Mira Nair is an Indian-American filmmaker based in New York City. Her production company, Mirabai Films, specializes in films for international audiences on Indian society, whether in the economic, social or cultural spheres. Among her best known films are Mississippi Masala, The Namesake, the Golden Lion–winning Monsoon Wedding, and Salaam Bombay!, which received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language.
Gypsy Rose Lee was an American burlesque entertainer, stripper, actress, author, playwright and vedette famous for her striptease act. Her 1957 memoir was adapted into the 1959 stage musical Gypsy.
Gypsy: A Musical Fable is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. It is loosely based on the 1957 memoirs of striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee, and focuses on her mother, Rose, whose name has become synonymous with "the ultimate show business mother." It follows the dreams and efforts of Rose to raise two daughters to perform onstage and casts an affectionate eye on the hardships of show business life. The character of Louise is based on Lee, and the character of June is based on Lee's sister, the actress June Havoc.
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.
Sarita Catherine Louise Choudhury is a British actress. She made her screen debut starring in the romantic drama film Mississippi Masala (1991). She later appeared in American and international film productions, including A Perfect Murder (1998), Restless (1998), She Hate Me (2004), The War Within (2005), Lady in the Water (2006), Midnight's Children (2012), The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (2014) and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (2015), A Hologram for the King (2016), and The Green Knight (2021).
Mississippi Masala is a 1991 romantic drama film directed by Mira Nair, based upon a screenplay by Sooni Taraporevala, starring Denzel Washington, Sarita Choudhury, and Roshan Seth. Set primarily in rural Mississippi, the film explores interracial romance between African Americans and Indian Americans.
Anita Nair is an Indian novelist who writes her books in English. She is best known for her novels A Better Man, Mistress, and Lessons in Forgetting. She has also written poetry, essays, short stories, crime fiction, historical fiction, romance, and children's literature, including Muezza and Baby Jaan: Stories from the Quran.
Love Today is a 1997 Indian Tamil-language romantic drama film written and directed by Balasekaran in his directorial debut. Produced by R. B. Choudary, the film stars Vijay and Suvalakshmi in the lead roles while Manthra, Raghuvaran, Karan and Sriman play supporting roles. The music was composed by Shiva with cinematography by Vijay Gopal and editing by V. Jaishanker. The film received positive reviews from critics and was very successful at the box office, running for over 175 days. It was remade in Telugu as Suswagatham, in Kannada as Majnu and in Hindi as Kya Yehi Pyaar Hai.
Lailee Inez Bakhtiar, is an American poet and novelist. Published in 2024 is her newest book of poetry, Severn Sky Sonnets & Poems. Published in 2021, Esther Entering Your Destiny is the author's newest non-fiction book about the historical and Biblical figure of Esther of the Old Testament Book of Esther. This analysis of Esther from the Bible describes her courage, influence, and spiritual role in ancient times.
Eleanor Catton is a New Zealand novelist and screenwriter. Born in Canada, Catton moved to New Zealand as a child and grew up in Christchurch. She completed a master's degree in creative writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters. Her award-winning debut novel, The Rehearsal, written as her Master's thesis, was published in 2008, and has been adapted into a 2016 film of the same name. Her second novel, The Luminaries, won the 2013 Booker Prize, making Catton the youngest author ever to win the prize and only the second New Zealander. It was subsequently adapted into a television miniseries, with Catton as screenwriter. In 2023, she was named on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list.
Lena Mohan Kumar, known by stage name Lenaa, is an Indian actress, author, and scriptwriter who appears predominantly in Malayalam cinema. In a career that spans over 25 years, Lenaa has worked in over 175 films in 5 languages, including blockbusters as well as critically acclaimed films in English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam.
Evelyn Rose Strange "Evie" Wyld is an Anglo-Australian author. Her first novel, After the Fire, A Still Small Voice, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 2009, and her second novel, All the Birds, Singing, won the Encore Award in 2013 and the Miles Franklin Award in 2014. Her third novel, The Bass Rock, won the Stella Prize in 2021.
Parvati Venugopal Nair is an Indian model and actress who works in the South Indian film industry. Born into a Malayali family in Abu Dhabi, she trained as a software professional from Manipal Institute of Technology. She started modelling at the age of 15.
M. Subhadra Nair is an Indian gynaecologist, medical teacher and social worker, reportedly credited to have assisted over 50,000 child births. The Government of India honoured her, in 2014, with the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award, for her services to the field of medicine, the first gynaecologist to receive the Padma award.
Mikey Walsh is a British writer and columnist.
Casey Plett is a Canadian writer, best known for her novel Little Fish, her Lambda Literary Award winning short story collection, A Safe Girl to Love, and her Giller Prize-nominated short story collection, A Dream of a Woman. Plett is a transgender woman, and she often centers this experience in her writing.
Jackie Cruz is a Dominican–American actress, singer and former model. She is known for her role as Marisol "Flaca" Gonzales on the Netflix original series Orange Is the New Black.
Sthreepadham Malayalam is a television soap opera that ran on Mazhavil Manorama on Monday-Friday at 8:30 PM IST. Show is based on the novel Sthreepadham on Manorama weekly written by Joyci.This was a superhit serial and It marks come back of miniscreen actress Shelly Kishore after the hit Kumkumapoovu and Vishnu Prasad after Nandhanam /Vrindhavanam.
Clauddine "Dee Dee" Blanchard was a 48-year-old woman who was found stabbed to death in her Springfield house. She was murdered by her daughter's boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn. The murder was planned with her daughter, Gypsy-Rose Blanchard.
Gypsy-Rose Alcida Blanchard Anderson is an American author, Munchausen-by-proxy awareness activist and social media personality. She rose to worldwide prominence when she was convicted of second-degree murder in Springfield, Missouri, for the death of her mother Dee Dee Blanchard, who had subjected Blanchard to life-long physical, mental, and medical abuse. She was sentenced to ten years in prison.
