Suzanna Arundhati Roy is an Indian author best known for her novel The God of Small Things (1997), which won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997 and became the best-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. She is also a political activist involved in human rights and environmental causes.
Postcolonial literature is the literature by people from formerly colonized countries, originating from all continents except Antarctica. Postcolonial literature often addresses the problems and consequences of the decolonization of a country, especially questions relating to the political and cultural independence of formerly subjugated people, and themes such as racialism and colonialism. A range of literary theory has evolved around the subject. It addresses the role of literature in perpetuating and challenging what postcolonial critic Edward Said refers to as cultural imperialism.
Taslima Nasrin is a Bangladeshi writer, physician, feminist, secular humanist, and activist. She is known for her writing on women's oppression and criticism of religion; some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. She has also been blacklisted and banished from the Bengal region, both from Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal.
Kamila Shamsie FRSL is a Pakistani and British writer and novelist who is best known for her award-winning novel Home Fire (2017). Named on Granta magazine's list of 20 best young British writers, Shamsie has been described by The New Indian Express as "a novelist to reckon with and to look forward to." She also writes for publications including The Guardian, New Statesman, Index on Censorship and Prospect, and broadcasts on radio.
Anita Desai, born Anita Mazumdar, is an Indian novelist and the Emerita John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a writer she has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times. She received a Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978 for her novel Fire on the Mountain, from the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters. She won the British Guardian Prize for The Village by the Sea (1983). Her other works include The Peacock, Voices in the City, Fire on the Mountain and an anthology of short stories, Games at Twilight. She is on the advisory board of the Lalit Kala Akademi and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, London.
N. S. Madhavan is an Indian writer of Malayalam literature. Known for his novel, Lanthan Batheriyile Luthiniyakal and a host of short stories such as Higuita, Thiruthu, Chulaimedile Shavangal and Vanmarangal Veezhumpol, Madhavan also writes football columns and travel articles. He is a distinguished fellow of Kerala Sahitya Akademi and a recipient of several major awards including Odakkuzhal Award, Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Story, Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Novel, Muttathu Varkey Award, Mathrubhumi Literary Award, Crossword Book Award and Kerala State Students Federation Sahithyolsav Award.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an Indian-born American author, poet, and the Betty and Gene McDavid Professor of Writing at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. Her short story collection, Arranged Marriage, won an American Book Award in 1996. Two of her novels, as well as a short story were adapted into films.
Qurratulain Hyder was an Indian Urdu novelist and short story writer, an academic, and a journalist. One of the most outstanding and influential literary names in Urdu literature, she is best known for her magnum opus, Aag Ka Darya, a novel first published in Urdu in 1959, from Lahore, Pakistan, that stretches from the fourth century BC to post partition of India.
Chetan Bhagat is an Indian author, columnist, and YouTuber. He was listed in Time magazine's list of World's 100 Most Influential People in 2010. Five of his novels have been adapted into films.
Dermot Bolger is an Irish novelist, playwright, poet and editor from Dublin, Ireland. Born in the Finglas suburb of Dublin in 1959, his older sister is the writer June Considine. Bolger's novels include Night Shift (1982), The Woman's Daughter (1987), The Journey Home (1990), Father's Music (1997), Temptation (2000), The Valparaiso Voyage (2001) and The Family on Paradise Pier (2005). He is a member of the artist's association Aosdána.
LeAnne Howe is an American author and Eidson Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at the University of Georgia, Athens. She previously taught American Indian Studies and English at the University of Minnesota and at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Nabaneeta Dev Sen was an Indian writer and academic. After studying arts and comparative literature, she moved to the US where she studied further. She returned to India and taught at several universities and institutes as well as serving in various positions in literary institutes. She published more than 80 books in Bengali: poetry, novels, short stories, plays, literary criticism, personal essays, travelogues, humour writing, translations and children's literature. She was awarded the Padma Shri in 2000 and the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1999.
Shashi Deshpande is an Indian novelist. She is a recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Padma Shri Award in 1990 and 2009 respectively.
Sadhguru is the founder and head of the Isha Foundation, based in Coimbatore, India. The foundation, established in 1992, operates an ashram and yoga centre that carries out educational and spiritual activities. Sadhguru has been teaching yoga since 1982. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy and Karma: A Yogi's Guide to Crafting Your Destiny, and a frequent speaker at international forums.
Githa Hariharan is an Indian writer and editor based in New Delhi. Her first novel, The Thousand Faces of Night, won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for the best first novel in 1993. Her other works include the short story collection The Art of Dying (1993), the novels The Ghosts of Vasu Master (1994), When Dreams Travel (1999), In Times of Siege (2003), Fugitive Histories (2009) and I Have Become the Tide (2019), and a collection of essays entitled Almost Home: Cities and Other Places (2014).
Nadya A.R., also known as Nadya Abbas Rahimtoola, is a Pakistani author, specialist teacher, journalist, and psychotherapist. Her published works include Broken Souls (1995), Kolachi Dreams (2006), and Invisible Ties (2017).
Jaya Madhavan is an Indian author, poet, The New Indian Express columnist and comic creator. She is a winner of The Children's Book Trust All India Competition for Writers of Children's Books.
Meghna Pant is an Indian author, journalist and speaker. She has won a variety of awards for her contribution to literature, gender issues and journalism. In 2012, she won the Muse India National Literary Awards Young Writer Award for her debut novel One-and-a-Half Wife. Her collection of short stories, Happy Birthday and Other Stories was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Award.
Kiran Manral is an Indian author. Based in Mumbai, she published her first novel The Reluctant Detective in 2011. Karmic Kids (2015) her first non-fiction work, is an introduction to parenting based on her own experience of raising a son. Manral is the founder of India Helps, a network of volunteers who assist disaster victims.
Ranjana Ash was an Indian-born writer, literary critic, academic and activist, who was a leading advocate of south Asian and African writing. She moved in the 1950s to England, where she married American-born writer and broadcaster Bill Ash.
