Manmohan Malhoutra a Rhodes scholar, was in the Indian Administrative Service from 1961 to 1978. He served in the Prime Minister’s Secretariat from 1966 to 1973, and then joined the Commonwealth Secretariat in London in 1974, where he was Assistant Secretary General till 1993. He has been Secretary General of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, New Delhi, since 2001.

Saba Naqvi Bhaumik is a journalist who is currently Bureau Chief Outlook magazine.

Mishi Saran took an undergraduate degree in Chinese Studies in America, studied in Beijing and Nanjing, and then worked in Hong Kong as a journalist and editor from 1994 to 2004. Her first book, Chasing the Monk’s Shadow: A Journey in the Footsteps of Xuanzang, will be published by Penguin Books in April 2005.

Jerry Pinto is a poet and journalist. He is the author of Surviving Women and editor (with Naresh Fernandes) of Bombay, meri jaan, an anthology of writings on Mumbai, both published by Penguin Books.

Sankarshan Thakur is a Delhi-based journalist. He is Executive Editor of Tehelka and the author of The Making of Laloo Yadav, The Unmaking of Bihar.

Sunanda K. Datta-Ray has been a journalist in Britain, India, the US and Singapore for more than forty-five years. His books include Smash and Grab: Annexation of Sikkim and Waiting for America: India and the United States in the New Millennium.

Edna Fernandes is a British journalist of Indian origin, who has worked with Reuters in London and the Financial Times in India. She now divides her time between Delhi and London. Her forthcoming book, Holy Warriors, will be published by Penguin Books in 2005.

Naresh Fernandes is a Mumbai-based journalist. His writing has appeared in Man’s World, Outlook Traveller and Letras Libres, among other publications. He is the editor (with Jerry Pinto) of Bombay, meri jaan, an anthology of writings on Mumbai, published by Penguin Books in 2003.

Nirupama Subramanian was the Colombo-based correspondent for the Indian Express and later the Hindu from 1996 to 2002. She is now Special Correspondent of the Hindu, based in Chennai. Her first book, Sri Lanka: Voices from a War Zone, will be published by Penguin Books in May 2005.

Arpita Das is joint owner of an independent publishing venture based in Delhi, called Yoda Press.

Ajai Shukla is Defence Editor for NDTV and anchors its weekly programme, Foreign Correspondent. He has travelled and reported regularly from conflict zones, including Afghanistan and Iraq.

Smita Gupta is a Delhi-based journalist who is currently Political Editor of Outlook magazine.

André Béteille was a founder-member of the Department of Sociology of the Delhi School of Economics, where he was Professor of Sociology till 1999. He has held visiting appointments at Cambridge, the London School of Economics and various other institutions in Europe and America. His books include Caste, Class and Power, Society and Politics in India and a collection of his newspaper articles, Chronicles of Our Time, published by Penguin Books in 2000.

Anuradha Roy was educated at Presidency College, Calcutta, and Cambridge University, UK. She is co-founder of Permanent Black, an independent publishing firm. She won the Outlook-Picador Non-Fiction Prize in 2003. In 2004, she was one of eight International Young Publishers of the Year picked by the British Council and the London Book Fair. She lives wherever Biscoot, her dog, wishes to live—usually the Kumaon hills and sometimes in New Delhi.

Arun John grew up in Calcutta. A layabout during his college days, he moved to the United States in the early nineties where he remains a layabout.

Ranjit Hoskote is the author of seven books, most recently, of The Complicit Observer, a monograph on the noted artist Sudhir Patwardhan. He has published three collections of his poetry: Zones of Assault (1991), The Cartographer’s Apprentice (2000) and The Sleepwalker’s Archive (2001). Hoskote is also the editor of Reasons for Belonging: Fourteen Contemporary Indian Poets (Penguin Books India, 2002). He received the Sanskriti Award for Literature, 1996, and the Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Award, 2004.

Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta lives and works in Mumbai.

Paromita Vohra is a film-maker and writer who lives in Mumbai. Her films as director are Unlimited Girls, Cosmopolis: Two Tales of a City, Work in Progress, A Woman’s Place, A Short Film about Time and Annapurna. Her films as a writer are the feature film Khamosh Pani, and the documentaries Skin Deep, A Few Things I Know about Her and If You Pause.

Indrajit Hazra is a journalist with the Hindustan Times. He is the author of two novels, The Burnt Forehead of Max Saul (2000) and The Garden of Earthly Delights (2003). He lives in New Delhi.

Mamang Dai is a poet from Arunachal Pradesh and the author of Arunachal Pradesh: The Hidden Land. She has been an accredited journalist to the Government of Arunachal Pradesh, a correspondent for the Hindustan Times and The Telegraph, and was founderpresident of the Arunachal Heritage Society. She is currently engaged in NGO activities in the state.

Palash Krishna Mehrotra was born in Bombay and educated at St Stephen’s College, Delhi, the Delhi School of Economics, and Balliol College, Oxford. He lives with his grandmother in Dehra

Alban Couto who retired from the Indian Administrative Service now lives in his ancestral village in Goa. He has worked in Bihar, Goa, Delhi and the Commonwealth Secretariat. He writes on current issues and is engaged in development programmes.

Rana Dasgupta was born in England in 1971, and grew up in Cambridge. Having lived in France, Malaysia and the US, he moved to Delhi in 2001. Tokyo Cancelled, his first novel, was published in January 2005.

Mita Ghose studied English literature at Loreto College, Kolkata, and specialized in French at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and Sorbonne University, Paris. She has worked as a teacher and translator and as senior subeditor with The Statesman and The Telegraph. She is now a freelance editor and writer. Her articles, book reviews and short stories have appeared in several newspapers, magazines and websites.

Sarnath Banerjee studied image and communication at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is currently working on a comic book on the eighteenth-century eccentricities of feudal Calcutta and Route 36, a graphic novel located on the upper deck of a doubledecker night bus in London. His work has appeared in various magazines and newspapers. His first graphic novel, Corridor (Penguin Books India), was published in 2004.

Mitali Saran has lived and travelled in several places, worked on various freelance projects and been a full-time employee at Business Standard and Outlook Traveller magazine. She now lives in Delhi and writes freelance features and reviews. She’s been writing stories since she was six years old, though ‘Afterlife’ is the first to see the light of day.

Navtej Sarna was born in Jalandhar. After studying Commerce and Law at Delhi University, he joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1980. He has served as a diplomat in Moscow, Warsaw, Thimphu, Geneva, Tehran and Washington DC and is presently the Spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs in Delhi. He has contributed short stories to the BBC World Service, London Magazine and to the anthologies Signals and Signals 2. His book reviews appear in the Times Literary Supplement, Biblio and other journals. He is the author of Folk Tales of Poland (1991), a novel, We Weren’t Lovers Like That (Penguin Books India, 2002) and The Book of Nanak (Penguin Books India, 2003).

Ambarish Satwik was born in 1976 in Nagpur. He is a surgeon at the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, New Delhi. He started out with verse, which has been largely abandoned in favour of a rogue sexual history of the British colonial project in India, which he produces in stray, short bursts.

Renuka Narayanan works for the Indian Express Group and writes ‘Faithline’, a weekly column on religion, for the Indian Express. She has edited The Book of Prayer and is the author of The Little Book of Indian Wisdom and Faith: Filling the God-sized Hole. She has also co-authored A Passion for Dance with Yamini Krishnamurthi and Maximize Your Life with Pawan K. Varma. She lives in New Delhi.

Ritu Bhatia began her career as a microbiologist. She left the laboratory to work as a writer and editor in the field of health and development, and has been affiliated with organizations such as the Women’s Feature Service, Population Services International and the India HIV/AIDS Alliance. Her articles and short stories have been published in various magazines and journals. She lives in New Delhi.