A well-known actor and politician, Shatrughan Sinha has acted in many iconic films such as Kalicharan, Dostana, Kaala Pathar, Paras, Dost and Blackmail. He was Union Cabinet Minister of Health and Family Welfare (2003-2004) and Shipping (2004). His biography Anything But Khamosh is out in 2016.
Sonal Mansingh is an Indian classical dancer and Guru Bharatanatyam and Odissi dancing style; who is also proficient in other Indian classical dancing styles. Over the years, dance has taken her all over the world and brought her many awards, including the Padma Bhushan (1992), Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1987, and the Padma Vibhushan, India’s the second highest civilian award, in 2003; making her the second woman dancer in India to receive such an honour.
Subroto Bagchi is an Indian entrepreneur and business leader. He is the co-founder of Mindtree and a business author. He has narrated the story of his life in his book, Go Kiss the World, published by Penguin Portfolio. Subroto is also on the Board of White Swan Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that offers knowledge services in the area of mental health.
Shubhrata Prakash is a writer, poet, blogger and civil servant. A graduate in Mathematics and post-graduate in Business Management, she has briefly worked in the world of advertising, before joining the Indian Revenue Service. Shubhrata is the author of “The D Word: A Survivor’s Guide to Depression” (Pan Macmillan India, 2016), a book where she uses her own experiences with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), to help people with MDD, and their families, turn their lives around. She is also the author of “Ink On Water”, a collection of poems, which were written over a 20-year period, and published in 2015.
Stephen Alter is an American author, primarily of non-fiction but also of fiction, who was born and raised in India, where he grew up as the son of missionaries. He is the author of eighteen books of fiction and non-fiction. He was born in Mussoorie, Uttarakhand, India and much of his writing focuses on the Himalayan region, where he continues to live and work. Among the honors he has received are fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulbright Program, the East West Centre in Hawaii, and the Banff Centre for Mountain Culture.
Simon Robert Napier-Bell is an English music manager, author and journalist. When Japan broke up, Napier-Bell wrote his first book, You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me, about his experiences in the music business in the 1960s. He wrote another book, Black Vinyl White Powder, about the British music business which was received with favourable reviews. In March 2005, he published another book, I’m Coming To Take You To Lunch, the story of how he took Wham! to China.
Shrayana Bhattacharya is an economist trained at Delhi University and the Harvard Kennedy School. Since 2006, she has worked on research projects with the Institute of Social Studies Trust, SEWA and Centre for Policy Research. Her first book of non-fiction Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh : India’s Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence was published by HarperCollins India in November 2021. Shrayana recently won the Times of India JK Paper AutHer Prize for Best Non-Fiction Author and the SKOCH Economic Forum Prize for Literature. She has also won the FICCI Ladies Organization Prize for Literature in 2022. She was listed in Open Magazine’s Top Minds list for 2022 and has recently became a Kamalnayan Bajaj Aspen Fellow. Her writing on women and the economy have appeared in Mint, Times of India and Hindustan Times.
An author, politician, and former international civil servant, Dr. Shashi Tharoor straddles several worlds of experience. Currently a second-term Lok Sabha Member of Parliament (MP) representing the Thiruvananthapuram constituency and Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, he has previously served as Minister of State for Human Resource Development and Minister of State for External Affairs in the Government of India. During his nearly three-decade long prior career at the United Nations, he served as a peacekeeper, refugee worker, and administrator at the highest levels, serving as Under-Secretary General during Kofi Annan’s leadership of the organisation. Dr. Tharoor is also an award-winning author of sixteen books of both fiction as well as non-fiction.
Shashi Deshpande is an award-winning Indian novelist. She is the second daughter of famous Kannada dramatist and writer Sriranga. She was born in Karnataka and educated in Mumbai and Bangalore. An eminent novelists of contemporary Indian literature in English. She has written four children’s books, a number of short stories, and nine novels, besides several perceptive essays. Deshpande creates figures that take her readers through the social strata of urban society, but her interest comes to centre more and more on women of the middle and upper middle classes; well-educated women who fight for their own space, for their place in the family and in their social and their cultural setting. This setting is the backdrop to her stories, action remains private, even with rape which is, after all, private only to a certain degree.
Sharbari Zohra Ahmed was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her family moved to the United States when she was three weeks old. She is a playwright and screenwriter, and also writes fiction. She barely graduated high school but now teaches creative writing in the MFA program in Manhattanville College, and is Artist in Residence in Sacred Heart University’s graduate Film and Television Program. She lives in Darien, Connecticut.