The music of Bangladesh spans a wide variety of styles. Bangladesh claims some of the most renowned singers, composers and producers in Asia. Music has served the purpose of documenting the lives of the people and was widely patronized by the rulers. It comprises a long tradition of religious and regular song-writing over a period of almost a millennium.
Mahasweta Devi was an Indian writer in Bengali and an activist. Her notable literary works include Hajar Churashir Maa, Rudali, and Aranyer Adhikar. She was a leftist who worked for the rights and empowerment of the tribal people of West Bengal, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh states of India. She was honoured with various literary awards such as the Sahitya Akademi Award, Jnanpith Award and Ramon Magsaysay Award along with India's civilian awards Padma Shri and Padma Vibhushan.
Utpal Dutt was an Indian actor, director, and writer-playwright. He was primarily an actor in Bengali theatre, where he became a pioneering figure in Modern Indian theatre, when he founded the "Little Theatre Group" in 1949. This group enacted many English, Shakespearean and Brecht plays, in a period now known as the "Epic theatre" period, before it immersed itself completely in highly political and radical theatre. His plays became an apt vehicle for the expression of his Marxist ideologies, visible in socio-political plays such as Kallol (1965), Manusher Adhikar, Louha Manob (1964), Tiner Toloar and Maha-Bidroha. He also acted in over 100 Bengali and Hindi films in a career spanning 40 years, and remains most known for his roles in films such as Mrinal Sen’s Bhuvan Shome (1969), Satyajit Ray’s Agantuk (1991), Gautam Ghose’s Padma Nadir Majhi (1992) and Hrishikesh Mukherjee's breezy Hindi comedies such as Gol Maal (1979) and Rang Birangi (1983). He also did the role of a sculptor, Sir Digindra Narayan, in the episode Seemant Heera of Byomkesh Bakshi on Doordarshan in 1993, shortly before his death.
Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury was a Bengali writer, painter and entrepreneur. One of his written books is Chotoder Shera Bigyan Rochona Shongkolon. He was the son-in-law of reformer Dwarkanath Ganguly. He was also an entrepreneur. He was the first person who introduced color printing in Bengal. He started the first colour children's magazine Sandesh in 1913.
Gita Mehta was an Indian-American writer and documentary filmmaker. As a journalist and documentary filmmaker she frequently covered war and conflict including covering the Bangladesh liberation war of 1971. As an author she published five books which were translated into 21 languages. Her works described aspects of life in India and were intended to interpret the country for a largely western audience.
The PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation, named in honor of U.S. translator Ralph Manheim, is a literary award given every three years by PEN America to a translator "whose career has demonstrated a commitment to excellence through the body of his or her work". The Medal is awarded in recognition of a lifetime's achievements in the field of literary translation.
Ashapurna Devi, also Ashapoorna Devi or Ashapurna Debi, was a prominent Indian novelist and poet in Bengali. In 1976, she was awarded the Jnanpith Award and Padma Shri by the Government of India, D.Litt. by the Universities of Jabalpur, Rabindra Bharati, Burdwan and Jadavpur. Vishwa Bharati University honoured her with Deshikottam in 1989. For her contribution as a novelist and short story writer, the Sahitya Akademi conferred its highest honour, the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship, in 1994.
Raakhee Gulzar, professionally known as Raakhee, is a popular Indian actress who has appeared in Hindi and Bengali films. In her four decades of acting, she has worked in more than 100 films. Raakhee has won several awards including two National Film Awards and three Filmfare Awards. In 2003, she received Padma Shri, India's fourth-highest civilian award.
Surjit Patar was an Indian Punjabi language writer and poet from Punjab. His poems enjoy immense popularity with the general public and have won high acclaim from critics.
Daniel Hahn is a British writer, editor and translator.
Samik Bandyopadhyay is a Kolkata-based critic of Indian art, theatre and film.
Nabarun Bhattacharya was an Indian writer who wrote in the Bengali language. He was born at Berhampur, West Bengal. He was the only child of actor and playwright Bijon Bhattacharya and writer and activist Mahashweta Devi. His maternal grandfather was a writer from the Kallol era Manish Ghatak. Visionary filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak was his great uncle.
Salim Barakat is a Kurdish-Syrian novelist and poet. He is considered one of the innovative poets and novelists writing in Arabic. Since the 1970s, he has published numerous novels, poetry collections, biographies and children's books. Several of his works have been translated into Kurdish, English, French, German, Swedish and other languages.
High was an Indian rock group from Kolkata, established in 1974. High marks the efflorescence of American pop and rock music in the city and was contemporaneous with rock bands from other metropolitan cities like Calcutta, Bombay, Goa, Darjeeling and Chennai. Some of the notable ones were The Combustibles and The Savages in Bombay, the Fentones in Shillong and the Mustangs in Madras. High performed in the 1970s and 1980s, disbanding in 1990. Although their music was heavily influenced by British and American rock acts like the Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers' Band, Pink Floyd and Traffic, it was in terms of their original compositions that the band gained a huge cult following.
Seagull Books is a publishing venture begun in Kolkata in 1982 by Naveen Kishore, a theater practitioner. It began primarily as a response to the growing need for an Indian publishing house for theater and the other arts and since then it has expanded its operations to include translations of world literature as well as twentieth- and twenty-first-century critical theory and non-fiction. At present, the company has registered divisions in London and New York City alongside its initial establishment in Kolkata (Calcutta).
Chapal Bhaduri is the last living female impersonator in Bengali theatre and perhaps even in Indian theatre. He did female impersonation in Jatra, a form of Bengali folk theatre as Chapalrani. In 2010, he starred in a Bengali Film Arekti Premer Golpo which was directed by Kaushik Ganguly and written by Ganguly and Rituparno Ghosh.
Priya Sarukkai Chabria is an Indian poet, translator and novelist writing in English, and a curator. She has written four poetry collections, two speculative fiction novels, translations from Classical Tamil, literary nonfiction, and a novel. She has edited two poetry anthologies. She is also founding editor of Poetry at Sangam, an Indian online literary journal of poetry.
Jenny Bhatt is an Indian American writer, literary translator, and literary critic. She is the author of an award-winning story collection, Each of Us Killers, an award-shortlisted literary translation, Ratno Dholi: The Best Stories of Dhumketu, and the literary translation, The Shehnai Virtuoso and Other Stories by Dhumketu. She is the founder of Desi Books, a global multimedia platform for South Asian literature, and a creative writing instructor at Writing Workshops Dallas.
Drenka Opalic Willen is a Serbian-American editor, publisher and translator, credited for discovering authors Günter Grass, Umberto Eco, José Saramago, Amos Oz, Wisława Szymborska and others.
ArabLit is an online magazine for information about translations of Arabic literature into English. The editors also publish ArabLit Quarterly as a print and electronic magazine, books with selected contemporary Arabic literary works and a daily newsletter about current publications of different genres of Arabic literature in English translation. Further, ArabLit's promotion of Arabic literature in English has been distinguished by British and Canadian literary awards.
