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winter 2022

editorial

poetry

prose

 

contributors

Aishwarya Iyer's first book of poems, The Grasp of Things, is forthcoming from Sublunary Editions in the US and Canada, and from Copper Coin in the rest of the world. Her poems, fiction and critical prose have appeared in journals such as The Bombay Literary Magazine, Humanities Underground, Almost Island, Muse India, Pratik, Berfrois and Poetry at Sangam, among others. Her drawings have appeared most recently in Aainanagar and are forthcoming in Jalsa. She teaches at O.P. Jindal Global University in Sonipat, and is working on a book of short stories. She won the Srinivas Rayaprol Prize in 2015.

A.J. Thomas is an Indian English poet and translator with more than 20 books. He was Editor of Indian Literature, and later, its Guest Editor for about seven years in two stints. Has M.Phil, and PhD degrees in English (Translation Studies). He taught English in Benghazi University, Ajdabiya Branch, Libya from 2008 to 2014. He was also a Senior Consultant at IGNOU. He is the translator of illustrious writers like O.N.V. Kurup, Paul Zacharia and M. Mukundan and editor of books by U.R. Anantha Murthy. He co-edited Best of Indian Literature (1500 pages in two books and four volumes, Sahitya Akademi). He is a recipient of Katha Award, AKMG Prize (which enabled him to tour USA, UK and Europe in 1997) and Vodafone Crossword Award (2007). He was a holder of Senior Fellowship, Department of Culture, Govt. of India and was Honorary Fellow, Department of Culture, Government of South Korea. He has been invited as a Guest Speaker in writers’ conferences and readings in South Korea(thrice), Australia, Thailand, Hong Kong and Nepal, besides centres all over India.

Anna Deeny Morales works in poetry and music as a literary critic, translator, and librettist. Deeny Morales is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow for her translation of Tala by Nobel Laureate, Gabriela Mistral. Her translations of Raúl Zurita’s poetry include Sky Below, Selected Works (Northwestern University Press, 2016), of which she is also the editor; Dreams for Kurosawa (arrow as aarow press, 2011); and Purgatory (University of California Press, 2009). She has taught at Harvard University as well as Dartmouth College, and currently teaches in the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University. Her book, Other Solitudes: Essays on Consciousness and Poetry, is forthcoming.

Anitha Thampi is a Malayalam poet who has been translated into many Indian and foreign languages. She has published four collections of poetry: Muttamatikkumpol (While Sweeping the Frontyard, 2004), Azhakillaathavayellam (All That Are Bereft of Beauty, 2010), Alappuzha Vellam (Alappuzha Water, 2016), and a trilingual co-authored collection, A Different Water (2018). Her translations into Malayalam include writings of Juan Ramón Jiménez, Carlo Collodi, Les Murray and Mourid Barghouti. Her new collection of poetry is due in October 2022. She lives and works in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.

Balam Rodrigo is a former footballer, biologist, and writer. An author of over thirty books of poetry, his lyrics give life to a diversity of topics, ranging from football to the biological sciences, to humankind’s spiritual relationship with God. Recent works: Marabunta (Invisible Books, 2017; Praxis, 2018; Yaugurú, 2018; Los Perros Románticos, 2019), Central American Book of the Dead (FCE, 2018), Antiicaro (La Chifurnia, 2019), Cantar del ángel con remos en la espalda (Puertabierta Editores, 2019) and Icarias (Icaro Ediciones, 2020). His work has earned several recognitions, to include: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz International Literature Contest 2012, Jaime Sabines International Poetry Prize 2014, José Emilio Pacheco National Poetry Prize 2016, Amado Nervo National Poetry Prize 2017 and Aguascalientes Poetry Fine Arts Award 2018. Member of the National System of Art Creators of Mexico from 2014-2016 and 2018-2020.

C S Venkiteswaran is a media critic, curator and translator based in Kerala. He has written several books on visual media and has published English translations of Malayalam poems in major journals and magazines.

After studying English, French, and journalism, Delaina Haslam worked in writing and editing roles in Madrid and then London. Missing languages, she retrained and passed the Diploma in Translation. She specialises in sociology and translates for French academic journals. She took part in the British Centre for Literary Translation Summer School in 2016, which led to invaluable collaborations including a series of Poetry Translation Centre workshops on francophone African poets and participation in Newcastle University's Poettrio Experiment. She translated a story by Guatemala's Alan Mills (from Spanish) for the Hay Festival Bogatá 39 anthology, but this collection is her first full literary work. She’s interested in collaborative and performative translation, and has written for the Glasgow Review of Books, the Poetry Translation Centre, and Yorkshire Translators and Interpreters. She is also working on a creative nonfiction novel. She lives in Sheffield with her partner and son.

Habib Tengour is one of the leading visionary writers of post-colonial Algeria. Rooted in Maghribi cultural identity and memory, his poems consider the experience of exile in a voice that is by turns unsentimental and surreal. He is one of a group of Algerian writers who choose to write in French, but the long heritage of Arabic and Imazighen poetries reverberates through his work alongside the voices of the storytellers of his childhood and the urgent ‘desire-scream’ of raï music. Tengour is a prolific writer of both poetry and prose, and his work has been translated into a number of languages and is celebrated worldwide. This collection features poems from his most recent collection - as yet unpublished in French - with its mix of playful poem-puzzles and longer prose poems reflecting on forms of loss, and includes an afterword by Shash Trevett.

J Devika is a social researcher, historian, writer and translator based in Trivandrum, Kerala. She translates literary writing from Malayalam to English and social science writing from English to Malayalam. She teaches at Centre for Development Studies(CDS), Trivandrum, Kerala.

Jibanananda Das (1899 – 1954) was an Indian poet, writer, novelist and essayist in the Bangla language.

Krishna Baldev Vaid (1927-2020) was a major Hindi writer known for his iconoclastic and experimental prose work. Educated in Punjab and Harvard, he taught at Indian and American universities and published novels, novellas, short stories, plays, diaries, literary criticism and translations. His work is translated and published in English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, Japanese and several Indian languages. His work as a translator is equally prominent and he produced the first Hindi translations of Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Endgame.

Phanishwarnath Renu (1921-1971) was one of the most prominent modern Hindi novelists of his generation, whose formally inventive prose and use of Hindi vernacular reshaped the social and caste consciousness of late twentieth century Indian writing.

Ratik Asokan is a writer based in New York.

Souradeep Roy is a writer, translator and academic. He is play based on the 1943-44 Bengal famine, How to Make Rice premiered in London in 2022. His earlier play and translation, A Brief Loss of Sanity, was published in the bilingual journal Kaurab. He is also working on his PhD at Queen Mary, University of London, where he is writing a history of the Bengal unit of the Indian Peoples' Theatre Association in the 1940s and the group theatre movement thereafter.

Udayan Vajpeyi has published five collections of poems including Kewal Kuchh Vakya, four collections of short-stories including Ret kinare ka ghar, three books of essays, a book on tribal painting and folk tales, Jangarh Kalam. He has written three plays for the great theatre director, K.N. Panikkar and a book on his works, Theatre of Rasa. He has written a book on theatre director Ratan Thiyam. He has published book length conversations with the film maker Mani Kaul, historian Dharampal, philosopher Navjyoty Singh, Hindi poet Kamlesh, art historian B.N. Goswamy, filmmaker Kumar Shahani etc. He has recently published a novel, Qayaas. His poems, short stories and essays have appeared in around 15 languages including French, Polish, English, Swedish, Odiya, Malayalam etc. He was writer-in-residence in Lavigny (Switzerland), Paris in 2003, and was a fellow at Nantes (France). He has written texts for documentary films b many directors including Kumar Shahani, Nandan Kudiyadi, Ashmaki Acharya etc. Has written dialogues for Char Adhyaya (film based on Tagore's novel of the same name) directed by Kumar Shahani. He edits a journal on Arts, Literature and Civilization, Samaas. He lives and works in Bhopal. 

Will Harris is a London-based writer and editor. His debut poetry book RENDANG (2020) was a Poetry Book Society Choice, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. His second book of poems, Brother Poem, will be published by Granta in 2023.