of William and Mary and currently a Fulbright-Nehru Fellow at the Xavier Center of Historical Research. Curator of the 2017-18 exhibition Goa, Portugal, Mozambique: The Many Lives of Vamona Navelcar, he edited a book of the same title (Fundacao Oriente 2017) to accompany this retrospective of the artist’s work. His scholarly writing appears in various international journals and edited books, including Research in African Literatures and Places of Nature in Ecologies of Urbanism (HKU Press 2017); his fiction and creative non-fiction can be read in Riksha, The Good Men Project, Mizna, The Joao Roque Literary Journal, and other publications.

With over 25 years of experience in the creative field, Raga has worked in senior positions in advertising in India and New Zealand and has been the recipient of several prestigious awards.
Globally known as the expert on corporate speakers and B2B content curation, Raga herself is a sought-after speaker on the subjects of Diversity, LGBT, Building a Personal Brand and Doing Business in India (her talk on ‘Holy Cow, so you think you know India is hugely successful across international corporate companies). As the South Asian Ambassador for Diabetes UK and a social influencer she has appeared on BBC, Sky TV, Channel 4, ITV and TVNZ to share her personal story and views to help prevent Diabetes. She has been on several boards over the years and was the first woman to be elected on the board of the India New Zealand Business Council. She is currently a trustee on the board of CRY UK.
Raga is a mother of twins and divides her time between London, Mumbai and New Zealand and considers all three her home.
Raga expresses her cynicism through poetry, short stories and is a published author of Untold Lies.

Rajorshi Chakraborti has published six novels and a collection of short fiction. He was born in Kolkata and grew up there and in Mumbai, and now lives with his family in Wellington, New Zealand. Two of his earlier novels have been nominated in different categories of the Crossword Book Award. His new novel, Shakti, a supernatural mystery thriller, is due to be published by Penguin Random House in November.

Rama Murkunde is an Assistant Professor in Konkani department, at Government College of Arts, Science and Commerce, Khandola. She is currently pursuing her doctoral research in translation of Konkani short stories and novels. She has written for Konkani dailies Sunprant and Bhangarbhui and her articles have been aired on All India Radio. She is the editor and compiler of children’s stories Kanyanachi Gathan published in 2006, author of Chanuchyo Kanyo, stories written for children published in 2012 and translated Nirbhudhicho Rajkarbar, collection of stories for children, for Sahitya Akademi in 2015. She translates children’s stories from other languages and are available in digital form on Prathambooks Storyweaver.

Dr Rakhshanda Jalil is a translator, writer, and literary historian. She has published over 25 books and written over 50 academic papers and essays. Her book on the lesser-known monuments of Delhi, Invisible City, continues to be a bestseller. Her recent works include:Liking Progress, Loving Change: A Literary History of the Progressive Writers Movement in Urdu (OUP, 2014); a biography of Urdu feminist writer Dr Rashid Jahan A Rebel and her Cause (Women Unlimited, 2014); a translation of The Sea Lies Ahead, Intizar Husain’s seminal novel on Karachi (Harper Collins, 2015) and Krishan Chandar’s partition novel Ghaddar (Westland, 2017); an edited volume of critical writings on Ismat called An Uncivil Woman (Oxford University Press, 2017); and in the past year a literary biography of the Urdu poet Shahryar for Harper Collins; The Great War: Indian Writings on the First World War (Bloomsbury); Preeto & Other Stories: The Male Gaze in Urdu (Niyogi) and Kaifiyat, a translation of Kaifi Azmi’s poems for Penguin Random House and Jallianwala Bagh: Literary Responses in Prose &Poetry (Niyogi Books). Her latest book is But You Don’t Look Like a Muslim (Harper Collins), a collection of 40 essays on religion, culture, literature and identity. She runs an organization called Hindustani Awaaz, devoted to the popularization of Hindi-Urdu literature and culture. Her debut collection of fiction, Release & Other Stories, was published by Harper Collins in 2011, and received critical acclaim. She was awarded the Kaifi Azmi Award for her contribution to Urdu and the First Jawad Memorial Prize for Urdu-Hindi Translation. She writes regularly for major newspapers such as Hindustan Times, Indian Express, The Hindu as well as magazines such as Outlook, Scroll, The Wire, etc. She is the Editor of the Taj magazine, a bi-annual book-length journal of the Taj group of hotels.

Ranjit Hoskote is a leading Anglophone Indian poet, and has also been acclaimed as a seminal contributor to Indian art criticism. His books include Vanishing Acts: New & Selected Poems 1985-2005 (Penguin, 2006), Central Time (Penguin/ Viking, 2014), and, most recently, Jonahwhale (Penguin/ Hamish Hamilton, 2018). His poetry has appeared in German translation as Die Ankunft der Vogel (Carl Hanser Verlag, 2006) and Feldnotizen des Magiers (Editions Offenes Feld, 2015). His translation of the 14th-century Kashmiri mystic Lal Ded has been published as I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded (Penguin Classics, 2011).   Hoskote curated India’s first-ever national pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2011), co-curated the 7^th Gwangju Biennale, and served on the jury of the 56^th Venice Biennale (2015). He was a Fellow of the International Writing Program, University of Iowa, and has been writer-in-residence at Villa Waldberta, Munich; Theater der Welt, Essen-Mulheim; and the Polish Institute, Berlin. He has been researcher-in-residence at BAK/ basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht. He has been honoured with the Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Award, the Sahitya Akademi Award for Translation, and the S H Raza Award for Literature. Hoskote is Poetry Editor for DOMUS India and Academic Consultant to the CSMVS Museum, Bombay.

Ramita Gurav is an associate professor at Xavier’s College, Mapusa, where she is teaching Hindi for more than 20 years now. She has also done her Ph.D. in Contemporary Hindi Theatre. She has presented papers on topics related to literature, theatre and media studies to various state, national and international seminars. She has done translations of Konkani poems, short stories and Marathi short stories in Hindi. She has also directed dramatizations of short stories of writer Premchand and poems by Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh.

Rita Kothari is a multilingual scholar and translator, who has made notable contribution to both theory and practice of translation in the Indian context. She has to her credit three seminal monographs Translating India : The Cultural Politics of English (St.Jerome Publishing, 2003); The Burden of Refuge (Orient Blackswan, 2007) and Memories and Movements (Orient Blackswan, 2013). She has edited (with Rupert Snell) Chutnefying English : The Phenomenon of Hinglish (Penguin India, 2011) and (with Judy Wakabayshi) Decentring Translation Studies : India and Beyond (John Benjamin Press, 2009). Her anthologies in translation Modern Gujarati Poetry (Sahitya Akademi, 1998); Speech and Silence (Zubaan Publishing, 2008) and Unbordered Memories (Penguin India, 2009) have been notable and pioneering contributions; so is her translation of the first Gujarati Dalit novel, Anglayat : The Stepchild.Her translation of Ila Mehta’s novel Fence (2014) — a real and metaphoric quest for home in a segregated society and more recently, the historical fiction of Gujarat’s well-known writer and nationalist K.M.Munshi (with Abhijit Kothari) has drawn much attention. Kothari’s recent publications incluce A Multilingual Nation : Translation and Language Dynamic in India (Oxford University Press, 2018) and Agnipariksha : An Ordeal Remembered ( Orient Blackswan, 2018). Rita Kothari is Professor of English, Ashoka University, India.

Born at Nampong in Tirap district of Arunachal Pradesh, Dr Rita Chowdhury holds master’s degree in Political Science as well as Asamiya, followed by LLB. She got her Ph.D. from Guwahati University. A prominent Asamiya novelist, poet and activist, Dr Chowdhury’s oeuvre include Makam, a poignant portrayal of Assamese Indian community of Chinese origin; Deo Lankhui, a novel of epic proportion on the glorious Tiwa Kingdom of Assam; and Ei Xomoy Xei Xomoy, a fictionalized account of the societal and political changes brought in by historic Assam Agitation against illegal immigration from Bangladesh to Assam. Her other novels are Abirata Yatra, Tirtha Bhumi, Maha Jibanar Adharxila, Papiya Tarar Sadhu, Raag Malkosh, Jal Padma, Hridoy Nirupai, Papi Nakshatrar Galpa, Razeeb Ishwar, Jahnabi and Mayabritta. Her 4 poetry collections viz. Pratyaxar Swapna, Sudoor Nakshatra, Alap Poharar Alap Aandharar, and Baga Matir Tulashi too have been well received. Her first novel Abirata Yatra (Incessant Journey) got her Asam Sahitya Sabha’s best manuscript award in 1981. Her Sahitya Akademi Award (2008) winning novel Deo Langkhui (The Divine Sword) got her a host of other awards including Kalaguru Bishnu Prasad Rabha Award. Her novel Makam, a poignant portrayal of Assamese Indian community of Chinese origin, translated to Marathi as Makam and to English as Chinatown Days brought her national and international acclaim. Dr Chowdhury has been quite active in giving voice to the voiceless. She is the Chief Trustee of ADHARXILA, an organization dedicated to empowering young writers of Assam. She has attended several national and international seminars and Panel Discussions on various issues of literature, society and international politics. She has also been awarded with Srimayi Asomi Samman by Guwahati Bihu Sanmilani, Assam. She was formerly Director, National Book Trust, India.

Pandit Ritwik Sanyal, is one of the most eminent Dhrupad singers,disciple of Zia Mohiuddin Dagar and Zia Fariduddin Dagar ,he got Sangeet Natak Academy Aword for Music in 2013, he is also a great academic, writer and philosopher.
Retired Professor of the Banars Hidu University, where he was vocal teacher in the faculty of performing arts for 39 years, he has been also Dean of the faculty  and Head of the department for several years.
He has been travelling across the globe since childoohod and tha is why he received a very special input to express with his own words and philosophy the ancient musical tradition of India.
His father was an eclectic philosopher and scholar, Prof. Batuk Sanyal and his mother, Shri Mati Ranu Sanyal a great writer and singer.
He assimilated his parents gifts and the Dhrupad tradition with a deep research in the indian tradition, both musical and philosophical , becoming a unique Master that combines the finess of singing with the logical way of Philosophy.
His master work Philosophy of Music is a book where he explains the sublime concept of music in philosophycal language.

Rochelle D’silva is a performance poet based in Goa. She writes about her travels, cultural influences and personal experiences. Her poems give voice to feelings of displacement, love and loss. She started performing in 2011, and since then has performed on numerous stages across India, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore and Nepal. She has been a part of a multitude of literary festivals; Times Lit Fest 2018, Goa Art and Lit Fest 2018, Melbourne Spoken Word and Poetry Festival 2018, Kala Ghoda Art and Literature Festival 2018 to name a few. In 2016, she represented the Indian writing community during a poetry tour in Nepal called Words Express  Spoken Word Jatra, featuring international poets from Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and the universally proclaimed Sarah Kay. Rochelle has created the very first residency solely designed for poets – ‘The Poetry Retreat’ is a 5-day residency held twice a year in Goa. Both her spoken word albums (A Thin Veneer of Coping and Best Apology Face) are available on Bandcamp/iTunes/Spotify. Her solo collection of poems, When Home Is An Idea, has been widely appreciated as a conduit to talk about identity and belonging.

Rochelle Potkar is an alumna of Iowa’s International Writing Program (2015) and a Charles Wallace Writer’s fellow, University of Stirling (2017). Her individual poems To Daraza won the 2018 Norton Girault Literary Prize UK, and The girl from Lal Bazaar was shortlisted at the Gregory O’ Donoghue International Poetry Prize, 2018. She is the author of The Arithmetic of breasts and other stories, Four Degrees of Separation, and Paper Asylum.
As critic, her reviews have appeared in Wasafiri, Indian Literature, Asian Cha, and Chandrabhaga. Her upcoming book The Inglorious Coins of the Counting House was longlisted at the Eyewear Publishing, Beverly Prize 2019, UK and shortlisted at the 2nd Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize 2019, NY.  Her poetry film Skirt was showcased on Shonda Rhimes’ Shondaland.
She has read her poetry in India, Bali, Iowa, Stirling, Glasgow, Hongkong, Ukraine, Hungary, Bangladesh, and the Gold Coast. She conducts poetry & haibun workshops across India.
https://rochellepotkar.com.

Saba Hasan is a noted contemporary artist with a diverse multimedia repertoire developed over twenty five years of highly distinguished practice. Saba has been nominated for the Celeste Contemporary Art Prize for her video La Verite/ Haqeeqat/ the Truth; she is the recipient of the French Government Cultural Fellowship, the Moscow Foto Award, the Raza National Award.
Her works have been exhibited at major international venues like the 55th International Venice Biennale, the Met Brauer Museum New York, the National Gallery of Art Colombo, The Assab One, Milan and the Hohenburg Castle Austria. Saba works in a plurality of media comprising photography, video art, book sculptures, paintings and sound installations spanning contemplative, conceptual ideas and along engagement with organic materials. Her use of natural elements like the sun, sand, leaves, water, the Urdu script, and her voice make her work idiosyncratic, nuanced and powerful. In a subtle thoughtful tone she reminds us that human consciousness is capable of creating a reality which is not only beautiful but also filled with hope which is so integral to our fractured world.

Saee Koranne-Khandekar is an author and culinary consultant. She researches and writes primarily on food, where her interests include indigenous cuisines, baking, and culinary literature. She is the author of the widely reviewed Crumbs!: Bread Stories and Recipes for the Indian Kitchen and writes extensively on baking and regional cuisines in their historical and socio-cultural contexts, and has been awarded the Food Chroniclers Award, 2019. Her second book, Pangat; A Feast, navigates the many sub-cuisines of Maharashtra and attempts to break the myths that surround the food of the land.
Saee is also an amateur poet. Her work can be read on www.saeekhandekar.com, and in various print and online journals.

Samar Halarnkar is a columnist and author of Nirvana Under the Rain Tree (2002), an early chronicle of India’s internet revolution and A Married Man’s Guide to Creative Cooking: And Other Dubious Adventures (2013). He has been a visiting lecturer at the University of California-Berkeley and a fellow at the Nieman Foundation, Harvard University. A journalist for 30 years, he has been the Editor of IndiaSpend.org, a nonprofit focussed on data-driven, public-interest journalism and Managing Editor of the Hindustan Times. An enthusiastic cook, his culinary experiences find their way into a cooking column for Mint Lounge.

When she was eight, Samhita Arni started writing and illustrating her first book. The Mahabharata – A Child’s View went on to be published in seven language editions and sell 50,000 copies worldwide. Samhita’s second book, Sita’s Ramayana, a graphic novel developed in collaboration with Patua artist Moyna Chitrakar, was on the New York Times Bestseller list for Graphic Novels. Her third book, The Missing Queen, has been published by Penguin (Viking) and Zubaan. Samhita’s fourth book, The Prince, has been published by Juggernaut.

Samrat Choudhury is an author and journalist, and a former editor of daily newspapers in India’s major metropolises, Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. His first novel, The Urban Jungle, was published by Penguin Books in 2011. Some of his literary essays and short stories have appeared in translation in German, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. His latest publication is an edited anthology titled Insider/Outsider, on this issue with relation to Northeast India, of which he is one of the two editors. He has recently relaunched East Wind, an independent quarterly for Northeast India, in collaboration with its founder.
Samrat was the Asian Leadership Fellow from India at the International House of Japan in Tokyo in 2018 and a Chevening Scholar at the University of Westminster, London, in 2019.

Sandesh Prabhudesai is an author, a journalist and a cultural activist, based in Goa. He has been writing for the last four decades, since 1979, street plays, radio plays, columns, articles as well as literary and cultural reviews in Konkani, Marathi and English, besides his journalistic writing. He has published five books of his original writings ??????, ???, ????? ?????? ? ?????? ?????? (Konkani); ????? (Marathi) and Clear Cut (English). He has also translated Bhagat Singh’s Why I am an Atheist in Konkani, for the National Book Trust. Since 1978, he has worked in the Student, Youth and Workers movements. He initiated the Street Play movement in Goa, in 80s, writing over 20 scripts and songs. He edited and wrote for Student and Youth magazines. He has been actively participating in organising cultural and literary festivals, especially for the students and youth. Sandesh joined professional journalism in 1987, and has since worked in local Konkani, Marathi and English dailies in different positions, from Reporter to Editor. He has also worked for national and international media, including rediff.com, The Sunday Observer, The Pioneer, BBC etc in Print, Radio and Internet. He has also headed Goan TV channels, anchoring debates, election analysis as well as interviews. He edits Goa’s first news website goanews.com, since 1999. He writes opinion columns throughout his career for several newspapers, periodicals as well as Internet portals in Konkani, Marathi and English. He sometimes also plays with Poetry. He has bagged several awards in Journalism as well as Literature, besides Theatre. Presently, he is the Consulting Editor of Goan TV Channel Goa365.

Sanjay Dharwadker is a writer of fiction and non-fiction.
Born in Naya Nangal, Punjab and educated at schools in Delhi and Jaipur, he has a master’s degree in pure mathematics from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani Rajasthan. Thereafter his career has spanned three continents and he currently advises the United Nations and national governments on identification policy, privacy, biometrics and related topics. He has lived in Delhi and then Johannesburg and is currently based at Utrecht in the Netherlands.
His first book published in 1998 was titled Chipping Away the Blues which contained essays on corporate humour. Diamond In My Palm (2019) is his first fictional work and he has already embarked on a second novel titled Philosopher’s Mistress which traces Ren Descartes journey through the Netherlands.
He also writes about other books, travel, histories, as well as identity in the contemporary world, technology and society.
He travels extensively with his partner, Kippy and enjoys a good game of Bridge.

Sanket Mhatrewas the chief assistant director of Kavyotsav 2001: the first bilingual poetry reading festival of Marathi and Kannada poets. He has held several poetry reading sessions in Mumbai and across Maharashtra. He performed at Kavyahotra 2018, the 72-hour poetry reading festival in Goa with 9 poets from other languages. Widely published, he performs at old age homes under the program (???????????? ????? or Poems By Grandchildren). He is a renowned lyricist. His title song for the daily soap ‘Radha Hi Bawari’ was awarded the best song at Zee Alpha Gaurav. Crossover Poems is his brainchild, that started with The Poetry Club to unify poets from multiple languages, and embracing sensibilities unique to every language. He is also the film director of Kavita Cafe archived on Youtube that captures the best of Marathi poets in recitation

Born in Buenos Aires in 1979, Santiago Lusardi Girelli is an Argentinian-Italian Music Conductor, Composer and Scholar of the music and philosophy of the traditions of the East and West. Dr. Lusardi Girelli has worked as lecturer and choir and orchestra conductor and in more than 20 countries in Europe, South America, Africa and Asia for the last 20 years. He holds Master degrees in Orchestra, Choir Conduction, Philosophy, and a PhD in Music Aesthetics and Philosophy. As the result more than ten years of research on Indian Philosophy he has published his Thesis on Buddhist Phenomenology and Hindu Ritualism and its links with Western Music & Art Tradition. Santiago has conducted choirs and orchestras, professional and amateurs, around the world throughout more than 300 concerts, and leaded music tours in several countries, from the Amazonas Rain Forest to Leipzig-Germany (J.S. Bach’s city); and from Peruvian Machu Pichu to the Indian Himalayas. His enthusiasm, leadership and passion for music, philosophy and cultures have led him to accomplish several important achievements and recognitions that have earned him the esteem of the local and international press alike. Currently located in India, Santiago holds the Anthony Gonsalves Chair as Visiting Research Professor at the Goa University in India, and he is the conductor of the Goa University Choir -the very first University choir of India-, he also collaborates as Lecturer, Composer and Guest Conductor with different Universities and professional orchestras and choirs from South America, Africa, Europe and India.

Seema Mundoli is a faculty at Azim Premji University. She has worked with NGOs involved in conservation, advocacy on mining, land and forest rights, and education of indigenous communities. More recently her research examines the social and ecological interactions around ecosystems in a rapidly urbanizing India. She has co-edited the State of the Environment, Andaman Archipelago (Universities Press, 2006) and authored Cities and Canopies: Trees of Indian Cities (Penguin India 2019, with Harini Nagendra).

Sethu (A.Sethumadhavan) has been writing in Malayalam for the past five decades. A banker by profession and a writer by passion, he has around 40 titles to his credit, consisting of novels and collection of short stories. Many of his works have been translated into other languages, including English, Hindi, German, French and Turkish. His novels translated into English include Pandavapuram, The Saga of Muziris, Aliyah, The Wind from the Hills, Once Upon a Time, The Cuckoo’s Nest and Jalasamadhi & other Stories. Kadambari, the Flower Girl is under print. Pandavapuram has already appeared in 10 languages. It has been filmed in Malayalam and Bengali, the latter titled Nirakar Chaaya, which had won recognitions abroad. Four of his works have been filmed, the latest being Jalasamadhi. A winner of all the major awards like the Sahitya Akademi award, Kerala Sahitya Akademi award(twice), etc, he was the former Chairman of the National Book Trust, New Delhi. Joining the State Bank as a Prob. Officer, he had retired as the Chairman & CEO of the South Indian Bank.

Shubha Vilas is an author, motivational speaker, lifestyle coach and storyteller par excellence. He believes that a good teacher, always sees the process of learning along with teaching as an inherent aspect of personal and spiritual growth. He teaches the importance of being governed by dharmic principles, meting out spiritual lifestyle tips and wisdom that can be applied to modern day situations.
Compelled by his deep sense of responsibility towards society, he started writing books that would benefit the readers in all aspects by understanding ancient literature in its true essence.
He took on the monumental task of writing a book on the Ramayana that would bring the epic out of the closet and into the world, to show the lessons hidden in the tales. And thus, he embarked on the ambitious project of a six-volume series titled Ramayana  The Game of Life.
His other bestsellers include Chronicles of Hanuman, which brings out the best and unheard stories from Hanuman’s life, and Open-eyed Meditations, a delightful compilation of his thoughts wherein he meditates with his eyes wide open, deriving practical wisdom for life’s dilemmas through insights from the Ramayana and Mahabharata.

Stacy Rodrigues resides in Margao Goa. She completed her education in music. Being visually impaired, she is an artist by profession for the past 6 years and as of now, she is a full-time yoga instructor & a spiritual counsellor. So far she has held 4 solo exhibitions and she has been part of a few group exhibitions in Goa. In the year 2012, on a small scale, she released her poem book entitled “reflections”. Recently she has written her first novel “In Search Of” which was launched in the month of October 2019. In Search Of is a book about a visually impaired individual who dared to live a normal life. The experience that life put her through taught her the meaning of life and helped her find her true self.

Sunanda Mehta is a journalist with over twenty-five years of experience. She began her career at Femina and moved on to Magna Publishing, where she became the founder-editor of the Pune city magazine Citadel at the age of twenty-five. After this, she worked for the Indian Express for two decades, breaking many stories throughout her tenure. From 2010 to 2017, she was Resident Editor of the newspaper’s Pune edition, which made her the first woman editor of a national English daily in Pune.
A graduate of Lady Shri Ram College for Women where she studied History, Sunanda also has degrees in Education and Journalism. A former Chevening fellow, she has been a visiting lecturer at the University of Pune. Sunanda divides her time between Mumbai and Pune.

Sujatha Fernandes is a writer and professor at the University of Sydney. She is the author of several academic monographs, including most recently Curated Stories: The Uses and Misuses of Storytelling (Oxford). Her literary work includes a memoir on a global hip hop life, Close to the Edge (Verso), and a forthcoming collection of essays entitled The Cuban Hustle (Duke). Her essays and short stories have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, New Ohio Review, Maine Review, and Aster(ix), among other places. She is currently completing a collection of interlinked short stories entitled Shadow People and is working on a novel about Goan migrants in coastal Karnataka during the colonial wars of the eighteenth century.

Sudeep Sen is widely recognised as a major new generation voice in world literature and one of the finest younger English-language poets in the international literary scene (BBC Radio). He is fascinated not just by language but the possibilities of language (Scotland on Sunday). At the 2004 Struga Poetry Festival (Macedonia), he received the Pleiades honour for having made a significant contribution to contemporary world poetry. His prize-winning books include: Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (HarperCollins), Distracted Geographies, Rain, Aria (A K Ramanujan Translation Award), Fractals: New & Selected Poems|Translations 1980-2015 (London Magazine Editions), EroText (Vintage: Penguin Random House), and Kaifi Azmi: Poems | Nazms (Bloomsbury). He has edited important anthologies: The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry, World English Poetry, and Modern English Poetry by Younger Indians (Sahitya Akademi). Blue Nude (Jorge Zalamea International Poetry Prize) and The Whispering Anklets are forthcoming. Sen’s works have been translated into over 25 languages. His words have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Newsweek, Guardian, Observer, Independent, Telegraph, Financial Times, Herald, Literary Review, Harvard Review, Hindu, Hindustan Times, Outlook, India Today, and broadcast on bbc, pbs, cnn ibn, ndtv, air & Doordarshan. Sen’s newer work appears in New Writing 15 (Granta), Language for a New Century (Norton), Love Poems (Knopf/Everyman), Out of Bounds (Bloodaxe), Initiate: Oxford New Writing (Blackwell), and Name me a Word (Yale). He is the editorial director of aark arts and the editor of Atlas. Sen is the first Asian honoured to read his poetry and deliver the Derek Walcott Lecture at the Nobel Laureate Festival. The Government of India’s Ministry of Culture has awarded him the senior fellowship for outstanding persons in the field of culture/literature.

Suneeta Peres da Costa was born in Sydney, Australia, to parents of Goan origin. She writes fiction, non-fiction, plays and poetry. Her debut novel, Homework, was published internationally by Bloomsbury in 1999 and a novella, Saudade (Giramondo, 2018; Transit Books USA & Canada, 2019) on thelegacies of Portuguese colonialism and the Goan diaspora in Angola is shortlisted for the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Awards 2019 (Fiction). Over the years,  she has worked with the National Gallery of Victoria, the National Museum of Australia, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the University of Technology, Sydney, Sydney Review of Books & Mascara Literary Review, among others. 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.

Supriya Nair is an editor and journalist from Mumbai. She writes a weekly books column for Mumbai Mirror. Her work has appeared in Vogue, Wisden and The New York Times. She is co-founder of All Things Small, a media company that specialises in non-fiction from the Indian subcontinent.

Sushila Sawant Mendes has a PhD in history from Goa University heads the Department of History at the Government College of Arts, Science and Commerce, Quepem (Goa). Her doctoral dissertation was on the impact of Luis de Menezes Braganza on Goa’s anti-colonial struggle, and later became a book: Luis de Menezes Braganza: Nationalism, Secularism and Free-thought in Portuguese Goa (2014). She is currently working on a book on the history of Assolna, Velim, and Cuncolim. Sushila regularly presents papers at various seminars in India and abroad, many of which are included in books on Goa’s history. The Government of Goa has appointed her on the Expert Committee for revision of the Goa Gazetteer. The present Std. X history text of the Goa Board was finalized under her guidance as Chairperson. Mendes is a Trustee of the Manovikas Public Charitable Trust, and a Founder Trustee of Silver Star Appeal.

Tamal Bandyopadhyay is a bestselling author, an award-winning columnist, and a keen student of the Indian banking sector for over two decades. His weekly column `Banker’s Trust’ is widely read for its incisive analysis and informed opinion.
He is currently Consulting Editor with Business Standard and Senior Adviser to Jana Small Finance Bank Ltd.
One of the key members of the team that set up the financial daily Mint, Tamal was an adviser on strategy at Bandhan Bank Ltd, the first microfinance company to transform itself into a universal bank in India.
Nandan Nilekani has written the foreword to his latest book His latest book ‘HDFC Bank 2.0: From Dawn to Dightal’ which captures the biggest self-made disruptions in Indian banking.
Before this, he has written four books — `From Lehman to Demonetization: A Decade of Disruptions, Reforms and Misadventures, `Bandhan: The Making of a Bank,’ `Sahara: The Untold Story’ and `A Bank for The Buck’.
Incidentally, a Rs200 crore defamation case was slapped on him by the Sahara group to stop the publication of his book on shadow banking.
Tamal is one of the contributors to the `Oxford Handbook on Indian Economy’, edited by Kaushik Basu, and Making of New India : Transformation Under Modi Government, edited by Bibek Debroy.
He won the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism (commentary and interpretative writing) in 2017.
Global professional network Linkedin nominated him one among top ten influential voices in India in 2018 and 2017 and one of the top 10 writers in finance globally for 2016 and 2015.

Tilak Devasher is the author of three books on Pakistan: Pakistan: Courting the Abyss (December 2016) that was termed easily the best book on Pakistan by a noted Pakistani commentator  Khaled Ahmed; Pakistan: At the Helm(July 2018). A Pakistani reviewer in Dawn termed it as a book that any future leader of Pakistan ought to have by their bedside, simply because it is the sum of all that has gone before. The third book Pakistan: The Balochistan Conundrum was published in July 2019.   Tilak retired as Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India in October 2014. He is currently a member of the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) and also a Consultant with the Vivekananda International Foundation.   During his professional career Tilak served in J&K, Delhi and abroad. He specialized in security issues, especially pertaining to India’s neighbourhood. Post retirement, he has continued to take a keen interest in such issues with special focus on Pakistan.   Tilak has taken to writing after his superannuation. Apart from his books, he has written articles for a host of newspapers, magazines and think tank journals. He also appears regularly on TV talk shows.   Tilak is an alumnus of Mayo College, Ajmer and St. Stephen’s College, Delhi.

Tony Joseph is the author of the best-selling book Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From published by Juggernaut last year and received well by the academic and scientific community. Tony has been a journalist for over three decades and has worked with The Economic Times as Features Editor, Business Standard as Associate Editor and BusinessWorld as Editor. His articles on Indian prehistory have appeared in The Hindu, BBC, The Quint and Scroll.in. He lives near New Delhi and is now working on his next book, which will deal with periods subsequent to the one that Early Indians covers.

Anthony M Barreto, who writes under the pen name Tony Martin teaches English at S S Angle Higher Secondary School, Mashem Canacona since 1999. He is a Gold medalist of the Goa University and holds post graduate degrees in English literature and Philosophy. Besides five books Naked Goa (2003) The Practical English Teacher(2001) It’s a Funny World (1994) Canacona  the Last Frontier (2012) Sinful Goa  Paradise in Peril (2014)   he has written extensively for local English dailies and was a Sub-Editor with The Navhind Times and Herald. He lives in Galgibaga Canacona and loves reading and writing.

Usha Alexander is the author of the novels The Legend of Virinara (2018) and Only the Eyes Are Mine (2008); and the novelette, Leaving Idaho (2017). Her writing has been featured in 3 Quarks Daily, Scroll.in, The Punch Magazine, Pangyrus, and White Wall Review. Her life and work have taken her from Vanuatu, a Pacific Island nation, where she taught secondary school science as a US Peace Corps volunteer, to the corporate life of Silicon Valley, where she worked for Apple, and to many points between. She maintains an abiding interest in science, anthropology, and history. Usha grew up in Pocatello, Idaho, a remote little town in the Rocky Mountain region of the USA. Though currently residing in the National Capital Region of India (NCR), she carries her home within herself. You’ll find her on the web at www.ushaalexander.com

V.Srinivas is a leading urological cancer and robotic surgeon working at Hinduja hospital and Asian Cancer Institute, Mumbai. He did his schooling at Lawrence school Lovedale, Nilgiris, undergraduate medical studies at Christian Medical College, Vellore and super specialisation at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York. He has published over 100 scientific papers in International medical journals and authored a surgical text book.But, this is his first foray into creative writing. He was an avid tennis player and an enthusiastic martial arts student in his younger days. However nowadays, while relaxing at Raven’s nest, he sticks to watching movies , pottering around the garden (more aptly chasing the gardener!) ,going for long leisurely walks with his lovely wife and playing a lazy game of tennis before hitting the bar!

Victor Rodriguez Nunez (Havana, 1955) is one of Cuba’s most outstanding and celebrated contemporary writers, with over fifty collections of his poetry published throughout the world. He has been the recipient of major awards all over the Spanish-speaking region, including, in 2015, the coveted Loewe Prize. His selected poems have been translated into Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Macedonian, Serbian, and Swedish. He has been a riveting presence at the most important international literary festivals, having read in more than forty countries. In the last decade, his work has developed an enthusiastic readership in the US and the UK, where he has published seven book-length translations.He divides his time between Gambier, Ohio, where he is currently Professor of Spanish at Kenyon College, and Havana, Cuba.

Vidya Kamat is an artist, research scholar, and academic. Her art practice looks at the mythological narratives and traditional belief systems engage and alter perceptions within contemporary Indian social reality. Kamat’s works have been showcased in Dhaka( 2012), Istanbul(2007), Santa Fe( 2008), New Delhi(2010,2011) art fairs . She has also shown her works in curated shows in New York ( 2011), Singapore (2011), Thailand(2009), London( 2009), Paris( 2009) & recently Serendipity Festival Goa (2018). Besides, she has had solo shows in Mumbai and Bengaluru, India. Vidya Kamat is also a founder and curator of Talking Myths Project an online archive of traditional tales; and founder of a non-profit organisation Centre for Study of Mythology and Culture based in Goa India.

Vince Costa started his journey in the mid 90’s as an audio engineer and then moved to Australia to study Music Business Management. He later returned to Goa and in 2009 he started to write his first music album called Saint and Sinner.
A few years later he released the album, but he felt that as a storyteller he wanted to explore other mediums .
Over a four year period he produced his debut documentary, Saxtticho Koddo- The Granary of Salcete an ethnographic film about the agrarian culture of his village Curtorim and the intrinsic relationship rice has with the Goan people.
Vince believes that Goa is a sea of stories and so he founded RedMackerel to tell them.

Vincy Quadros is a Konkani author, recipient of Bal Sahitya Puraskar of National Sahitya Akademi and Goa Konkani Akademi. He is also recipient of literary awards from Konkani Bhasha Mandal, Thomas Stephens Konkani Kendra and Dalgado Konknni Akademi. In all, he has penned down 30 books n different genres. He is versatile with Roman & Devnagri scripts of Konkani. Presently he is a Honorary Secretary of Dalgado Konknni Akademi (funded by Government of Goa). He has served Goa Konkani Akademi as Vice President and Konkani Bhasha Mandal as Secretary. He was also an Advisory Board Member for National Sahitya Akademi. He has presented several Research Papers at State & National level. In his home village of Raia, he actively participates in the field of education, sports & social fronts. He writes for Konkani newspapers & magazines besides All India Radio and TV channels. He is the Editor of Konkani Monthly Divine Voice from Kerala and Editorial Board member for For Mhoineachi Rotti (monthly magazine). He also takes part in debates on social and Konkani language issues and does the cover stories for Gulab, a monthly magazine in Konkani. He is an organiser, compere, translator and transliterator.

Vivek Shanbhag writes in Kannada. He has published five short story collections, three novels and two plays. He has edited two anthologies, one of which is in English. Vivek was the founding editor of the literary journal Desha Kaala. His critically-acclaimed novel Ghachar Ghochar is translated into 18 languages worldwide. Ghachar Ghochar was on the list of best ten books of 2017 by NY Times as well as The Guardian. It is one of Vulture’s 100 best books of the 21st century. Ghachar Ghochar is the first Indian language book to be a finalist for the LA Times book prize in fiction 2017 and The American National Translation Award 2017.
Vivek is the co-translator of U R Ananthamurthy’s book Hindutva or Hind Swaraj’ into English.

Yvonne Vaz Ezdani stays in Saligao, North Goa but lives for some months of the year with her family in Brisbane . She is an ex teacher turned school counsellor and an author of two books, ‘Songs of the Survivors’ published by Goa 1556 and ‘New Songs of the Survivors’ published by Speaking Tiger. Although the genre of these books is oral history, she is also interested in psychology and stories of the human mind and spirit. She loves reading ,writing and gardening.