Surjeet Kalsey [1] (born in Amritsar, Punjab, India) [2] is a Canadian poet, dramatist, short story writer and translator who lives in British Columbia and writes in both Punjabi and English. She has published a dozen books.
After receiving a Master's Degree in English and Punjabi Literature from Punjab University, Chandigarh, [3] she worked as the Punjabi Regional News Anchor for All India Radio. [4] Kalsey earned a Master's in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia [3] and worked as a freelance writer, interpreter, and translator for several years. [4] She earned a fourth master's degree in Counseling Psychology from the University of British Columbia, [3] after which she has worked as a family therapist and bi-lingual instructor at the Vancouver Community College teaches Court & Health Interpreting Certification Program. [4]
In 2014, Kalsey was awarded the University of British Columbia's Asian Studies Department lifetime achievement award for her literature. [4]
Gurmukhī is an abugida developed from the Laṇḍā scripts, standardized and used by the second Sikh guru, Guru Angad (1504–1552). Commonly regarded as a Sikh script, Gurmukhi is used in Punjab, India as the official script of the Punjabi language.
Punjabi, sometimes spelled Panjabi, is an Indo-Aryan language native to the Punjab region of Pakistan and India. It is one of the most widely spoken native languages in the world with approximately 150 million native speakers.
Faiz Ahmad Faiz was a Pakistani poet and author of Punjabi and Urdu literature. Faiz was one of the most celebrated, popular, and influential Urdu writers of his time, and his works and ideas remain widely influential in Pakistan and beyond. Outside of literature, he has been described as "a man of wide experience", having worked as a teacher, military officer, journalist, trade unionist, and broadcaster.
Shahmukhi is the right-to-left abjad-based script developed from the Perso-Arabic alphabet used for the Punjabi language varieties, predominantly in Punjab, Pakistan. It is generally written in the Nastaʿlīq calligraphic hand, which is also used for Persian and Urdu. Shahmukhi is one of the two standard scripts used for Punjabi, the other being Gurmukhi used mainly in Punjab, India.
Sayyid Abdullāh Shāh Qādrī, known popularly as Baba Bulleh Shah and vocatively as Bulleya, was a Punjabi revolutionary philosopher, reformer and Sufi poet, universally regarded as the 'Father of Punjabi Enlightenment'; and one of the greatest poets in the Punjabi language. He criticised powerful religious, political, and social institutions; and is revered as the 'Poet of the People' amongst Punjabis.
Yasmeen Hameed is a Pakistani Urdu poet, translator and educator.
Anwar Masood is a Pakistani poet and educationist known for his comic poetry. However, his works include other genres as well. He writes in Punjabi, Urdu, and Persian languages.
Lahnda, also known as Lahndi or Western Punjabi, is a group of north-western Indo-Aryan language varieties spoken in parts of Pakistan and India. It is defined in the ISO 639 standard as a "macrolanguage" or as a "series of dialects" by other authors. Its validity as a genetic grouping is not certain. The terms "Lahnda" and "Western Punjabi" are exonyms employed by linguists, and are not used by the speakers themselves.
Nirupama Dutt is an Indian poet, journalist and translator. She writes poems in Punjabi, and translates them into English herself.
Sharif Kunjahi was a leading writer and poet of Punjabi language.
Punjabi literature, specifically literary works written in the Punjabi language, is characteristic of the historical Punjab of present-day Pakistan and India and the Punjabi diaspora. The Punjabi language is written in several scripts, of which the Shahmukhi and Gurmukhī scripts are the most commonly used in Western Punjab and Eastern Punjab, respectively.
Muhammad Afzal Ahsan Randhawa was a Pakistani Punjabi language writer, poet, translator, playwright and a politician.
Shiv K. Kumar was an Indian English-language poet, playwright, novelist, and short story writer. His grandfather late Tulsi Das Kumar was a school teacher and his father Bishan Das Kumar, was a retired headmaster. The letter 'K' stands for Krishna, i.e. Shiv Krishna Kumar.
Sant Singh Sekhon (1908–1997) was an Indian playwright and fiction writer associated with Punjabi literature. He is part of the generation of Indian authors who mark the transition of India into an independent nation, scarred by the tragedies of partition.
Satyapal Anand; born April 24, 1931) is an Indian-American poet, critic and writer. He has written several fictional and poetry books in four languages: English, Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi. He has also received awards for his literary work.
Mangal Sen (1915–1972) was a Punjabi writer, poet and essayist in East Punjab, India. He wrote first under the name Balwant Rai, but is most famous for his poetry under his pen name Bawa Balwant. He started writing poetry in Urdu but later switched to his mother tongue of Punjabi. Balwant is credited with helping start the progressive movement in Punjabi poetry. He also made a contribution to the freedom struggle of India.
Sheila Bhatia (1916-2008) was an Indian poet, playwright, theatre personality and the founder of the Delhi Art Theatre, a forum based in Delhi for the promotion of Indian art forms. She is credited with originating Punjabi opera, an Indian form of dance drama incorporating operatic movements. She was honoured by the Government of India in 1971 with Padma Shri, the fourth highest Indian civilian award. A decade later, she received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for theatre direction in 1982 followed by Kalidas Samman in 1997.
Tarlochan Singh Bedi is an academic better known for translating the Kural into Punjabi.
Gurdas Ram Alam (1912–1989), was a Punjabi language poet born in Bundala village of Jalandhar, Punjab. He was a progressive poet and an activist poet from a marginalized part of the society known as Dalits, and he is known as the first Punjabi Dalit poet. He was from a working-class family and lived in small mud house in village. Alam did not go to school, he learned reading and writing Gurmukhi from his friends. Being a working-class child he started working at a very young age, and he also started writing poems from his childhood. His first source of inspiration for getting into writing was oppression by the rich on the poor people that he experienced while working as child labor. Despite being illiterate, he emerged as a popular name in Punjabi folk poetry before the partition of India. Alam is recognised as a Dalit activist poet and the voice of deprived, oppressed castes and communities.
Surjit Hans, also appears as Surjeet Hans, was an Indian writer, tragedian, scholar and lecturer. He is also credited with being a "translator" for translating all the tragedies and thirty eight plays of William Shakespeare into Punjabi language. His name also appears in "historians" and "poets" for his research on history of Sikhism and writing novels and poems. Hans wrote sixty books, including Mittti Di Dheri, Loon Di Dali and Mrit Da Sapna throughout his life.