Writing Workshop - The Mumbai Litfest 2012

Kirsty Murray :From convict times to contemporary circuses, from India to Ireland, from the complex past into possible futures, Murray’s fiction blends rich elements and thought-provoking themes. Her novels include Market Blues, Zarconi’s Magic Flying Fish, Vulture’s Gate, and Bridie’s Fire, which is the first title in her epic series of Australian historical fiction, Children of the Wind. Her recent novel, The Lilliputians (released in the UK and Australia as India Dark), is based on the true story of a theatrical troupe of Australian children that toured India in 1910.  It won a NSW Premier’s History Prize in 2011. Her novels have won and been short-listed for numerous awards including the WA Premier’s Award and the NSW Premier’s History and NSW Premier’s Literature Awards. She has been an Asialink Literature Resident in South India, a Creative Fellow of the State Library of Victoria and is currently an Ambassador for the Victorian Premier’s Reading Challenge. She has participated in writers festivals and conferences in Australia, UK, Bali, India, Singapore and Hong Kong. Murray has also taught creative writing in many schools and institutions. She is married to puppeteer Ken Harper.

Arundhathi Subramaniam is the author of three books of poetry (most recently Where I Live: New and Selected Poems), the bestselling biography of the contemporary mystic Sadhguru (Sadhguru: More Than A Life) and a prose work on the Buddha (The Book of Buddha). As editor, her most recent book is Pilgrim's India. She has worked as poetry editor, arts critic and curator. Her poetry has been widely translated and featured in several international journals and anthologies. She has been awarded the Charles Wallace Fellowship, the Visiting Arts Fellowship, the Homi Bhabha Fellowship and the Raza Award for Poetry. Since 2004, she has been the India domain of the Poetry International Web. She has worked at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai, leading a discussion-based inter-arts forum named Chauraha. She has also been Head of Indian Classical Dance at the NCPA. She has written on literature and classical dance for several years. 

Dilip D’Souza  is a writer, journalist and an occasional activist who writes on both social and political issues, travel, current affairs as well as writing a well-known mathematics column for Mint. He has authored three books: ‘Branded by Law’, ‘The Narmada Damned’ and Roadrunner’ alongside essays in a number of anthologies for both national and international publications. Some of the prestigious awards he has won for his work include the Statesman Rural Reporting Award, The Times of India/Red Cross Prize, The Timeout Travel Writing Ward, the Sanctuary Magazine Prize and the Outlook Picador nonfiction prize for his essay “Ride across the River.” Recently, he also won the esteemed Newsweek and Daily Beast Award “The Open Hands Prize for commentary in South Asia.”

Tanika Gupta's work for theatre includes: Skeleton (Soho Theatre  during residency  1997); Translation of Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan (NT Education tour); The Waiting Room (NT, Winner of the John Whiting Award 2000); Sanctuary (NT, during residency,2002); Inside Out (Clean Break 2002); Fragile Land (Hampstead Theatre; nominated for Olivier and EMMA awards 2003); Hobson’s Choice (Young Vic nominated for Olivier Award 2003);  Gladiator Games (Sheffield Crucible and Theatre Royal Stratford East 2005/2006); Sugar Mummies (Royal Court, 2006); Catch (Group Play for Royal Court, 2006); White Boy (National Youth Theatre, Soho Theatre, 2007 );  Meet the Mukherjees ( Bolton Octagon 2007).Her adaptation of Charles Dickens Great Expectations for Watford Palace Theatre/English Touring theatre; Wah!Wah!Girls a British Bollywood musical (Sadlers Wells/ Theatre Royal Stratford East) is currently on a UK tour.

Abhijeet Kini is a Mumbai based illustrator, animator and independent comics publisher, known for his work in Tinkle comics and his own comic series "Angry Maushi" and "Fanboys". Winner of the Best Illustrator Awards Bronze (2018 and 2019) at the Comic Con India awards, Abhijeet has been a regular participant in all the Indian comic cons and has also participated in international editions. Starting off cartooning for newspapers and magazines, he has been illustrating for Tinkle comics since 2004. He is also the co-founder of the animation and merchandise line Kinistudios.com. Abhijeet conducts workshops across all age groups on ideation, creative writing and drawing and comic making and is also a visiting faculty at leading academic institutions.

Inua Ellan is an award winning poet, playwright and performer. He has lived in Jos, Plateau State - Nigeria, Dublin - Ireland and London - England where he currently resides. He has five books published, including his most recent pamphlet of poems Candy Coated Unicorns and Converse All Stars. The 14th Tale, his first play won a Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2009 before touring nationally and transferring to the National Theatre in spring 2010. He performed the play for its international debut at the Perth Festival in February 2012. His second play, Untitled, was long listed for the Alfred Fagan award. It was co-commissioned by Soho Theatre and toured nationally in autumn 2010. His most recent show Knight Watch was commissioned by the Albany and toured to outdoor spaces around London and the UK this summer. His third show Black T-shirt Collection commences its second national tour in the autumn.

Chandrahas Choudhury is a novelist and literary critic based in Delhi. He is the author of the novel Arzee the Dwarf (HarperCollins, 2009), which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth First Book Prize and named one of “60 Essential Works of Modern Indian Literature in English” by World Literature Today. His book reviews appear in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. He is also the Fiction & Poetry editor of the Indian monthly The Caravan.

Amitava Kumar's latest book, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm A Tiny Bomb was  judged the ‘Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year’ at the Page Turner Literary Award.  Kumar’s earlier non-fiction titles are Husband of a Fanatic, which was an ‘Editors’ Choice’ book at the New York Times; Bombay-London-New York was included on the list of “Books of the Year” in The New Statesman; and Passport Photos, winner of an “Outstanding Book of the Year” award from the Myers Program. His debut novel, Home Products, was short-listed for the Vodafone Crossword Book Award. In addition, Kumar has edited five critical anthologies. His work has appeared in The Nation, The New Statesman, Boston Review, Harper’s, Kenyon Review, Caravan and Guernica. Kumar serves on the advisory board of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop as well as the Norman Mailer Center. Currently, he is at work on his second novel. He is Professor of English on the Helen D. Lockwood Chair at Vassar College in upstate New York.

Glyn Maxwell is an established poet and dramatist. He lives in London and is the Poetry Editor of The New Republic and Professor of Writing at New York University and Essex University. He has won several awards for his poetry, including the E.M. Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1997), and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for The Nerve (2004). His poetry collection, Hide Now, was shortlisted for both the Forward and T.S. Eliot Prizes (2009). His selected poems, One Thousand Nights and Counting, was published last year. His critical guidebook On Poetry was published this year in the Oberon Masters Series' and sold out its first run within five days. He reviews for the Times Literary Supplement and London Review of Books., He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Welsh Academy. He is currently writing a new collection as well as editing Walcott’s Collected Poems 1948-2012. He has written several plays, 15 of which have been professionally staged in the UK and the US.

Ruth Padel is an award-winning British poet, who started out as a classical Greek scholar. She has published eight poetry collections, most recently The Mara Crossing, poems and prose on migration, animal and human, in the mediaeval form of the prosimetrum; and Darwin – A Life in Poems, a miniature biography in lyric poems of her great great grandfather Charles Darwin.  She has also published a novel and eight works of non-fiction, including 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem, The Poem and the Journey and Silent Letters of the Alphabet, and a book on rock music and Greek mythology. Internationally acclaimed for her nature writing across different genres, she has written a memoir on tiger conservation, Tigers in Red Weather (shortlisted for the US Kiriyama prize) and a novel Where the Serpent Lives, featuring wildlife crime and tropical field zoology. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Fellow and Council Member of the Zoological Society of London and a Member of the Bombay Natural History Society. She is a well-known radio broadcaster in the UK on literature, music and wildlife, and presents Poetry Workshop, a landmark BBC 4 series.

Novelist and freelance journalist, Chatura Rao’s stories and novels have been published by some of the best known publishers in the country. Amie and the Chawl of Colour (Puffin Books, 2004) was followed by Meanwhile, Upriver (Penguin Books, 2008) and Growing Up in Pandupur (Young Zubaan, 2011), most recently. Her short stories and essays have appeared in several Puffin and Scholastic collections. Chatura teaches creative writing to children at Junoon and Pomegranate Workshops, Mumbai, and at the India Habitat Centre in Delhi.

Benjamin Law is a Brisbane-based freelance writer and journalist, whose  essays have been anthologised in The Best Australian Essays twice. He is a frequent contributor to frankie, Good Weekend, The Monthly and Qweekend. He has been published in over 50 newspapers, magazines, websites and journals in Australia and worldwide, including The Australian Financial Review, The Courier Mail, Smith Journal, Mate, The Big Issue, Griffith Review, Cleo, Feast (SBS),The Drum (ABC), New Matilda, Overland, The Australian Way (Qantas), The Walkley Magazine, Kill Your Darlings, Sunday Life, The Lifted Brow, Voiceworks, The Sydney Star Observer and Travel and Leisure: South East Asia. His debut book The Family Law, was shortlisted for Book of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs) and the screen rights have been bought by Matchbox Pictures. A French version will be published this year.  His second book Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East will be published in September 2012 and looks at queer cultures and communities in across Indonesia, Thailand, China, Japan, Myanmar (Burma), Malaysia and India. He holds a PhD in writing and cultural studies from the Queensland University of Technology.

Deepa Kiran is an Education Consultant, a professional storyteller and a freelance writer who works with children, teachers and parents. She has worked with AIR, All India Radio and has teaching and teacher-training experience with Kendriya Vidyalayas. She has also facilitated workshops on ELT, experiential learning and multiple intelligence concepts with I  discover  and soft skills training roles in corporate.  She has written for The Hindu newspaper and management websites. Deepa is a professional storyteller working with schools, libraries, cultural centers, publishing houses, corporate and NGOs. She does storytelling performances and workshops for children, teachers and parents across the country. She builds in music and dance in her telling to bring alive the story time. 

Natasha Sharma sold watches, coffee and pizzas as a brand manager before discovering her love for writing children’s books and poetry. She now has a title she loves a lot more as an Author. She has also illustrated her first book with Pratham Books in a leap from words to pictures. Her published books include Icky, Yucky, Mucky!, Kaka and Munni and 366 words in Delhi with more books on their way. She loves animals and most of her childhood memories feature dogs, rabbits, chickens, guinea pigs, horses and the occasional squirrel. She feels strongly about the preservation of the environment and engages in activities that help in the same. As a testament to this, her daughter all of 5 now, is often emptying dustbins to check if the household has been careful enough in their sorting of waste. In writing books, she is thrilled to have found her most favourite thing to do in the world.