Amitava Kumar
Amitava Kumar is the author of several works of literary non-fiction, including Passport Photos, Bombay-London-New York, Husband of a Fanatic, and A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb (described by the New York Times as a “perceptive and soulful” meditation on “the cultural and human repercussions” of the global war on terror). His latest book is a biography of Patna titled, A Matter of Rats . His novel Home Products was short-listed for India’s premier literary award and republished in the US under the title Nobody Does the Right Thing. Kumar serves on the editorial board of several publications and co-edits the web-journal “Politics and Culture.” He is the script-writer and narrator of the prize-winning documentary film “Pure Chutney” (1997) and “Dirty Laundry” (2005). Professor Kumar is the Helen D. Lockwood Professor of English at Vassar College (USA) and teaches classes that mainly deal with: reportage; the essay-form, both in prose and film; literatures describing the global movement of goods and people; memory-work.
Anees Salim
Anees Salim is a Kochi, India-based author. He is rather proud of being a dropout. He joined advertising in the late 1990s, and has been working on a variety of brands for the past fourteen years. He currently heads the creative department of Draft FCB Ulka, Kochi, where he started his career as a trainee copywriter. He loves being invisible, and shares his time between home and office. In 2013, he won The Hindu Literary Prize for his novel, Vanity Bagh. His other novels include The Vicks Mango Tree and Tales from A Vending Machine.
Kunal Basu
Kunal Basu is an Indian author of English fiction who has written four novels – The Opium Clerk (2001), The Miniaturist (2003), Racists (2006), The Yellow Emperor’s Cure (2011), and Kalkatta (2015). He has also written a collection of short stories, The Japanese Wife (2008), the title story of which has been made into a film by the Indian filmmaker Aparna Sen. Since 1999, he has been teaching at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School.
Kunal Basu was born in Kolkata to Sunil Kumar Basu (a litterateur and publisher and one of the early members of the Communist Party of India) and Chabi Basu (an author and actress). Born to Communist parents, he was brought up on books and enriching conversations at home that was visited by a galaxy of prominent men and women of the day. In between he worked for an advertising agency, in freelance journalism, dabbled in filmmaking, and taught at Jadavpur University for a brief period of 16 months. In 1982, he met and married Susmita. Their daughter, Aparajita, was born soon after. After his doctoral degree, he was a professor at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, from 1986–1999. Since 1999, he has been teaching at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School.
Tabish Khair
Born and educated in a small town of Bihar, India, Dr. Khair is the author of various books, including the poetry collections, Where Parallel Lines Meet (Penguin, 2000) and Man of Glass (HarperCollins, 2010), the studies, Babu Fictions: Alienation in Indian English Novels (Oxford UP, 2001) and The Gothic, Postcolonialism and Otherness (Palgrave, 2010) and the novels, The Bus Stopped (Picador, 2004), Filming (Picador, 2007), The Thing About Thugs (Harpercollins, 2010; Houghton Mifflin, 2012) and How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position (Interlink and Corsair 2014).
His honours and prizes include the All India Poetry Prize (awarded by the Poetry Society and the British Council) and honorary fellowship (for creative writing) of the Baptist University of Hong Kong. His novels have been shortlisted for nine prestigious prizes in five countries, including the Man Asian Literary Prize and the Encore Award, and translated into several languages.
Sudeep Sen
Sudeep Sen’s prize-winning books include Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (HarperCollins), Rain, Aria (A. K. Ramanujan Translation Award), The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry (editor), Fractals: New & Selected Poems | Translations 1980-2015 (London Magazine Editions) and EroText (Vintage: Penguin Random House). Blue Nude: New Poems & Ekphrasis (Jorge Zalamea International Poetry Prize) is 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, Poetry Review, Literary Review, Harvard Review, Hindu, Hindustan Times, Times of India, Indian Express, 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), Leela: An Erotic Play of Verse and Art (Collins), Indian Love Poems (Knopf/Random House/Everyman), Out of Bounds (Bloodaxe), and Initiate: Oxford New Writing (Blackwell). He is the editorial director of AARK ARTS and the editor of Atlas. Sen is the first Asian honoured to speak and read at the Nobel Laureate Festival. The Government of India awarded him the senior fellowship for “outstanding persons in the field of culture/literature.”
Jayapriya Vasudevan
Jayapriya Vasudevan is one of Asia’s best known literary agents. She is the founder of Jacaranda Literary Agency. She has been in publishing pretty much all her working life. Starting her career in East West Books (now Westland), she moved on to set up a bookstore with her siblings, Bookends, in Bangalore, India. Following that she did a two year stint with Seagull Books in Calcutta. In 1994, she set up R&B, India’s first bookstore-cafe in partnership with a friend. In 1997, she set up Jacaranda, India’s first Literary Agency. Her agency now works from Singapore, India, the Philippines and Kenya.
PAST ADVISORS
Suchen Christine Lim
Born in Malaysia but educated in Singapore, Suchen Christine Lim was awarded the Southeast Asia Write Award 2012. In 1992, her novel, Fistful Of Colours, won the Inaugural Singapore Literature Prize. Critics have described her first novel, Rice Bowl, as “a landmark publication on post-independence Singapore”, and A Bit of Earth as “a literary masterwork as well as a historical document”. One of her short stories in The Lies That Build A Marriage was made into a film for national television. Awarded a Fulbright grant, she is a Fellow of the International Writers’ Program in the University of Iowa, and its International Writer-in-Residence. In 2005, she was writer-in-residence in Scotland, and has returned to the UK several times as an Arvon Tutor to conduct writing workshops and read at the Edinburgh Book Festival. Her latest novel is The River’s Song.
Chris Mooney-Singh
Chris Mooney-Singh was born in 1956 of Australian-Irish descent. He has worked extensively in publishing, editing and education. The founder of Poetry Slam in Singapore and Malaysia, he has also published two joint collection of poetry, two chapbooks and has three spoken word CDs. He is the founding director of Lit Up Singapore, a multidisciplinary festival for the literary arts. In addition, he developed and curates two virtual 3D arts communities at sikhlifeonline.com and islandofthearts.org. His poetry has been featured at Times online, Mindfire, Unbrella Journal. Stylus and QLRS among others. Chris has appeared at the Austin International Poetry Festival (2003), Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival (2004) and Singapore Writers Festival (2007) among others. He has two books under Red Wheelbarrow Books, The Laughing Buddha Cab Company (2007) and The Bearded Chameleon (2011). Currently, he is a visiting scholar at Monash University.
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