Contributors

Sayan Aich Bhowmik (Issue Editor) is currently Assistant Professor, Department of English, Shirakole College, West Bengal, India. His poems have appeared on forums such as South Florida Poetry Journal, Madras Courier, The Punch Magazine just to name a few. He is also the Co-Editor of Plato’s Caves Online, a semi academic space dealing with poetry, life, culture and politics.

Ritoshree Chatterjee pursues her undergraduate degree in English literature, and struggles to locate herself through writing amidst the chaos. Her poems have appeared in Late Night Poets’ Anthology and the Armchair Journal.

Amit Ranjan is Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at Florida International University (FIU) for 2021-22. He has a PhD, MPhil, and MA from JNU; and a BA(Hons) in English from St. Stephen’s College. Amit’s poems, short stories, and essays have been published in various journals like La Zaporogue, Anti-Serious, Coldnoon, Muse India, The Equator Line, Joao Roque, etc. Amit also has written four plays. His poetry collection Find Me Leonard Cohen, I am Almost Thirty came out in 2018 to very warm reviews. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of English NCERT, New Delhi.

Malini Bhattacharya studied English Literature at Jadavpur University, Kolkata. She is a digital storyteller at one of India’s biggest FMCG companies. Her work has appeared in Coldnoon Travel Poetics, Litro, Tehelka, The News Minute, The Better India, Agony Opera, among others.

Bhaswati Ghosh writes and translates fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Her first book of fiction is Victory Colony, 1950. Her first work of translation from Bengali into English, My Days with Ramkinkar Baij won her the Charles Wallace (India) Trust Fellowship for translation. Bhaswati’s writing has appeared in several literary journals, including Scroll, The Wire, Cargo Literary, Cafe Dissensus Everyday, Pithead Chapel, Warscapes, and The Maynard. Bhaswati lives in Ontario, Canada and is an editor with The Woman Inc. She is currently working on a nonfiction book on New Delhi, India. Visit her at https://bhaswatighosh.com/

Abhay K. is author of ten poetry collections, most recently of The Magic of Madagascar and The Alphabets of Latin America and the editor of Great Indian Love Poems, CAPITALS, Great Indian Poems and New Brazilian Poems. His poems have appeared in over 100 literary journals across the world and have been translated into a dozen languages. His poem-song “Earth Anthem” has been translated into over 120 global languages. He received SAARC Literary Award 2013 and was invited to record his poems at the Library of Congress, Washington DC in 2018.

Maaz Bin Bilal‘s first collection of poems Ghazalnama: Poems from Delhi, Belfast, and Urdu was shortlisted for the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar 2020. His translation of Mirza Ghalib’s long poem on Banaras, Chiragh-e-Dair, is forthcoming from Penguin in 2022. He teaches at O. P. Jindal Global University.

Sumana Roy is the author of How I became a Tree, a work of nonfiction, Missing: A Novel, Out of Syllabus: Poems, and My Mother’s Lover and Other Stories, a collection of short stories.

Aditi Dhabe is currently a law student based in Pune, India, and maintains a penchant for words on the side. Her writing projects range from fantasy, literary fiction and poetry, to academic articles and research papers.

Aekta Khubchandani is a writer and poet from Bombay. She is the founder of Poetry Plant Project, where she conducts month-long poetry workshops. She is currently matriculating her dual MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry & Nonfiction) from The New School in New York. She teaches Creative Writing to students of High School of Economics & Finance (HSEF) at WriteOn NYC. Her recent fiction “Love in Bengali Dialect”, winner of Pigeon Pages Fiction contest, is nominated for Best American Short Fiction anthology. Her poems were awarded the winner of honourable mention by the Paul Violi Prize. Her work is published in Passages North, Epiphany, Jaggery Lit, Vayavya, and elsewhere. She has performed spoken word poetry in India, Bhutan, and New York. She’s working on her first book of hybrid poems.

Mandira Mitra is a voracious reader of poetry from any place anywhere on earth. She has evolved from a reader to a writer. She also writes prose and is writing her memoir in parts. She is Assistant Professor of English at Bethune College Kolkata. Her greatest teachers have been her students.

Nishi Pulugurtha is an academic and creative writer based in Kolkata. Her work has been published in various journals and magazines. Her publications include a monograph on Derozio (2010), a collection of essays on travel, Out in the Open (2019), an edited volume of essays on travel, Across and Beyond (2020) and a volume of poems, The Real and the Unreal and Other Poems (2020). Her recent book is a collection of short stories, The Window Sill (2021) and a second volume of poems is forthcoming.

Rukmini Banerjee is a queer poet, translator and researcher. She is interested in the connection and disconnection of bodies with mind and the (mis) management of technology in everyday lives. Her poetry has appeared in The World That Belongs To Us: An Anthology of Queer Poetry from South Asia and magazine Livewire. Her translations have appeared in Friendship as Social Justice Activism.

Shafinur Shafin is a poet, writer, translator and academic. She is also the poetry editor of Prachya Review, an international literary webzine. She writes in both English and Bangla. Her first poetry collection, Nisangam, has been published in Bangladesh in 2016 and her translation book “gondomphul” was published in 2019. Her poems and articles appeared in various reputed national and international magazines and journals.

Sreejata Roy is a PhD research scholar at the Department of English, Rabindra Bharati University. She has been teaching for five years as a guest lecturer in various UG and PG departments of English in colleges affiliated to the University of Calcutta. Presently, she is a State Aided College Teacher (category-1) at Jogesh Chandra Chaudhuri College, University of Calcutta. She dabbles in art and writing. Poetry is a coping mechanism for her.

Aakriti Kuntal, aged 28, is a poet and writer from India. Her work has been featured in various literary magazines. She was awarded the Reuel International Prize 2017 for poetry, was a finalist for the RL Poetry Award 2018, and received a nomination for the Best of the Net.

Nabina Das is the author of Sanskarnama, a poetry volume. Most recently she has edited WITNESS: The Red River Book of Poetry of Dissent. She has also published a novel, a short fiction collection, and two other books of poems. Her fourth poetry collection is forthcoming from Yoda Press in 2022.

Tabish Khair is the author of various books, including the poetry collections, Where Parallel Lines Meet (Penguin, 2000) and Man of Glass (HarperCollins, 2010), the studies, Babu Fictions: Alienation in Indian English Novels (Oxford UP, 2001), The Gothic, Postcolonialism and Otherness (Palgrave, 2010), The New Xenophobia (OUP, 2016) and the novels, The Bus Stopped (Picador, 2004), Filming (Picador, 2007), The Thing About Thugs (Harpercollins, 2010; Houghton Mifflin, 2012), How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position (Interlink and Corsair 2014), Just Another Jihadi Jane (Periscope and Interlink, 2016/17), which was published as Jihadi Jane in India (Penguin, 2016), and Night of Happiness (Picador, 2018). Other Routes, an anthology of pre-modern travel texts by Africans and Asians, co-edited and introduced by Khair (with a foreword by Amitav Ghosh) was published by Signal Books and Indiana University Press in 2005 and 2006 respectively. He has also edited or co-edited other scholarly works.

Uttaran Das Gupta is a New Delhi-based writer and journalist. He has published a book of poems (Visceral Metropolis, 2017) and a novel (Ritual, 2020). He teaches journalism at O P Jindal Global University, Sonipat.

Dr. Abin Chakraborty currently teaches as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Chandernagore College. He is the author of the monograph Popular Culture (Orient Blackswan, 2019) and editor of the international online journal Postcolonial Interventions. His articles have been published in various national and international journals and anthologies.

With an M.A in English literature, Anupama Bhattacharya is a teacher by profession. Her poems have found place in platforms like The Time of India, Ceasurae Literary Magazine, Ethos Literary Magazine, PPP Ezine and Literary Yard. An ardent lover of Indian classical dance, music, literature and poetry she believes in healing the world with words and rhythm.

Rochelle Potkar is Fictionist, Poet, Critic, Curator, Editor, Translator, Screenwriter and more. She is the author of Four Degrees of Separation and Paper Asylum, Bombay Hangovers, and co-author of the recent book of poetry translations The Coordinates of Us/सर्व अंशांतून आपण. Read more of her poetry at https://rochellepotkar.com/poetry/

Takbeer Salati was born and raised in Srinagar, Kashmir. She moved to Delhi for her Bachelors and Masters degree of Arts in English. She is currently pursuing a PhD. Her short stories and research articles have been published in Mountain Ink, Akademos, etc.

Painting: The Art Wolf

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For more stories, read Café Dissensus Everyday, the blog of Café Dissensus Magazine.