Participant's Bios

Priya Sarukkai Chabria: is the editor of Talking Poetry on the website <openspaceindia.org> She is a poet and novelist. Her first novel, The Other Garden (1995) was published by Rupa & Co., and her new novel Or Else... is forthcoming from Zubaan (2207). Her collection of poems, Dialogue and Other Poems (2005) was published by the Sahitya Akademi. Her other published works appear in Adelphiana, Alphabet City, Atlas, L.A.B., Quarterly, South Asian Review, The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Voices from the East and are archived at various sites.

Temsula Ao: is Professor of English and Dean, School of Humanities and Education, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong. She has also been Director, North East Zone Cultural Centre, Dimapur. She has published 4 books of poems, a book on Henry James as well as The Ao-Naga Oral Tradition. Her entry, 'Folklore of Nagaland' has been published in the Greenwood Encyclopedia of World Folklore and Folklife Her most recent publication is a book of short stories called These Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone (Zubaan-Penguin, 2006). She has contributed a number of articles on different aspects of Naga culture to various journals and her poems are represented in several anthologies.

Randhir Khare has published more than a dozen volumes of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and translations including the critically acclaimed The Singing Bow: Song Poems Of The Bhil. He teaches MA Literature at Nowrosjee Wadia College in Pune.

Sridala Swami, a film editor from FTII, Pune has edited documentaries, short features and commercials. She has worked with the publishing house, Katha, taught cinema and yoga and conducted film appreciation workshops. Her poetry has been published in the online journals, Nthposition,  Museindia, and in Chandrabhaga. Her first collection of poems, A Reluctant Survivor, is in forthcoming from the Sahitya Akademi. Three books for children, Phani’s Funny Chappals, Kabadiwala and What Shall We Do For A Cradle? are due from Pratham in 2007. 

Anju Makhija is a poet, playwright and translator. Her works include View from the Web a book of poems; All Together, a multi-media production that won an award at the National Educational Film Festival, California (’86). She has co-translated an anthology of partition poetry, Freedom & Fissures. Her plays include If Wishes Were Horses, The Last Train and Unspoken Dialogs.  She won the first prize in the All India Poetry Competition, organized by the British Council and the Poetry Society of India (’95). She also won the BBC World Poetry Award (’02). Her translation of 16th century Sufi poet,  Shah Abdul Latif, Seeking the Beloved was recently published by Katha.

GJV Prasad discusses life and literature at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He writes fiction as well as poetry. His novel, A Clean Breast, was published (to critical acclaim, including being short-listed for the Commonwealth Prize for First Fiction in the Eurasia Region) in 1993 and his second novel, In the
Name of God, is scheduled for publication this year. In Delhi without a Visa, his collection of poems, was published in 1996.

Keki Daruwalla is a leading figure in Indian poetry in English today and a mentor to a new generation of poets in India. He is the recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award (1984) and the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (1987) for Asia.He published his first collection of poetry, Under Orion in 1970 and now has nine collections of poetry to his name.  Keki Daruwalla’s collected poems were published by Penguin in 2006, as well as a travelogue, Riding the Himalayas. Keki Daruwalla has published three collections of short stories, the most recent being A House in Ranikhet.

Arshia Sattar has a Ph.D in South Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago. Her translations of the Sanskrit Kathasaritsagara and Valmiki Ramayana have been published by Penguin. She teaches courses on classical Indian literatures for various American universities and has recently begun teaching traditional narratives for screen writing programs. She is a Program Consultant for arts and culture at Open Space.

Baby Haldar was born and grew up largely in Murshidabad, in West Bengal. She was married off at 12, and pregnant soon after. After she had two more children, she walked out of her marital home and took a train to Delhi with her children, where she started work as a household cleaner. She worked in the home of a retired academic who noticed her interest in his books. He gave her a notebook and pen, and encouraged her to write herself. At night, after her work was done and the children asleep, she poured out her life story into the notebook. This resulted in her memoir A Life Less Ordinary. She wrote in Bengali, and the book has been translated into several languages including English. Baby Halder lives and works in a house in Delhi, and is writing her second book.

Mamang Dai is a journalist who has written for The Sentinel and The Telegraph and is currently writing for the Hindustan Times. A former member of the Indian Administrative Service, she left the service to pursue a career in writing, traveled extensively and has numerous articles, poems and short stories published in various journals. She is the author of Arunachal Pradesh – The Hidden Land and the recipient of the state’s first annual Verrier Elwin Award, 2003 for the book. Her first collection of poems River Poems has drawn much critical acclaim.

Urvashi Butalia is a feminist and a historian whose areas of research are Partition and oral histories. She was the Director and co-founder of Kali for Women, India’s first feminist publishing house. She now runs Zubaan a press which focuses on women’s writing. Her own publications include the highly acclaimed The Other Side of Silence ; Voices from the Partition of India and Speaking Peace; Women’s voices from Kashmir. Zubaan has recently published her translation of Baby Haldar’s A Life Less Ordinary. Zubaan is an imprint of Kali.

Alok Bhalla is Professor of English Literature at the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad, and has published extensively on literature and politics. His most recent publication is Partition Dialogues: Memories of a Lost Home. He has translated Dharamvir Bharati’s  Andha Yug, Bhisham Sahni's  Madhavi, into English as well as Intizar Husain’s stories, A Chronicle of the Peacocks. He has edited Stories about the Partition India (3 volumes).