Born in Patna in 1974,  Siddharth Chowdhury is the author of  Patna Roughcut [ Picador:2005]; Day Scholar[ Picador:2010], shortlisted for the Man Asian Prize and  the  DSC Jaipur prize; The Patna Manual of Style[ Aleph:2015], shortlisted for the Hindu Prize for Fiction. An Omnibus edition of his work, Ritwik & Hriday: Tales from the City, Tales  from the Town was brought out by Picador in 2016.  His short novel The Time of the Peacock ( Aleph :2021) is now out in the world.

Farah Ahamed’s writing has been published in The White Review, Ploughshares, The Mechanics’ Institute Review, The LA Review, The Markaz Review, The Massachusetts Review amongst others. Her stories were shortlisted for the 2022 Bridport and Commonwealth Prize. She is the editor of Period Matters: Menstruation Experiences in South Asia, Pan Macmillan India, 2022, (periodmattersbook.com.) You can read more of her work at: farahahamed.com.

Vijayalakshmi Sridhar writes from Chennai, a metropolis in South India. Stories have always been part of Vijayalakshmi’s life. Her writing can be found in JaggeryLit, Spark Magazine, Exposition Review, Vestal Review among others.

Manjima Gupta is a 23-year-old teacher and artist. They studied Philosophy at Ashoka University and are currently a Teach for India fellow, teaching 10th graders English and Social Science. They spend as much of their time in creative pursuits as possible, including writing, art, and singing. They’re an avid reader with a penchant for slice-of-life stories.

Dr Rakhshanda Jalil is a multi-award-winning translator, writer, and literary historian. She has published over 25 books and written over 50 academic papers and essays. Some of her books 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), among others. She runs an organization called Hindustani Awaaz, devoted to the popularization of Hindi-Urdu literature and culture.

Kirtana Kumar is an actor, director, and film-maker, who loves writing on the intersections between gender and culture. She lives by a hill and forest, outside Bangalore, with animals, trees and flowers who leave her no option but to join the dots between life, nature, and human expression. Her first book is Bangalore Blues.

Vighnesh Hampapura recently graduated from Ashoka University with a degree in literature. He is heading to the University of Oxford for further studies, where he is supported by a Rhodes Scholarship. His English translation of Kannada writer Vasudhendra’s short stories is forthcoming from Penguin Random House.

Sanchit Toor is broadly interested in the questions of language, literature, religion, translation, and performance. He graduated with an MA in English from Ashoka University and currently works with the Ashoka Centre for Translation.

Peeyush Sekhsaria is an amateur naturalist and occasional writer. He paints to slow down. Some of his photography and writing work can be seen at www.peeyushsekhsaria.com. He is mainly interested in spending time in the wild and is now finding ways to do that in professional capacity as a natural resources management professional. An architect by training, he did a Masters in Mud Architecture from CRATerre in France and followed it up with an M. Phil in Geography from the Sorbonne during which he worked with the Dogon, in Mali, West Africa. He divides his time between Delhi and Pune.

Sarbani Sarbashree Mohanty is deeply invested in writing poetry, novels, translations and editing projects when she can spare time from her research work. She has translated two Odia autobiographies: Reminiscences of a Nobody (2022) by Beena Dei, Odisha’s first female surgeon and I am Sumani (2023) by Sumani Jhodia, the tribal activist leader from Mayurbhanj. She has also edited a Bibliography of Biographies in Odisha (2022) and an Annotated Bibliography of Autobiographies in Odisha (2023) on which she got an opportunity to work during her stint with the “Centre of Excellence for Translation and Life Writing” at Rama Devi Women’s University. She has two published anthologies of poetry called ‘Voyage of the Soul’ and ‘Trimukta’ which include poems in Odia, Hindi, and English. Currently she is engaged as a research scholar in English Literature at Sri Sri University, Cuttack.

Sanchit Toor is broadly interested in the questions of language, literature, religion, translation, and performance. He graduated with an MA in English from Ashoka University and currently works with the Ashoka Centre for Translation.

Joanne Nezi was born in Montreal to Greek parents who moved the family to Greece when she was ten. The memory of Indian ladies in saris walking in Montreal’s Botanical Gardens was the beginning of a lifelong interest in India which led her to a degree in South Asian Studies at SOAS. Retired now from a career in the European Union, she lives in Athens and Isthmia, near the Corinth Canal.

CB Mohandas teaches literature and film. He writes on these subjects in Malayalam.

Kanak Agrawal is a writer and photographer based in Mumbai.

Nabanita Sengupta is a translator, creative writer, and academician. She teaches in an undergraduate college in Kolkata. She has co-edited an anthology of critical essays on Understanding Women’s Experiences of Displacement. Her published translations are Chambal Revisited and A Bengali Lady in England. She also has an e-book of fiction, The Ghumi Days and a collaborative anthology of poetry to her name. She has been published in multiple anthologies, journals and e-zines.

Rituparna Sengupta is a writer, translator, and academic. She researches and teaches literature and popular culture, writes essays on cinema and literature for popular and academic publications, and translates poetry and short fiction. In summers, she works as a full-time mango-picker-and-disposer for her family.

Rupayan Mukherjee teaches at the Dept. of English, University B.T. & Evening College, Cooch Behar. He is the co-editor of Partition Literature and Cinema: A Critical Introduction (Routledge, 2020) and Popular Literature: Texts, Contexts, Contestations (ibidem-Verlag, 2022). His literary writings have featured in Café Dissensus, Livewire, The CQ Magazine, among others.

Gautam Pemmaraju is a Mumbai based filmmaker, writer, and researcher, working in the areas of history, literature, and art. He has a special interest in the cultural history of the Deccan & Hyderabad, and 20th century anti-colonialism.

Kotesh Devulapally is an independent scholar based in Hyderabad, India. He writes and speaks on different aspects of the emergence of regions and regionalisms in modern India. His work aims at retrieving the rational egalitarian, and hence liberative articulations in History and Culture of Indian sub-continent, particularly of the Telugu people.

Vandana Rag is a bi-lingual author, translator and literary activist. She has published four books of short stories in Hindi. Her recently published Hindi novel, Bisat par Jugnu – a saga of dreams traversing across India and China is receiving much critical acclaim. She has translated poetry and prose into Hindi and English.

Michelle D’costa is a writer, editor, creative writing mentor, and podcaster from Mumbai. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Litro, Berfrois, Out Of Print, Economic & Political Weekly, and many other journals. She is the author of the poetry chapbook Gulf (Yavanika Press, 2021).  Most recently, her short story appeared in Four Palaces Publishing’s Fall anthology.

Krupali Naik  is an Assistant Professor of Konkani at Goa University. She is the sub editor of Jag Konkani Monthly and has translated Suraj aur Mor from Hindi to Konkani for Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi. She has also contributed for the PLSI Volume on Canacona variety of Konkani and presented research papers at various national level seminars organized by Sahitya Akademi and other institutions.

Kanak Agrawal is a writer and photographer based in Mumbai.

Siddhi Vartak is an artist and storyteller from Mumbai. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Animation Film Design from NID, Ahmedabad.  She writes, paints, illustrates and animates to express herself. She has been working as a freelancer in the field of film-making, storytelling, and visual art. She aspires to present authentic and raw stories in their most honest form, in the mediums that suit them the most.

Shashi Deshpande is a novelist and short story writer who has also written for children. She has done some translations from Kannada and Marathi into English. She is the recipient of the Sahitya Akademi award for her novel, That Long Silence as well as the Padma Shri. Shashi Deshpande has lectured in many universities both in India and abroad. She now lives a reclusive life in Bangalore.

Kanak Agrawal is a writer and photographer based in Mumbai.

Vighnesh Hampapura recently graduated from Ashoka University with a degree in literature. He is heading to the University of Oxford for further studies, where he is supported by a Rhodes Scholarship. His English translation of Kannada writer Vasudhendra’s short stories is forthcoming from Penguin Random House.

Ustad Mohi Bahauddin Dagar has had his initial training on the sitar under the tutelage of his mother Smt Pramila Mohiuddin Dagar. At age 16, he began his training under his father, the Rudraveena maestro Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar and also learnt vocals from his uncle Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar, a Dhrupad vocalist.  He now continues to get able guidance under Pandit Pushpraj Koshti. Mohi Bahauddin has played concerts in India and abroad.  He is a recipient of the the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award. He presently resides at Dhrupad Gurukul, a residential training space where he teaches students for voice, veena and other instruments in the Guru Shishya Parampara method.

Kanak Agrawal is a writer and photographer based in Mumbai.

Kalyani Jha is a Marathi lecturer at the undergraduate level. She also teaches Marathi to non-Marathi speakers. She has a Doctorate in Marathi Literature. Research, translation, culture, gender, child education and music are her areas of interest. She lives in Pune.

Gayatri is a therapist, poet and author. Her previous works include Anitya, Sit Your Self Down, and Who Me, Poor? Her latest title is Devi & The Battle of Meghadhanush, a children’s fantasy adventure which is also a mental health tool for emotional self-regulation. Her medium for both writing and therapeutic practice is applied Buddhist mind studies. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize 2021 and has featured in the Converse Anthology in 2022, among others. She is the founder of Shamah | शम: a mind-body-spirit alignment practice.

Siddharth Dasgupta writes poetry and fiction from lost hometowns. His A Moveable East arrived in early ’21. A fifth book and third collection of poetry—All These Streets We’ve Known By Heart—has emerged in October ’22 via the independent publisher Red River. Siddharth’s writing has appeared in Epiphany, Rogue Agent, Lunch Ticket, Prairie Fire, Kyoto Journal, and elsewhere. He serves as Editor, Visual Narratives with The Bombay Literary Magazine, but calls the city of Poona home.

Suranjana Choudhury teaches literature at North Eastern Hill University, Shillong. Her essays and translations have appeared  in Biblio, The Wire, Scroll.in, Café Dissensus, Humanities Underground, among other places.

Anshu Chhetri is a final year M. Phil student in English Literature. She is also a freelance content writer and translator. Some of her works have appeared in Terribly Tiny Tales, LiveWire, Parcham, Youth Ki Awaz and others. She also runs a blog called Humans of the Margin where she documents stories of people whose voices often go unheard. Her passion lies in reading, writing and styling clothes and shoes.

Kanak Agrawal is a writer and photographer based in Mumbai.

Barnali Ray Shukla is a filmmaker and poet. Her writing has featured in Sunflower Collective, OutOfPrint, Kitaab.org, OUTCAST, Madras Courier, Bengaluru Review, Indian Ruminations, Vayavya, The Brown Critique, Kaurab, Usawa Literary Review, Portside Review. Anthology of Contemporary Indian Poetry II, indianculturalforum.in, Indian Quarterly, The Punch Magazine, Modern English Poetry by Younger Indians  [Sahitya Akademi], The World That Belongs to Us [Harper Collins, India], Have a Safe Journey [Amaryllis, India] Side Effects of Living [Speaking Tiger], Hibiscus [Hawakal Publishers], Open Your Eyes [Hawakal Publishers], Converse [ PippaRann Books &Media], The Kali Project [Indie Blu-e Publishing], Borderless [Singapore], Voice & Verse [Hong Kong], UCityReview [USA], A Portrait in Blues [UK], Centre for Stories [Australia]. She has two feature films to her credit as writer director, three documentaries and two short films, photo essays and a book of poems, Apostrophe. [RLFPA 2016]. Her new Hindi Feature film ‘Joon’ premiered at Bolivia, earlier this month, selections are already in for festivals in Romania, Sweden and Ecuador. She lives with her plants, books and a husband in Mumbai.

Amit Kumar is a film enthusiast particularly interested in the stories set in rural India. He teaches a co-curricular course titled ‘Filming the Ordinary’ at Ashoka University. He has studied Film Direction at State Institute of Film and Television, Rohtak and Liberal Studies under the Performing Arts Department, Ashoka University.

Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry is a Chandigarh-based theatre artist and director who has worked around the world. She was awarded the 2003 Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in the Theatre Direction category. She was the recipient of the 2011 Padma Shri Award. She is Professor Emeritus at Punjab University.

Surjit Patar is a Punjabi language writer and poet. His poems enjoy immense popularity with the general public and have won high acclaim from critics. Among his works of poetry are “Hawa Vich Likhe Harf” (Words written in the Air), Birkh Arz Kare (Thus Spake the Tree), Hanere Vich Sulagdi Varnmala (Words Smouldering in the Dark), Lafzaan Di Dargah (Shrine of Words), Patjhar Di Pazeb (Anklet of Autumn) and Surzameen (Music Land). He is the recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award (1993), Saraswati Samman (2009) and Padmashri (2012).

Geet Chaturvedi is a poet, novelist, and essayist. He is one of the most widely read contemporary Hindi authors. The recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the Syed Haidar Raza Fellowship for fiction writing, he was named among the Ten Best Young Writers of India by The Indian Express. He recently won the 2021 Vatayan-UK Literary Award for his contribution to Hindi literature. His works have been translated into twenty-two languages.

Arathi Devandran curates personal experiences through prose and poetry. She explores themes of inter-generational familial relationships, women’s issues, and navigating the complexities of self-growth. Her work has been featured on various online platforms including RIC Journal, Huffington Post, Burning House Press and in print. She is currently working on her full-length manuscript.

Latha Arunachalam is a Tamil poet and translator. Her debut poetry collection named ‘Udalaadum Nadhi‘ was published  in 2018  and thereafter she has translated several works. Her Tamil translation of a famous Nigerian novel, Season of Crimson Blossoms by Abubakkar Adam Ibrahim has been  widely appreciated for its diction , eloquence and a novel theme. She has received the Ananda Vikatan Award for Best Translation (2019) and Vasaga Salai Literary Organisation Award for her work.

Sangeeta Ray is currently the Vamberry Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Maryland. She is also a Professor in the English department where she teaches Anglophone Postcolonial Literature, South Asian Literature, Literature from the Black Diaspora, and Asian American Literature. Her work is always attuned to questions of gender and sexuality. Her current interests include environmental studies as well the field of refugee studies. She is primarily a literary scholar engaged in questions of form and genre, postcolonial reading practices and the relationship between aesthetics, ethics and politics. She has published two books, Engendering India: Woman and Nation in Colonial and Postcolonial Narratives (Duke UP 2000) and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: In other Words (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). She has co-edited the Companion To Postcolonial Studies (Blackwell, 2000) and the 3 volume Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016). She is currently working on two book projects, Form Fitted: Postcolonial Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics and a book on South Asian refugee literature in Bengali, English, Hindi and in translation. She has published widely in key journals and given talks nationally and internationally. She is the recipient of several grants and serves on the editorial boards of important journals in the field. She was one of the founders of the Postcolonial Discussion Group now a Forum at the MLA. She has served as President of a few divisions in the MLA as well as on various committees for the MLA and ACLA. She has been a past President of the Cultural Studies Association and has served two terms on the supervisory Board of the English Institute. She was President of ACLA from 2020-2021. At the University of Maryland, she has, in the past, been the Director of the Asian American Studies Certificate Program, Director of the Cultures of the Americas in the College Park Scholars Program as well as the Director of Graduate Studies in the English department.

Chirodip Naha is from Cumilla, a small city in Bangladesh. He is a Post Graduate student at Ashoka University. He was invited to participate in the University of Iowa’s prestigious international writing program summer institute. He prefers to write fiction, especially historical fiction. Currently, he is interested in the 1971 Bangladesh Pakistan war and is writing a novel on this theme. His short stories have been published in the Collision Literary Magazine.

Aranya is a poet, and editor of the digital newsletter ‘Poetly’. Poetly is a space that curates Indian and international poetry, along with critical commentaries that contextualise the works within contemporary socio-cultural discourses and artistic practice. He is currently based out of Delhi, a place to which he does not belong.

Poornima Laxmeshwar resides in Bangalore, India. Her books of poetry include ‘Anything but Poetry’ (Writers Workshop), ‘Thirteen’ – a chapbook (Yavanika Press) and ‘Strings Attached’ (Red River).

Ritoshree Chatterjee pursues her undergraduate degree in English literature and struggles to locate herself through writing amidst the chaos. Her works have appeared in Café Dissensus (Issue 60), Madras Courier, The Punch Magazine (The Poetry Issue 2022), Outlook, The Chakkar, and the Joao Roque Review amongst others.

Satya Dash is the recipient of the 2020 Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize and a finalist for the 2020 Broken River Prize. His poems appear in Poet Lore, ANMLY, Waxwing, Rhino Poetry, Cincinnati Review, and Diagram, among others. Apart from having a degree in electronics from BITS Pilani-Goa, he has been a cricket commentator. He has been nominated previously for Pushcart, Best of the Net, Orison Anthology and Best New Poets. He grew up in Cuttack and now lives in Bangalore, India.

Winner of the Deepankar Khiwani Memorial Prize 2022, Tuhin Bhowal’s poems and translations appear or are forthcoming in nether Quarterly, adda (Commonwealth Writers UK), Parentheses Journal, Ovenbird Poetry, and elsewhere. He currently serves as a Poetry Editor at Bengaluru Review, Sonic Boom Journal and Yavanika Press.

Nishi Pulugurtha is an academic and writer based in Kolkata. Her publications include a monograph on Derozio (2010), a collection of essays on travel, Out in the Open (2019), an edited volume of essays on travel, Across and Beyond (2020), a volume of poems, The Real and the Unreal and Other Poems (2020), a collection of short stories, The Window Sill (2021) and co-edited a volume of poems Voices and Vision The First IPPL Anthology (2021). A second volume of poems is forthcoming from Writers Workshop, Kolkata. She is working on a book project that brings together recipes from the Telugu kitchen in Calcutta with tales of growing up in Calcutta/Kolkata. She also writes on Alzheimer’s Disease.

Dr. Sarabjeet Dhody Natesan is an Associate Professor of Economics at the School of Interwoven Arts and Sciences, Krea University. She writes about growing up in Lajpat Nagar, a refugee resettlement colony of Delhi. Her academic research lies at the intersection of macroeconomics and public policy implementation. Her current research is on the ‘Bazaars of Post-Partition India’ and ‘The Economics of Religion’. She lives in Chennai with her family. In her free time, she can be found at the beach.

Yamini Krishna Bandlamudi is from Vijayawada.  She did M.A English and MSW and has been into teaching English, Translation, English media & social work for the past 12 years.

Amandeep Kaur is an assistant professor of English at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar.

Kalyani Dutta is a writer and translator. She co-authored with Meena Bhargava ‘ Women, Education and Politics’: The Women’s Movement and Delhi’s Indraprastha College ‘, OUP (2005). A recipient of Katha Translation Award, her translation of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s Freedom Fables: Satires and Political Writings (2019) was nominated for the Crossword Translation Prize.  There are also Abanindranath Tagore’s   Rajkahini in English (2005) and three contributions in The Essential Tagore, Ed Radha Chakravarty, Fakhrul Alam, Harvard.  ‘Sobuj Card’ by Trishna Bosak, for ‘Bangladesh- Writings on 1971, Orient Longman, (2022) is the most recent.

Vandana Rag is a bi-lingual author, translator and literary activist. She has published four books of short stories in Hindi. Her recently published Hindi novel, Bisat par Jugnu – a saga of dreams traversing across India and China is receiving much critical acclaim. She has translated poetry and prose into Hindi and English.

Amandeep Sandhu was born in Rourkela, Odisha, and studied at the University of Hyderabad. He lives in Bangalore.

Aman is the author of two novels: Sepia Leaves (2008, Rupa) is about a family living under the shadow of schizophrenia from a young boy’s point of view during the Emergency. Roll of Honour (2012, Rupa) is about the split loyalties of a Sikh boy in a military boarding school in Panjab during the Khalistan movement, based on the events of the year 1984. The novel was nominated for The Hindu Prize 2013.

In late 2019, Aman published his non-fiction book, PANJAB Journeys Through Fault Lines (Westland/Amazon, 2019) which is part-reportage, part-memoir, part-contextual history. The book was long-listed for the NIF-Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay Award 2020 and short-listed for the Atta Galatta-BLF Non Fiction Prize 2020. Aman’s e-Book on India’s mental health in the times of coronavirus outbreak is: Bravado to Fear to Abandonment: Mental Health and COVID-19 Lockdown available on Amazon. His essays and short stories have appeared in various anthologies, magazines and websites. He also writes for Caravan, Scroll, The Hindu, The Hindu Businessline and others.

Aman was a Fellow, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, 2013-15. He is now a Homi Bhabha Fellow, 2022-2024, working on a book tentatively titled The Outliers: Sikhs who live Outside Panjab, in India.

Jashanpreet Kaur hails from a village in district Bathinda of Punjab. She has completed her post-graduation in Literature from Panjab University, Chandigarh. At present, she is pursuing Ph.D. on the concept of Punjabiat in Punjabi Poetry of West Punjab. She is a voracious reader. Her areas of interest are poetry, folklore, culture and gender. Her poems have appeared in Punjabi literary magazines. She has also worked as a translator and content writer with TROLLYTIMES & KARTI DHARTI during the farmers’ protests.

Vandana Rag is a bi-lingual author, translator and literary activist. She has published four books of short stories in Hindi. Her recently published Hindi novel, Bisat par Jugnu – a saga of dreams traversing across India and China is receiving much critical acclaim. She has translated poetry and prose into Hindi and English.

Jaskaran Singh Rana is a passionate photographer who is interested in the stories of common people and their struggles.  He is currently based in Jalandhar.

Jaya Jaitly has worked closely, with India’s crafts persons to sustain traditional craft livelihoods and preserve India’s cultural heritage, since 1967 and has travelled widely both in India and abroad for her work. After guiding Design and Marketing at Gurjari for the Gujarat Govt for 11 years she founded the Dastkari Haat Samiti, a national association of craftspeople in 1986. She also created Dilli Haat, a permanent and now iconic crafts marketplace in Delhi in 1994. Jaitly works to link crafts persons to a variety of markets through innovative strategies like creating artistic crafts maps and organising over 15 international workshops with foreign artisans and Indian counterparts to further diplomacy and India’s soft power. She headed a major project with Google Arts & Culture titled Crafted in India to present the largest online exposition of craft stories in the world. Her published works, apart from hundreds of articles, and essays, include the Crafts of Gujarat, Crafts of Jammu, Kashmir & Ladakh, Crafting Nature, Craft Traditions of India, Crafts Atlas of India, The Artistry of Handwork, The Woven Textiles of Varanasi, A Podium on the Pavement, and Viswakarma’s Children.  Crafting Indian Scripts was published in 2015 along with the Akshara exhibition. Her most recent work is Life among the Scorpions – A Memoir of a Woman in Indian Politics. She also writes children’s stories, and gives lectures at educational and cultural institutions.

Adnan Kafeel Darwesh hails from Ballia (U.P). He graduated in Computer Science (Hons.) from Delhi University and went on to acquire a Master’s Degree in Hindi Literature from Jamia Millia Islamia. Currently pursuing a Ph.D from Jamia Millia Islamia, he is a poet, translator and occasional photographer. Darwesh won the noted Bharat Bhushan Agrawal Poetry Award (2018). His first poetry collection, ‘Thithurte Lamp post’ is published by Rajkamal Prakashan, Delhi in 2022.

Vandana Rag is a bi-lingual author, translator and literary activist. She has published four books of short stories in Hindi. Her recently published Hindi novel, Bisat par Jugnu – a saga of dreams traversing across India and China is receiving much critical acclaim. She has translated poetry and prose into Hindi and English.

Kalapini Komkali is endowed with a wholly original, melodious and extremely rich voice. She is widely recognized as one of the finest and well – trained classical vocalists of the younger generation. She is the daughter and disciple of the legendary Pandit Kumar Gandharva and has also been trained by her illustrious mother, Vidushi Vasundhara Komkali. Kalapini learnt from her distinguished parents not only the technique and grammar of her art but also inherited a capacity for creativity and reflection.

While strengthening her hold over her inheritance with a fine sense of understanding, she has evolved her own vision and has emerged in the last decade as a vocalist with a profound degree of sensitivity and intensity. Her performances are marked by youthful imagination, artistic thoughtfulness and a mature command over various aspects of classical vocalism. The improvisations made by her are generally rooted in the Gwalior gayaki, but carry her own distinct identity.

Kalapini’s wide repertoire of ragas and compositions is further supplemented by the presentation of the traditional songs of Malwa representing the folkore and ethnic flavour of the region. The Sagun-Nirgun bhajans (devotional songs) of the various saint poets rendered in her inimitable style provide an ascetic flavour to Kalapini’s music.

Committed to the promotion of art, she organizes music festivals at Dewas to bring together major scholars, performers as well as young artists. A performer of uncommon perception, Kalapini is popular amongst the youth for her lecture- demonstrations of Indian Classical Music.

Kalapini lives in Dewas, Central India. She is an active trustee of the Kumar Gandharva Sangeet Academy. Commercial releases of her studio recordings include, ‘Aarambha’ and ‘Inheritance’, released by HMV; and ‘Dharohar’ released by Times Music. ‘Swar- Manjari’, a live concert recording, was released by Virgin Records. Kalapini has also recorded for sound tracks of the films, ‘Paheli’ and ‘Devi Ahilya’.

Himadri Agarwal (Hima) is a reader and a lover of language. She currently reads Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, and English, and hopes to keep adding more to the list. She loves to play, both with words and with games—an avid Dungeons & Dragons fan, she hopes to spend her life listening to stories, whether they are from people, pages, or the game board.

Kalyani Jha is a Marathi lecturer at the undergraduate level. She also teaches Marathi to non-Marathi speakers. She has a Doctorate in Marathi Literature. Research, translation, culture, gender, child education and music are her areas of interest. She lives in Pune.

Zainab Ummer Farook calls Kozhikode her home, but she loves banana halwa from Mangalore. Her poems have been featured in The Bombay Literary Magazine, nether Quarterly, Narrow Road, and the anthology 14 International Younger Poets.

Yamini Krishnan is a student of English and Creative Writing at Ashoka University, Haryana, India. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Scroll.in, The Bombay Literary Magazine and Extinction Violin: The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Poets among others. She’s a graduate of the Summer Institute of the International Writing Programme at the University of Iowa. She writes poetry and essays. She lives between Delhi and Pune.

Purvi Rajpuria is a freelance writer and illustrator. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Illustration and Visual Culture at Washington University in St. Louis, USA.