Contributors

Abhinav Kafare is an artist and photographer and runs an art collective called Bade Moochwale. He seeks newness in the process of creating art and finds life in not knowing how his art will be perceived. Abhinav had his multisensory exhibition ‘हारlequin’ at Darpan Art gallery, Pune and Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai in Feb 2023. The exhibition was well appreciated in the field for its novel and contemporary approach towards visual art. In his recent exhibition ‘Eldorado’, at Vesavar Art Gallery, Pune, Abhinav captures moments from traditional festivals and attempts to recreate mystical journeys that lead seemingly nowhere, creating illusions that challenge reality.

Adil Manzoor is a Delhi-based Kashmiri photographer. His vivid, sometimes surreal photography explores his position with the world that he exists in. Though Adil initially worked through the lens of social documentary, he soon turned his vision inwards, creating visual diaries of his life and personal relationships as a means to find himself in it. 

Aishwarya Parab is an aspiring fine artist and visual art educator currently working in an educational institute, based in Mumbai.

She has done her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Rachana Sansad Academy of Fine Arts and Crafts in 2019; having earned a gold medal in the final year. For more than five years now, she has voluntarily been a part of different art projects and public art installations including Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, Bandra Art Festival and a public wall painting project led by Maharashtra Government at Pustakanche Gaon-Bhilar. Her works have been displayed at the 41st Monsoon Art Show at Jehangir Art Gallery, Nippon Art Gallery, Mumbai and other exhibitions in collaboration with other artists. 

Anupam Basu is a practising artist in New Media and an Assistant Professor at Amity University Kolkata.

Ashra is an independent artist and sculptor, with a Master’s degree from College of Art, Delhi University. The core concept of her artworks is growth. Human civilization has developed by joining various cultures. All those episodes have equal and significant contributions to the making of the stage of history, which she precisely tries to reflect in her compositions. 

Baabusha Kohli is a Hindi poet and writer, whose published books include three poetry collections, one prose poetry collection, and two creative non-fiction collections. She received the Navlekhan Award for new writers from Bharatiya Jnanpith for her poetry collection, Prem Gilahri Dil Akhrot in 2015. The Hindi Sahitya Sammelan of her home state of Madhya Pradesh also conferred upon her the Vaagishwari Award for her prose-poetry collection, Baavan Chitthiyaan in 2018. Her writing has been translated into multiple languages. She teaches English to middle-school students in Kendriya Vidyalaya, Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. She has also written and directed two short films.

Babra Shafiqi is a writer from Kashmir. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Literary Art from Ambedkar University. Her work has previously been published in Beetle Magazine and Cafe Dissensus.

D G Kaale is an award-winning poet, editor and critic. He is known for his books Aakal and Aranyahat, among others.

Dr. Loveneesh Sharma is an Art Historian and Assistant Professor in Amity University, Kolkata.

Dr. Viraj Desai is currently serving as an Assistant Professor at Department of English, Veer Narmad South Gujarat University, Surat. She holds a PhD in Translation Criticism and has a keen interest in translating literature from Gujarati into English and also developing models from comprehensive and nuanced criticism of Indian Literature English Translation.

Himanshu Smart is a Marathi playwright, poet and scholar. He teaches drama at the Bhalji Pendharkar Kala Academy and is a visiting faculty at Lalit Kala Kendra, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune.

Krishna Mohan Pandey is a Professor at the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Banaras Hindu University. His areas of interest are 18th Century British Poetry, Sanskrit Poetics, Indian English Literature, and ELT. Apart from more than thirty papers in books and journals, he has to his credit three published books: Cultural Anguish in the Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel and Kamala Das (2002), Rhyming with Reason: The Poetry of Thomas Gray (2004), and City as Kaleidoscope: Indian English Poetry in Plural Contexts (2008). He completed the UGC Major Research Project The Mahabharata and Recent Indian Fictional Imagination, which is to be published soon. 

Kuzhali Jaganathan is a researcher and curator at the Museum of Art and Photography, Bengaluru, India. She is a postgraduate from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and has previously worked with cultural institutions such as Serendipity Arts Foundation and India Art Fair. Her research and writings focus on representation of women in visual culture and performance traditions, photography practices and histories and development of culture industries. Her writings have been featured in Critical Collective, Write | Art | Connect and newsletters of Abhyas Trust and Serendipity Arts Foundation.

Michelle D’costa is the author of the poetry chapbook Gulf (Yavanika Press, 2021). She was born and raised in Bahrain, and currently writes and edits out of Mumbai. She co-hosts the podcast Books and Beyond with Bound which has over 2.5 million listens in over 140 countries.  Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Litro, Berfrois, Economic & Political Weekly, Out Of Print, and many other journals. Her work has been longlisted for prizes like the TOTO Award for Creative Writing & the DNA-Out of Print Short Fiction Contest. She is an alumna of the Seagull School of Publishing, & the Kolam Writers’ Workshop. She loves to mentor writers.

Nagindas Parekh (1903-1993) was a Gujarati language critic and translator. He is also popularly known by his pen name, ‘Granthkeet’. He has majorly contributed to the fields of criticism, biography writing, translation, and editing. His major works include ‘Abhinavno Rasvichar ane Bija Lekho’ (1969), ‘Viksha ane Niriksha’ (1981), Biographies of Navalram, Premanand, and Gandhiji, and Gujarati translations of several works of Rabindranath Tagore and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay among others. 

Nishant Awasthi is a writer and artist, and is currently pursuing Masters in Literary Art (Creative Writing) from Ambedkar University, Delhi

Prakash Ransing is a scholar of Adivasi issues. He is the convenor of the Vidrohi Vidyarthi Sanghatana. He studies oral languages and folk culture.

Ratnakar Matkari (1938-2020) was an award-winning, prolific contemporary Marathi author, director, playwright and artist. His works include a number of plays, one-act plays, novels, short-story collections and poetry both for adults and children. Matkari popularised the genre of “gudha-katha” or “mystery-thriller stories” in Marathi literature. His writing in this genre spanned horror, psychological thriller, supernatural and the macabre, and he sought to bring out the darkness in innocuous, everyday settings.

Rituparna Sengupta is a literary translator, writer, and academic. She has translated poetry and short fiction by Amrita Pritam, Gauhar Raza, Mirza Azim Beg Chugtai, Rashid Jahan, and Baabusha Kohli from Punjabi, Urdu, and Hindi to English. Recently, her translation of Baabusha Kohli’s poem, ‘The Reflection of Sadness’, was published in Modern Poetry in Translation. She also researches, teaches, and writes on literature, cinema, and popular culture. 

Sameem Wani has completed a Master’s degree in English from Ashoka University, where he also worked as a Teaching Fellow with the English department. With an interest in performativity and its pervasive influence on daily existence, he explores the interplay between language and lived experiences. His work has previously appeared in Inverse Journal, Mountain Mag, and others.

Satpal Gangalmale is a wildlife researcher. He studies the taxonomy of the octopuses and reptiles of the Indian subcontinent. He is involved in writing research essays on two new species of scorpions and lizards. He is currently working in Thackeray Wildlife Foundation, an organisation working on wildlife research and conservation.

Shivangi Chaturvedi is a Ph.D. research scholar at the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Banaras Hindu University. Her research interests lie in spatial studies, Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of assemblage, Indian Writing in English, and Electronic Literature. 

Uma Gowrishankar is a writer and artist from Chennai, South India. Her poems have appeared in online and print journals that include Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English, Poetry at Sangam, City: A Journal Of South Asian Literature, Qarrtsiluni, Vayavya, Buddhist Poetry Review, Silver Birch Press, Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, and Nether Quarterly. Her full-length collection of poetry ‘Birthing History’ was published by Leaky Boot Press.

Uma Shirodkar is a literary translator working primarily from Marathi into English. She was a 2022 South Asia Speaks Translation Fellow. Since 2020, she has been running Lyrically Obscure, an Instagram platform where she explores translation through the music, cinema, languages and literature of the Indian subcontinent.

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Editor: Ashutosh Potdar

Guest Editor: Purvi Rajpuria

Editorial Team: Adreeta Chakraborty, Azhar Wani.

Proofreading and copyediting: Asmita Choudhury, Indu MG.

Courtesy for slider images: Abhinav Kafare, Adil Manzoor, Himanshu Bhushan Smart.

Courtesy for Section images:Himanshu Bhushan Smart, Abhinav Kafare, Akshay Khandekar, Aishwarya Parab, Adil Manzoor.