A. Revathi is a transgender writer and activist based in Bangalore. She is the author of a book in Tamil, Unarvum Uruvamum (Feelings of the Entire Body), comprising thirty-seven profiles of hijras in Tamil Nadu. Her work has also been published in the anthology Because I Have a Voice.

Anjum Hasan is the author of the novel Lunatic in my Head and the collection of poems Street on the Hill. Her poems and short fiction have been published in anthologies such as 60 Indian Poets; Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond; and 21 Under 40: New Stories for a New Generation. She lives in Bangalore.

Mayank Austen Soofi feels insecure if there’s no book inside his shoulder bag and no camera hanging round his neck. He runs six blogsites (The Delhi Walla, Pakistan Paindabad, Ruined by Reading, Mayank Austen Soofi Photos, Reading Arundhati Roy and The New Yorker Clichés) to understand the complicated ways of our world. He sleeps in a library in Delhi.

Sandeep Kumar was born in India in 1961. He holds degrees in English literature, law, security studies, and environment and development. He joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1985, and has served in Kabul, Cape Town, Hong Kong, Paris and Hanoi. Sandeep has a passion for the arts, travel and languages. He is also a modest painter. He is fluent in English, Hindi, French, Chinese and German. Sandeep considers himself to be a sensitive person, with appreciation for the simplicity of life forms: watching the reds and oranges of the setting sun, blossoming of the autumn flowers, soaring of the kingfisher or, the simple holding of hands.

Kishalay Bhattacharjee, Chief of Bureau for North East India for New Delhi Television (NDTV), has been with NDTV since 1996. Born in Guwahati in 1969 he grew up in Shillong and studied at St.Edmund’s. Kishalay is the recipient of the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award for the year 2006-2007 for his report on internally displaced people and was selected for the Edward R. Murrow Journalism Fellows Programme to the US in 2006. He was given the Panos Fellowship for HIV/AIDS in 2007 and in 2008 and his documentary film Santi, Lucy and Thoibe was screened at an international festival of short films in Goa and then at the Barcelona Film Festival. He lives in Guwahati with his wife Gayatri and their daughter Shreya.

Jaya Jaitly is a social and political activist from an eminent family of writers and public spirited persons in Kerala. She works to empower traditional craftspeople and preserve India’s cultural heritage. In 1984 she joined the democratic socialist movement and took part in organisational work for the Janata Dal and later the Samata Party where she was elected its national President. Taking a break from direct political activity, she has also published six books, edits a political monthly called The OtherSide, runs a national organization of craftspeople, set up Dilli Haat, a popular crafts marketplace in Delhi, and campaigns for women’s empowerment and human rights.

Sridhar Balan is currently with Ratna Sagar Private Limited as senior consultant. He was previously with Oxford University Press India. A publishing professional for the last 25 years, Sridhar has been a columnist with The Hindu, Indian Express, Economic Times and Financial Express. He will shortly be writing a column on publishing for Business World Online. Prior to publishing, Sridhar has taught at both Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and at North Eastern Hill University, Shillong. Passionate about the inculcation and strengthening of the reading habit among children, Sridhar takes a program on reading for school teachers.

Ranvir S. Jain is a geoscientist and writes his reminiscences occasionally.

Swedish writer Zac O’Yeah was born in Finland, although he, of course, lives in Bangalore today with his wife, the writer Anjum Hasan. His books range from collections of essays on arts and culture to novels and travelogues. He has of late branched out into thrillers with the crime noir novel Tandooriälgen (The Tandoori Moose) published in Stockholm in 2006, which will be followed by a new thriller to be published in 2009. However, his tenth and most recent book was Mahatma!, a book on Gandhi and the Indian freedom struggle, published in 2008. He has also written plays and worked with Rangayana Theatre in Mysore.

Jairaj Singh is a journalist and a struggling writer in New Delhi. He started working with the Hindustan Times in 2004 and then went on to work with INX Media to launch their news channel NewsX. He is presently working with the city based tabloid, Metro Now, launching their Sunday section. He is 22 years old.

Vidura Jang Bahadur was born in Lusaka, Zambia and has travelled extensively across India and China over the last decade. His interests lie in working on was born in Lusaka, Zambia and has travelled extensively across India and China over the last decade. His interests lie in working on projects that create a better understanding of communities and individuals, exploring ideas close to him often drawing from his own experiences and experimenting with both storytelling form and format. Bodhi Art (www.bodhiart.in), New Delhi, exhibited a show of Vidura’s photographs on Tibet ‘Tsampa on My Shoulder’ in August 2008. He is currently working on a photography project on the Chinese Indian community that will culminate in a book and an exhibition.

Anil Ananthaswamy is a consultant editor of New Scientist in London. He has worked at the magazine in various capacities sinc is a consultant editor of New Scientist in London. He has worked at the magazine in various capacities since 2000, most recently as deputy news editor. He is also a contributor to National Geographic News. He studied electrical and computer engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and the University of Washington, Seattle, and worked as a software engineer in Silicon Valley before training in science writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is currently working on his book To the Edge of Reason: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Cosmology, which will be published in India, the US and the UK in 2009.

Viky Arya, a self-confessed nature worshipper, was born and brought up in Dehradun with the Himalayas as her inspiration. An established illustrator, sculptor and painter, Viky is also the author of a number of published books and poems in Hindi. At present Viky is Associate Vice President & Senior Creative Director at JWT Social.

Avik Chanda is born and educated in Calcutta, his profession as a management consultant has led to tenures in UK, Europe and in the US, where he currently resides. He also moonlights as a painter, freelance journalist and poet, writing in English and Bengali. He held a solo exhibition of paintings in Calcutta in 2001, and published a collection of poems in Bengali, in 2006. Avik’s poetry has appeared in a number of international journals and anthologies, and his first collection in English, Footnotes, was published in 2008 by Shearsman Books.

Yumlam Tana was born in Koloriang in Kurung Kumey District of Arunachal Pradesh in 1976. Belonging to the Nyishi tribe of Arunachal Pradesh, Yumlam is a poet, was born in Koloriang in Kurung Kumey District of Arunachal Pradesh in 1976. Belonging to the Nyishi tribe of Arunachal Pradesh, Yumlam is a poet, cartoonist and painter. Apart from being published in various poetry journals in India, Yumlam’s verse has been published in a book, The Man and a Tiger, by Writers’ Forum, Ranchi. Yumlam has also worked on a comic book series on Nyishi oral literature.

Omair Ahmad grew up in India and Saudi Arabia, and has worked as an analyst, reporter and political adviser in Washington DC, London and New Delhi. He is the grew up in India and Saudi Arabia, and has worked as an analyst, reporter and political adviser in Washington DC, London and New Delhi. He is the author of The Storyteller’s Tale (Penguin Books India). He is currently working on a collection of tall tales from Gorakhpur of which ‘Does It Catch Mice?’ is a part.

Aseem Kaul lives in Philadelphia, where he is a PhD candidate at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Aseem’s poems have appeared in a lives in Philadelphia, where he is a PhD candidate at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Aseem’s poems have appeared in a number of journals including Rhino, Rattle, Poetry Northeast, nthposition and Softblow. A book of his short fiction, Etudes, is due out in 2009.

Sridala Swami’s poetry has appeared in various journals including Chandrabhaga, The Little Magazine, New Quest, Wasafiri, Asian Cha and the Creative Writing poetry has appeared in various journals including Chandrabhaga, The Little Magazine, New Quest, Wasafiri, Asian Cha and the Creative Writing Issue of The South Asian Review (28:3, 2007). Her work features in The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets (ed. Jeet Thayil, UK: Bloodaxe, 2008). Sridala has authored three books for very young children that will be published by Pratham later this year. Her first collection of poems, A Reluctant Survivor, was published by the Sahitya Akademi in June 2007 and was shortlisted for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Award.

Mita Nangia Goswami is currently the Director of the Environment Education Division at the World Wildlife Fund— India Secretariat, New Delhi. She has worked in the development sector since 1995 on varied issues like gender, reproductive health and nature conservation. Mita has taught in Darrang and Tezpur Colleges in Assam and has also been the Head of the English Department at the Assam Valley School. A member of the North- East Writers’ Forum, she has penned many short stories, essays and poems. An avid reader, she believes we create our selfhoods only through our interaction with nature and there is nothing which is not ‘Copyright Nature’.

Prem Nath is a Mumbaiite by inclination, by heart and through the fact that he has spent his entire life in this city. Since completing his graduation from St. Xavier’s College, he has worked as an advertising copywriter for well over a decade. Yet, all through, he has maintained his interest in works of the human imagination, whether it be books, movies, music or otherwise.

Paritosh Uttam, 31, lives in Pune, and is a software engineer by profession. He divides his non-office hours between reading and writing fiction. Several of his short stories have been published in webzines and magazines. Read more on him at www.paritoshuttam.com

Aniruddha Sen Gupta wrote his first story, ‘The Adventure of the Chinese Junk’, when he was thirteen years old. Three decades later, he is back to writing children’s adventure stories—his first book, The Mystery of MindNet, part of a series about a group of kids called the Fundoo 4, was published by Scholastic in October 2008. Annie, as his friends call him, lives in Goa with his wife Anjali and four loony dogs.

Sanjeeb Pol Deka, 22, is a final year BA student in Cotton College, Guwahati. His first short story was published in Prantik, a fortnightly Assamese magazine, in 2005. Since then, he has continued writing short stories that have been published in various journals in Assamese. Sanjeeb’s stories highlight the corruption and violence that pervades our lives today and also brings to light the culture of Assam’s villages.

Salil Chaturvedi writes poetry and short stories. His story titled ‘The Music of the Stars’ won top honours at the British Council/Unisun Short Story Competition, 2007. He is the Asia region winner of the 2008 Commonwealth Short Story Competition and his story ‘Ramakant’s Pillow’ was part of the Sulekha.com- Penguin Blogprint online writing competition. Also a poet, Salil’s English poetry has appeared in anthologies and his Hindi poetry appeared in Tadbhav, a Hindi literary journal published from Lucknow. Born in Coimbatore in 1968, Salil resides in Noida, near New Delhi, though he wishes he could live in Goa instead. You can visit Salil’s blog at www.salilchaturvedi.blogspot.com

Sunanda Krishnamurty is a literary translator and a teacher. She has worked as a college lecturer in Delhi and has published articles in professional journals. She has co-authored Dictionary of South and Southeast Asian Art, and has translated into English a collection of Tagore’s short stories entitled Monihara and Other Stories.

Soma Sarkar grew up in Dehradun and studied in Santiniketan, Pune and Hyderabad. An academic with a PhD in Culture Studies, she focuses on creative writing and education. She also has an interest in environmental issues. Soma’s writing has appeared in www.chowk.com and www.apollos-lyre.com. One of her short stories featured in Short Fuse, a literary event in the UK. She now lives in Bombay and Panchgani with her husband and son.