Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, typically set on the Indian subcontinent. Rushdie's second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be "the best novel of all winners" on two occasions, marking the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize.
Hari Mohan Nath Kunzru is a British novelist and journalist. He is the author of the novels The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions, Gods Without Men, White Tears and Red Pill. His work has been translated into twenty languages.
Helen Levitt was an American photographer and cinematographer. She was particularly noted for her street photography around New York City. David Levi Strauss described her as "the most celebrated and least known photographer of her time."
Sooni Taraporevala is an Indian screenwriter, photographer, and filmmaker who is the screenwriter of Mississippi Masala, The Namesake and Oscar-nominated Salaam Bombay!, all directed by Mira Nair. She also adapted Rohinton Mistry's novel Such A Long Journey and wrote the films Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, her directorial debut Little Zizou, and Yeh Ballet, a Netflix original film that she wrote and directed.
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders is an American documentary filmmaker and portrait photographer based in New York City. The majority of his work is shot in large format.
Mary Ellen Mark was an American photographer known for her photojournalism, documentary photography, portraiture, and advertising photography. She photographed people who were "away from mainstream society and toward its more interesting, often troubled fringes".
Francine Prose is an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and critic. She is a visiting professor of literature at Bard College, and was formerly president of PEN American Center.
Fury, published in 2001, is the seventh novel by author Salman Rushdie. Rushdie depicts contemporary New York City as the epicenter of globalization and all of its tragic flaws.
Lois Conner is an American photographer. She is noted particularly for her platinum print landscapes that she produces with a 7" x 17" format banquet camera.
The PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature is an annual week-long literary festival held in New York City and Los Angeles. The festival was founded by Salman Rushdie, Esther Allen, and Michael Roberts and was launched in 2005. The festival includes events, readings, conversations, and debates that showcase international literature and new writers. The festival is produced by PEN America, a nonprofit organization that works to advance literature, promote free expression, and foster international literary fellowship.
Max Vadukul, is a British-Indian photographer based in Milan, Italy. Noted for his black-and-white imagery, Vadukul expressed his preference for monochrome photography as superior, stating, “Black-and-white is king. King of kings. Color is Commercial”, in an interview with J’aipur journal. He holds the distinction of being the first photographer of Indian origin to publish in the editions of Paris, Italian, British, and American Vogue, photographing celebrated figures such as Amy Winehouse, Tilda Swinton, Beyonce, Paul McCartney, Natalie Portman, Tom Hanks, Justine Timberlake, and many more. Sting has described his photography as a sort of "On the move style". The National Geographic channel produced a feature documentary on Vadukul in 2000 about the improbable arc of his life after Africa; the documentary continues to air around South Asia today.
The Satanic Verses controversy, also known as the Rushdie Affair, was a controversy sparked by the 1988 publication of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. It centered on the novel's references to the Satanic Verses, and came to include a larger debate about censorship and religious violence. It included numerous killings, attempted killings, and bombings by perpetrators who supported Islam.
The Jaipur Literature Festival, or JLF, is an annual literary festival which takes place in the Indian city of Jaipur each year in the month of January. It was founded in 2006.
Craig Varjabedian is a fine-art photographer who explores the back roads of the American West, making pictures of the unique and quintessential. He shares stories of the land and the people who live on it, one photograph at a time. Moving from Canada to the United States in 1970, he currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Alice Boughton was an early 20th-century American photographer known for her photographs of many literary and theatrical figures of her time. She was a Fellow of Alfred Stieglitz's Photo-Secession, a circle of photographers whose artistic efforts succeeded in raising photography to a fine art form.
Kathy Ryan is the Director of Photography for The New York Times Magazine. She has worked at The New York Times Magazine since 1987.
Dorothy Norman was an American photographer, writer, editor, arts patron and advocate for social change.
Ian Jeffrey is an English art historian, writer and curator.
The Indo-American Arts Council (IAAC) is an American non-profit cultural organization that promotes Indian theatre, art, film, fashion, music, dance, and literature in the United States. The Council was established in 1998 in New York City and is headed by Aroon Shivdasani. IAAC hosts cultural and artistic events throughout the year, including the annual New York Indian Film Festival, which showcases Indian and diaspora-related films.
The 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the French author Annie Ernaux "for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory". It was announced by the Swedish Academy on 6 October 2022. Ernaux was the 16th French writer – the first Frenchwoman – and the 17th female author, to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
