Shabnam Minwalla has spent most of her life with words — editing her school magazine, working as a journalist with the Times of India and writing non-fiction, for example, a coffee-table book on her beloved alma mater, St Xavier's College. She writes food columns, book reviews and features for publications like Business Line, The Times of India and Outlook Traveller. But what she most enjoys is writing books for children - The Six Spellmakers of Dorabji Street, The Strange Haunting of Model High School, The Shy Supergirl, Lucky Girl, When Jiya Met Urmila, What Maya Saw and Nimmi’s Spectabulous Schooldays. Shabnam has also written short stories for five anthologies. She has been a speaker at various lit fests across the country. She also holds journalism and creative writing workshops in schools across the country. Shabnam got her MA in Journalism at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She was also a Chevening Scholar at Wolfson College in Cambridge.
Sharanya Manivannan is the author of five books, including the new novel The Queen of Jasmine Country and the short story collection The High Priestess Never Marries, which won the 2015-2016 South Asia Laadli Media and Advertising Award for Gender Sensitivity (Best Book – Fiction). She is also the author of two books of poetry, Witchcraft and The Altar of the Only World, and a children's picture book, The Ammuchi Puchi.
Shekhar Sen inherited his love for music, story, melody, rhythm and harmony from his parents, Dr Arunkumar and Dr Anita Sen, who were well-known classical singers and musicologists. Arriving in Mumbai in 1979, Shekhar began his stage career with innovative musicals drawn from his deep knowledge of Hindi literature. He has sung and composed music for many TV serials and films besides participating in concerts in India and abroad and has 227 albums to his credit. In 1998 Shekhar reinvented himself as a playwright who also sang, composed directed and acted by performing mono-act musicals on immortal saint-poets Kabeer, Tulsidas and Soordas. He later added Vivekananda and the Common Man to his repertoire. He was conferred the Padma Shri in 2015 and has been appointed as Chairman of the Sangeet Natak Akademi.
Shobha Vishwanath is the publishing director of Karadi Tales Company, an award-winning independent children’s book publishing house. She has authored over twenty-five books for children, including Little Vinayak that was listed in the 2013 IBBY Catalog of Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities. She collects picture books and considers herself an accidental writer.
Vaasanthi is a freelance journalist and writer based in Delhi. Formerly Editor, India Today Tamil, her articles have appeared in The Indian Express, The Hindu, Deccan Herald, Tehelka, Swagat, Media Transasia, The Week, India Today, Open and several online magazines. She has also published thirty novels, six short-story collections, four volumes of articles and four travelogues in Tamil. Her works have been translated in Malayalam, Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, English, Norwegian, Czech and Dutch. Two of her novels were made into films in Malayalam. Her book on Tamil Nadu politics, Cut-outs, Caste and Cine Stars: The World of Tamil Politics was published in 2006. Her biography of Tamil Nadu’s former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa: A Portrait (2012) received a court injunction against its release. A more recent biography is Amma: A Journey from a Movie Star to a Political Queen (2016).
Venki Ramakrishnan grew up in India before moving to the USA in 1971 at the age of 19. Following a PhD in physics, he studied biology for two years before he began his studies on the ribosome, the large molecular complex in all cells that translates genetic information into proteins. He moved in 1999 to Cambridge, England. For his role on the atomic structure of the ribosome and its complex with antibiotics, he shared the 2009 Nobel Prize for chemistry. He is also the current president of the Royal Society and the author of Gene Machine, a very candid memoir that describes both the quest for the ribosome structure and the human side of science
Yasser Usman is an award-winning TV journalist and the author of three bestselling biographies - Rajesh Khanna: The Untold Story of India’s First Superstar, Rekha: The Untold Story and Sanjay Dutt: The Crazy Untold Story of Bollywood’s Bad Boy. He has been a recipient of the prestigious Ramnath Goenka Award for excellence in journalism, among many others.
