A N I L M E N O N
ANIL MENON’s most recent work is The Inconceivable Idea Of The Sun: Stories (Hachette, 2022), a collection of his speculative short fiction. His novel Half Of What I Say (Bloomsbury, 2015) was shortlisted for the 2016 Hindu Literary Award. His debut novel The Beast With Nine Billion Feet was shortlisted for the 2009 Crossword Prize and the Carl Baxter Society’s Parallax Award. Along with Vandana Singh, he co-edited Breaking the Bow (Zubaan Books, 2012), an international anthology of short fiction inspired by the Ramayana. His stories have been translated into more than a dozen languages, including Arabic, Hebrew, Igbo, and Romanian. He is the chief editor of The Bombay Literary Magazine. His novel The Coincidence Plot (Simon & Schuster) is scheduled to appear later this year.
A K S H A T N I G A M
Akshat Nigam has worked in the field of Arts Education since 2007. He teaches Literature, Creative Writing and Storytelling, and is an award-winning playwright.
Akshat has been performing as a professional Storyteller for children and for adults since 2015. He debuted in East of the Sun, West of the Moon. His current performance under the collective The Forty Thieves, called Error 404: Life Not Found opened in theatres in March 2016, while another show titled An Uneasy Truce: Stories about Fear opened in June 2016. In 2017, Akshat co-wrote In Search of Dariya Sagar, a play that won The Hindu Playwright Award for scriptwriting that year. In 2019, he wrote and performed in “My Fair Ladle: A Disobedient Love Story”, an “immersive performance experience”.
Currently Akshat composes audio tours on Mumbai for Hop On India, a tourism app and conducts guided tours, telling people the story of Bombay. He also works as a subtitler, translating from Hindi to English for shows on OTT platforms.
P E R V I N S A K E T
Pervin Saket was awarded the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize 2021, and she was the inaugural Fellow for the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, 2021. Her poems, including the collection A Tinge of Turmeric, have been widely anthologised. Her novel Urmila has been adapted for the stage, featuring classical Indian dance forms of Kathak, Bharatnatyam and Odissi. Most recently, she authored a landmark series of eight childrens’ books regarding Indian women in science and sports. She has served on the jury for the Laadli Media and Advertising Awards for Gender Sensitivity and is on the Board of Studies for St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. Pervin is the Literature Curator of the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival 2023, and the Poetry Editor at The Bombay Literary Magazine.