Nagaland is a state in northeastern India. It borders the state of Assam to the west, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam to the north, Myanmar to the east, and Manipur to the south. The state capital is Kohima, and the largest city is Dimapur. It has an area of 16,579 square kilometres (6,401 sq mi) with a population of 1,980,602 per the 2011 Census of India, making it one of the smallest states of India. Nagaland is one of three states in India where the population is mostly Christian.
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.
The Assam Sahitya Sabha is a non Government, non profit, literary organisation of Assam. It was founded in December 1917 in Assam, India to promote the culture of Assam and Assamese literature. Presently it has about one thousand branches all over Assam and also outside the state. The central office is at Jorhat, a city of historical importance. The branches and the district units also have their offices in their respective places. A branch of the organisation named Singapore Sahitya Sabha is launched in Singapore on July 28, 2019.
Pratibha Ray is an Indian academic and writer. She was born on 21 January 1943, at Alabol, a remote village in the Balikuda area of Jagatsinghpur district formerly part of Cuttack district of Odisha state. She was the first woman to win the Moortidevi Award in 1991.
Shashi Deshpande is an Indian novelist. She is a recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award.
Bhabendra Nath Saikia was a novelist, short-story writer and film director from Assam, India. He won many literary awards, including Sahitya Academy (1976), and was also recognised with the Padma Shri.
Arupa Kalita Patangia is an Indian novelist and short story writer and known for her fiction writing in Assamese. Her literary awards include: the Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad award, the Katha Prize and the Prabina Saikia Award. In 2014, she received the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award for her short stories book named Mariam Austin Othoba Hira Barua. Her books have been translated to English, Hindi, and Bengali. Her works touch upon Assamese history and culture, addressing the lives people from middle and lower income brackets, and focus specifically on concerns of women, violence, and insurgency.
Sitakant Mahapatra is an eminent Indian poet and literary critic in Odia as well as English. He was in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) since 1961 until retiring in 1995, and has held ex officio posts such as the Chairman of National Book Trust, New Delhi since then.
Rita Chowdhury is an Indian poet, novelist and Sahitya Akademi Award recipient in the world of Assamese literature. She has been working as an associate professor in Cotton College, Guwahati, Assam in Political Science Department since 2001. Prior to that, Chowdhury had worked as lecturer from 1991 to 1996 and as senior lecturer from 1996 to 2001 in the same college. She started her teaching career as lecturer in Political Science in Diphu Government College, Karbi Anglong from the year 1989 to 1991. She is currently the Director of National Book Trust, India. She is also the wife of minister Chandra Mohan Patowary.
Mitra Phukan is an Indian author who writes in English. She is also a translator and columnist.Her published literary works include four children's books, a biography, two novels, "The Collector's Wife" and "A Monsoon of Music" (Penguin-Zubaan) several volumes of translations of other novels and a collection of fifty of her columns, "Guwahati Gaze" Her most recent works are a collection of her own short stories "A Full Night's Thievery" and a collection of short stories in translation, "Aghoni Bai and Other Stories" (2019) She writes extensively on Indian Music as a reviewer and essayist. Her works have been translated into many languages, and several of them are taught in colleges and Universities. As a translator herself, she has translated into English the works of some of the best known Assamese writers of fiction, including "Blossoms in the Graveyard", a translation of Jyanpeeth Awardee Birendra Kumar Bhattacharjee's "Kobor Aru Phool" Her column "All Things Considered" in the Assam Tribune is widely read. She has been extensively anthologized, also.
Mamang Dai is an Indian poet, novelist and journalist based in Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh. She received Sahitya Akademi Award in 2017 for her novel The Black Hill.
Nilmani Phookan is an Indian poet in Assamese language and an academic. His work, replete with symbolism, is inspired by French symbolism and is representative of the genre in Assamese poetry. His notable works include Surya Henu Nami Ahe Ei Nodiyedi, Gulapi Jamur Lagna, and Kobita.
Mahim Bora was an Indian writer and educationist from Assam. He was elected as a president of the Assam Sahitya Sabha held in 1989 at Doomdooma. He was awarded with most notably with the Padma Shri in 2011, the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2001 and the Assam Valley Literary Award in 1998. Assam Sahitya Sabha conferred its highest honorary title Sahityacharyya on him in 2007.
Nalini Bala Devi was a noted Indian writer and poet of Assamese literature, known for nationalistic as well as mystical poetry. She was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 1957 for her contribution to literature, and 1968 she won the Sahitya Akademi Award given by Sahitya Akademi for her poetry collection Alakananda.
Padma Sachdev is an Indian poet and novelist. She is the first modern woman poet of the Dogri language. She also writes in Hindi. She has published several poetry collections, including Meri Kavita Mere Geet, which won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1971. She has also received the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian award in 2001, and the Kabir Samman for poetry for the year 2007-08 given by Government of Madhya Pradesh.
Laburnum for My Head (2009) is the collection of eight short stories by Indian author Temsula Ao. The stories are about the lives of people from the vibrant and troubled region of Nagaland in northeast India.
Chandra Prasad Saikia (1927–2006) was a writer from Assam, India. He was the president of the Asam Sahitya Sabha held at Hajo and Jorhat district, Assam in 1999 and 2000, respectively. Saikia was born on 9 July 1927 at Jalukgaon, Amguri in Sivasagar district, Assam. After having primary education in Sivasagar he had left for Kolkata for higher education.
Karabi Deka Hazarika is an Indian writer. She was born in the small coal mining township of Borjan in the Indian state of Nagaland. Her father, Minakanta Hazarika, was a doctor who spent most of his life serving the poor in the Naga hills. A great Assamese literary author, Atul Chandra Hazarika was her maternal uncle who later became Karabi's chief source of literary inspiration. Born amidst the green hills, lush forests and rivers instilled an early love and awe for nature in her that is echoed in her literary works in later years, especially her poems.
Easterine Kire is a poet and author who currently lives in northern Norway. The majority of her writings are based in the lived realities of the people in Nagaland in north-east India. Her motivation to write is summed up in this statement by her in an interview, "I felt we needed to create written Naga Literature. We have so much oral narratives but with oral dying out, it's all going to be lost." Apart from writing, she also performs Jazz poetry with her band Jazzpoesi.
Monalisa Changkija is an Indian journalist and poet of Ao Naga ethnicity. She is the founding editor and publisher of the daily newspaper Nagaland Page. She was a member of the Working Group on Women's Empowerment in the Indian National Planning Commission.
