“It’s no more possible to reduce women’s literature to feminist or womanish concerns.”- Anju Makhija (Indian poet, playwright and translator)

Team Kitaab is in conversation with Indian author Anju Makhija as a part of the South Asian Women Writers Feature.

For the whole of March, we will be featuring South Asian Women Writers on Kitaab for the whole of March. You can read the editor’s note to know more about this.

Today, we are featuring Indian poet, playwright, and translator, Anju Makhija. Anju is Sahitya Akademi award-winner. She has written three poetry collections: View from the Web, Pickling Season and Poems Grow with You; co-translated Freedom & Fissures and Seeking the Beloved-the mystical verse of Shah Abdul Latif; co-edited three anthologies related to women, Indo-English theatre, and young readers.  

Anju has a MA in Educational Media from Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. She has won several awards, The National Education Multi-Media Prize, California (‘90); The All-India Poetry Competition (‘94); The Charles Wallace Trust Award (’97); The BBC World Regional Poetry Prize (’02) and The Sahitya Akademi English Translation Prize (’11). She has been on the English Advisory Board of the Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi for 5 years and is the co-founder of   Pondicherry/Auroville Poetry Festival. Her most recent book is ‘Mumbai Traps: collected plays’. She is currently translating the work of 17th-century Sufi poet, Sachal Sarmast.