Alliance University's School of Liberal Arts in association with Asia Pacific Writers & Translators Inc. proudly presents APWT 2022. The literary festival will be held on November 28, 29 & 30, 2022 amidst the welcoming Alliance campus.
Alliance University continues to reimagine the idea of the Indian university as a hub of art and culture. The festival helps further Alliance's vision to become the Cosmopolis – a public sphere throbbing with ideas and debates to make Bangalore truly cosmopolitan.
The theme for this festival is "Writing outside the frame". To shine the spotlight on voices lying outside the usual frame of the literati, we bring together exhilarating confluence of styles, modes and mediums of literature that evade convention.
In its 17th year, Asia Pacific Writers and Translators is the region's longest running and largest literary network.
Featuring an exciting line-up of feature authors and translators from around the world, and tantalising cultural events, #APWT2022 'Writing Outside the Frame' will be part festival, part conference: an interactive program designed to showcase Asia Pacific writers to the world.
Agam is a Bangalore-based contemporary Carnatic progressive rock band formed in 2003. Their music is a blend of Carnatic music and rock and draws inspirations from traditional Carnatic music and progressive rock acts such as Dream Theatre. Their logo is inspired by the folk art Theyyam of North Kerala. Interestingly, the name ‘Agam’ is a Malayalam/ Tamil word which means the 'Heart, soul or the Inner soul'. The current lineup consists of Harish Sivaramakrishnan (vocals and violin), Ganesh Ram Nagarajan (drums and backing vocals), Swamy Seetharaman (keyboards and lyricist), T Praveen Kumar (lead guitar), Aditya Kasyap (bass guitar and backing vocals), Sivakumar Nagarajan (ethnic percussions), Jagadish Natarajan (rhythm guitar) and Yadhunandan (Drummer). Agam has also been featured in television channels and their well-known performances include the one for the entertainment channel Rosebowl, and it also performed in the second season of Coke Studio (India). They received recognition by winning the "Ooh la la la" – Music reality show hosted by Sun TV, and judged by A. R. Rahman, in 2007. They have also featured in Music of contemporary India commissioned by the Ministry of External Affairs, India.
Aaron Chapman Artist & Writer
Aaron Chapman is an artist and writer based between the Gold Coast and Northern Rivers, working across a range of mediums including photography, text, sculpture and public art. Chapman's work is motivated by architecture and the home, and is particularly interested in childhood and the metaphorical offerings of deconstructed homes. His work has appeared at Head On Photo Festival, Centre for Contemporary Photography and the Bleach Festival. His poetry and prose have appeared in international publications and Australian literary journals. In 2019, Chapman was a Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize semi-finalist and a finalist in the Australian Life Photography Competition at Art & About Sydney. In 2020, he was a finalist in Perth Centre for Photography’s CLIP Award and received the judge’s commendation award. Some of the selected awards received by Chapman are, Josephine Ulrick & Win Schubert Photography Award, HOTA Gallery, 2022; Wollumbin Art Award, Tweed Regional Gallery, 2022; Byron Arts Magazine (BAM) Art Prize 2021 Finalist award.
Allen C. Jones Writer & Poet
Award-winning California poet and writer, Allen C. Jones is an Associate Professor of English Literature and Culture at University of Stavanger, Norway. As a writer, game developer, and scholar, he takes an interdisciplinary approach to literature. His digital work explores the usefulness of creative writing games that encourage users to experience (play and create) alternative and "non-linear" textual experiences, a goal that includes designing usefully creative user interfaces (metaphor mapping). His novel Her Death Was Also Water will be published in November 2022 by Midnight Sun. His experimental memoir-in-verse Son of a Cult, is forthcoming in 2023 from Kelsay Books.
Pandit Anand Thakore Poet & Vocalist
Born in Mumbai in 1971, Poet and Hindustani Khayal vocalist Pandit Anand Thakore, 'Sabadpiya', spent a part of his childhood in Britain and has lived in India since then. Elephant Bathing, Mughal Sequence and Waking in December are his three collections of verse. His poems and critical essays on music and poetry have appeared in leading national and international journals and anthologies. Anand Thakore is the author of a number of critical essays on music and poetry and a pamphlet of 'Khayal' lyrics in Hindi. He received training in Hindustani vocal music for many years from Pandit Satyasheel Deshpande, Ustad Aslam Khan and Pandit Baban Haldankar of the Agra Gharana. He has given vocal concerts at music festivals and read his poetry at literary festivals in various parts of the country. Thakore is the founder of Harbour Line, a publishing collective, and of Kshitij, an interactive forum for musicians. He lives in Mumbai, where he sings composes, writes and teaches Hindustani vocal music in the Guru-shishya tradition.
Amit Shankar Saha Writer & Poet
Amit Shankar Saha is an award-winning short story writer and poet. He is the author of three collections of poems and has co-edited a collection of short stories. He has been a delegate writer at literary events of Sahitya Akademi, Unmesha: International Literature Festival, Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival, Ethos Literary Festival, Valley of Words, Yercaud Poetry Festival and Anantha - A Festival of Poetry. His works have appeared in numerous internationally acclaimed magazines, journals and anthologies and been included in Best Indian Poetry 2018, the Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English 2020 and 2021 and Converse: Contemporary English Poetry by Indians. He works as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Seacom Skills University, Santiniketan, West Bengal.
Danish Sait Writer
Danish Sait is an Indian Stand-up Comedian, Radio Host, TV Presenter, Actor and Writer. With over 32 million plays, his prank calls and 8 alter egos have reached people across the world. As a TV Presenter, Danish has hosted The Pro Kabaddi League - Seasons I and II, The ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 and The RCB Insider Series (IPL 2015). In 2018 Danish co-wrote and played the lead in the film Humble Politician Nograj. He received the Outlook Social Media Award for being the first person in the country to turn an internet-based character into full-fledged film role. His other movies include French Biryani (2020); One Cut Two Cut (2022) and 777 Charlie (2022). Danish is also the face of several digital campaigns including Taxi4Sure and Royal Challengers Bangalore.
Irom Chanu Sharmila Activist & Poet
Irom Chanu Sharmila known as the 'Iron Lady of Manipur' is an Indian civil rights activist, and poet from the state of Manipur. On 5 November 2000, she began a hunger strike in favour of abolishing the dreaded Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 that applied to seven states in India and granted the Indian armed forces the power to search properties without a warrant, and to arrest people, and to use deadly force if there is "reasonable suspicion" that a person is acting against the state. She ended the fast on 9 August 2016, after 16 long years of fasting. Having refused food and water for more than 500 weeks (she was nasally force fed in jail), she has been called "the world's longest hunger striker". In 2013, Amnesty International declared her a Prisoner of conscience, and said she "is being held solely for a peaceful expression of her beliefs". Recognised as a civil and human rights icon across the world, Sharmila has won numerous peace and human rights awards including the South Korean Gwangju prize for human rights, the first Mayillama Award, a lifetime achievement award from the Asian Human Rights Commission, the Rabindranath Tagore Peace Prize and the Sarva Gunah Sampannah Award for Peace and Harmony. Sharmila lives in Bangalore with her husband and two children.
Dr Sally Breen Writer & Lecturer
Dr Sally Breen is an Australian writer and senior lecturer in Writing and Publishing at Griffith University. She is the author of The Casuals (2011) winner of the Harper Collins Varuna Manuscript Award and her novel Atomic City (2013) was shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards Book of the Year People’s Choice in 2014 . Her short form creative and non-fiction work has been published widely including features in Overland, Griffith REVIEW, Best Australian Stories, Asia Literary Review, Meniscus, TEXT, Review of Australian Fiction, The Guardian UK, The Age and the Australian. Sally is a regular contributor to The Conversation and is Executive Director of Asia Pacific Writers and Translators.
Sudeep Sen Author
Sudeep Sen’s prize-winning books include Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (HarperCollins), Rain, Ladakh, Aria (A. K. Ramanujan Translation Award), The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry (editor), Fractals: New & Selected Poems, Translations 1980-2015 (London Magazine Editions), EroText (Vintage: Penguin Random House). He is the editorial director of AARK ARTS, editor of Atlas. Sen is the first Asian honoured to deliver the Derek Walcott Lecture and read his poetry at the Nobel Laureate Festival. The Government of India awarded him the senior fellowship for “outstanding persons in the field of culture/literature.”
Tom Doig Author & Journalist
Tom Doig is an award-winning creative non-fiction author, investigative journalist, editor and scholar born and raised in Wellington, New Zealand. He has authored two books, which are narrative journalism accounts of the 2014 Hazelwood mine fire: Hazelwood (2020) and The Coal Face (2015). Hazelwood was a finalist for the 2020 Walkley Book Award, Journalism and the 2021 Ned Kelly Awards, Best True Crime and Highly Commended in the 2020 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, Non-Fiction. The Coal Face was a joint winner of the 2015 Oral History Victoria Education Innovation Award. He has also written a travel memoir titled Mörön to Mörön: Two men, two bikes, one Mongolian misadventure (2013). Tom’s non-fiction has been published in The Big Issue, Crikey, New Matilda, ACF’s Habitat magazine among other sites and magazines. His plays include Survival of the Prettiest (2004), The Badness Hour (2006), Hitlerhoff (2008), One-Arm and Three-Arms in the Swamp (2009) and Selling Ice to the Remains of the Eskimos (2010). Tom has performed in every State and Territory in Australia.
Vanessa Barrington Founder and Director of PR and branding firms
Vanessa Barrington is the founder and director of PR and branding firms, The Right Remark and The Book Doula. With over 18 years’ experience working across a range of industries, Vanessa enjoys elevating brands and creating meaningful connections through storytelling. She has worked across broad range of industries including financial services, energy, mining & utilities, healthcare, infrastructure, not for profit and government. Vanessa successfully led the change management and communications for the largest commercial acquisition in Australia during 2016 (State Grid Corporation of China V Jemena) and has worked on a range of major business transformations. She has previously led and facilitated media campaigns for multi-million-dollar events such as the Leukaemia Foundation’s World’s Greatest Shave, helped launch Brisbane’s first ever Brisbane Writer’s Fringe Festival, and continues to promote a range of lifestyle and community events and brands through The Right Remark.
Victor Mallet Journalist & Author
Victor Mallet is a journalist, editor, commentator and author with more than three decades of experience in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. He is currently Paris bureau chief of the Financial Times. His previous posts include south Asia bureau chief in New Delhi, bureau chief in Madrid, Asia editor in Hong Kong, and Paris correspondent. In India, he was twice awarded the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism as a foreign correspondent, first for a 2012 feature about the Rise of Narendra Modi and later for a weekend magazine cover story on the Ganges. His latest book is River of Life, River of Death: The Ganges and India’s Future (OUP, 2017) is a highly acclaimed book. Also, his highly praised book on the south-east Asian industrial revolution and the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, The Trouble with Tigers (HarperCollins), was first published in 1999. In Hong Kong, he twice won the Society of Publishers in Asia (SoPA) award for opinion writing.
Vinita Agrawal Poet & Editor
Vinita Agrawal is an award-winning poet, editor and convenor of literary events in India. She has penned five books, including Twilight Language which bagged the winner of the Proverse Prize 2021. She is a joint Recipient of the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize 2018 and winner of the Gayatri GaMarsh Memorial Award for Literary Excellence, USA, 2015. She is a Poetry Editor with Usawa Literary Review and has co-edited the Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English. Her work has been published in Indian Quarterly, Mascara Review, Zingara, Fox Chase Review, Indian Periodical, Asian Cha, Voice & Verse Poetry, among others. She co-curates an online series on poetry titled Ruminating Poetry. In 2020, she edited an anthology on climate change titled Open Your Eyes. She was also featured in a documentary Deepest Uprising, on twenty women poets from Asia.
Xavier Hennekinne Writer
Xavier Hennekinne is a French-Australian writer, publisher, and international aid and development professional. He is one of the co-founders of Sydney-based publisher Gazebo Books, which has been publishing works of literary fiction and non-fiction since 2018. His first novel Lost Words was published in 2019.He has also published essays and short stories in the Griffith Review, Kyoto Journal and Courant d’Ombres.
Devdutt Pattanaik Writer
Devdutt Pattanaik writes on the relevance of mythology in modern times, especially in areas of management, governance, and leadership. He defines mythology as cultural truths revealed through stories, symbols, and rituals.
He is the author of more than 50 books and over 1000 columns, with bestsellers such as My Gita, Jaya, Sita, Shyam, Business Sutra, and the 7 Secret Series. As a regular columnist, he writes for reputed newspapers like The Times of India and Dainik Bhaskar. Pattanaik is known for his TED talks and his shows on television. His TV shows include Business Sutra on CNBC-TV18, Devlok on Epic TV and Daan Sthapana on SonyLiv. He lectures on the relevance of both Indian and Western myths in modern life and has been part of several podcasts. He is a consultant for organisations, various television channels, film houses on culture, diversity, leadership and art of storytelling.
Geetanjali Shree Novelist & Writer
Geetanjali Shree is a renowned Hindi novelist and short-story writer based in New Delhi. She is the first South Asian to have received the prestigious International Booker Prize in 2022 for the English translation (Tomb of Sand) of her novel Ret Samadhi (pub. 2018). Described as ‘a triumph of literature’ Tomb of Sand is a family saga set in northern India that tells the story of an eighty-year-old woman who slips into a deep depression at the death of her husband, then resurfaces to gain a new lease on life.
Geetanjali completed her master's degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University and her PhD from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda on the Hindi writer Munshi Premchand. She began her career as an academic but soon turned to her passion of writing stories. She is the author of five collections of short stories and five novels. Her novels have been translated into many European languages. Her first novel Mai was shortlisted for the Crossword Book Award in 2001 and its English translation by Nita Kumar, received the Sahitya Akademi Translation Prize. The novel was translated into several languages after the huge success of its English translation including Serbian and Korean. Her other novels are Khali Jagah, Hamara Shahar Us Baras, and Tirohit. Her Booker winning novel Ret Samadhi, has been translated into English by Daisy Rockwell as Tomb of Sand, and into French by Annie Montaut as Au-delà de la frontière. She has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Indu Sharma Katha Samman, the Hindi Akademy award for achievement in literature, and the prestigious Krishna Baldev Vaid award. She has also been associated with theatre, and written scripts for many plays over the years.
Ravi Shankar Author & Poet
Pushcart-prize winning poet, author, editor, translator, and professor, Ravi Shankar is the author and editor of over fifteen books and chapbooks of poetry, including the Muse India Award winning translations of 8th century Tamil poet/saint Autobiography of a Goddess, the National Poetry Review Prize winning Deepening Groove and the Carolina Wren judges award winning What Else Could it Be. Translated into over 12 languages, Shankar has held fellowships from the Jentel Foundation, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Blue Mountain Center and many others. He has been featured in The New York Times, the Chronicle of Higher Education, BBC, NPR and the PBS Newshour. He is the Chairman of the Asia Pacific Writers & Translators Inc.
Rebecca Vedavathy Poet
Rebecca Vedavathy is a research scholar, poet and literature lover currently based in Hyderabad. She pursues research in Francophone Literature from EFLU, Hyderabad. She won the first prize for the Poetry with Prakriti Contest, 2016. She was shortlisted for the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize 2018 and has previously been longlisted (English Poetry) for the Toto Funds the Arts Awards. Her fiction has been published by the University of Edinburgh for their Dangerous Women Project. She has contributed poetry to the Sunflower Collective, Mascara Literary Review (Australia), Allegro Poetry Magazine (UK), Narrow Road Review.
Saeed Ibrahim Author & Writer
Bangalore-based writer, Saeed Ibrahim, is the author of two books - Twin Tales from Kutcch, a family saga set in colonial India, and the recently published - The Missing Tile and Other Stories, a collection of fifteen short stories reflecting on various aspects of human behaviour. Several of his short stories have been published in The Deccan Herald, The Beacon Webzine, Bengaluru Review, The Blue Lotus Magazine, Borderless Journal and Muse India. His other writings include newspaper articles, travel writing, book reviews and two essays for the Museum of Material Memory, a digital repository of stories linked to objects of material culture.
