Lady Mohini Kent Noon is an author, journalist, playwright, film-maker & charity worker. She worked as a print journalist with India Today newsmagazine and other publications. She had a fortnightly radio slot on BBC Radio 5 Live and Radio Scotland.
Namita Devidayal is an author and a journalist, living in Mumbai. She graduated from Princeton University. She has written the award-winning memoir ‘The Music Room’, a novel, ‘Aftertaste’, and ‘The Sixth String of Vilayat Khan’, a journey into the life of the great musician. She is a trained classical singer and is the co-director of a literature festival in Mumbai.
Namita Gokhale is a writer, publisher and festival director. She is the author of fourteen works of fiction and nonfiction. Her acclaimed debut novel, Paro: Dreams of Passion, was published in 1984. The recent Things to Leave Behind has been described as her most ambitious novel yet. Other books include Gods, Graves and Grandmother, A Himalayan Love Story, The Book of Shadows, Shakuntala: The Play of Memory, Priya in Incredible Indyaa, The Habit of Love. The Book of Shiva and The Puffin Mahabharata are born out of her deep interest in Indian religion and mythology. Edited anthologies include In Search of Sita, Travelling In, Travelling Out and Himalaya, co-edited with Ruskin Bond. Gokhale is a founder and co-director of the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival and Mountain Echoes, the Bhutan Literature Festival. She is the director of Yatra Books, a publishing house specialised in translation. She has curated ‘Kitaabnama’, India’s only multi-lingual book show for the national channel Doordarshan. As a literary activist, she is passionately committed to showcasing the spectrum of writing across the Indian languages.
A writer, child-rights activist, and an award-winning actor, Nandana Dev Sen is the author of six children’s books, translated into more than 15 languages globally, and two collections of her translations of the poetry of her mother, Nabaneeta Dev Sen. She grew up in India, England and America, and has starred in 20 feature films from four continents (and in multiple languages). Nandana’s first book Kangaroo Kisses was selected by 320 UK nurseries as a “Book of Excellence,” and her interactive workshops have been loved, in person, by more than 30,000 young people across the world.
After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University (where she won the Detur Book Prize, as well as the John Harvard Scholarship and Elizabeth Agassiz Award each year) and studying filmmaking at the USC School of Cinema-Television, Nandana worked as a book editor, a screenwriter, a translator, an advocate for child protection, and as Princess Jasmine in Disneyland. The winner of several Best Actress awards, the Wingword Poetry Prize, as well as the Last-Girl Champion Award for lifetime achievement in child protection, Nandana has served on numerous child-rights commissions and juries of global film festivals and international literary prizes (including the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature). As an advocate and ambassador, she has represented such prominent organizations as UNICEF, Operation Smile, RAHI, Apne Aap International, and the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, to fight against child abuse and to end human trafficking
Nandana is the Child Protection Ambassador for Save the Children India, a global Author Advocate for Girls’ Education for Room to Read, and a Director of the Women’s Refugee Commission, New York, where she serves on the Programs and Advocacy Committee.
Navdeep Suri is Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation. He is an advisor to several prestigious international organizations and an independent director on the board of reputed companies. He is also Professor of Eminence at Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar.Navdeep Suri completed a distinguished 36-year career in the Indian Foreign Service in 2019, having served in India’s diplomatic missions in Cairo, Damascus, Washington, Dar es Salaam and London and as India’s Consul General in Johannesburg. He has headed the West Africa and Public Diplomacy departments at the Ministry of External Affairs and was India’s High Commissioner to Australia and Ambassador to Egypt and UAE. In a rare gesture, the President of UAE conferred on him the Order of Zayed II, the country’s second-highest civilian award. His innovative use of social media in public diplomacy in 2010 also received extensive recognition and two prestigious awards.Navdeep Suri has learnt Arabic and French, has a master’s degree in economics and has written on India’s Africa policy, on the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific, on Public Diplomacy and on the IT outsourcing industry. He has also co-edited the ORF-Global Policy book ‘A 2030 Vision for India’s Economic Diplomacy. His English translations of his grandfather Nanak Singh’s classic Punjabi novels have been published by Penguin as ‘The Watchmaker’ and by Harper Collins as ‘A Life Incomplete’ ‘Khooni Vaisakhi’ and ‘Hymns in Blood.’
She grew up in a typical Marwari home with six siblings, in New Delhi. She has been inculcated profusely by her mother with a passion for both the spoken and written word and divides her time between writing and pursuing her interest in poetry, philosophy and paranormal. A passionate ‘people-watcher’, she is drawn to oddities and thrives on writing about personalities and human behaviour, from the quirky to the mysterious, to the bizarre, a subject that she does chillingly close to the bone.
Nilanjana S Roy is the author of two award-winning fantasy novels, The Wildings and The Hundred Names of Darkness, and a collection of essays on reading, The Girl Who Ate Books. She is also a columnist for the FT, has edited several anthologies, and will soon publish her third novel, Black River.
Onir is an Indian filmmaker, producer, screenwriter and editor. He is best known for his film “My Brother…Nikhil”, based on the life of Dominic D’Souza, starring Sanjay Suri, Juhi Chawla and Purab Kohli. It was one of the first mainstream Hindi films to deal with AIDS and same-sex relationships. He won the Indian National Film awards for Best Film (Hindi) for the anthology “I AM” in 2011. I AM is considered one of the first and largest crowd-funded and crowd-sourced films through social media in India. The film dealt with single motherhood, child sexual abuse, displacement and LGBTQI rights.
Payal Kothari embarked on her health and wellness journey with the world’s largest nutrition school, IIN—Institute for Integrative Nutrition, New York USA, IIN Advanced Business, Medvarsity, India’s leading training academy, Kaizad Kapadia’s K11 and QI academy. She has 150 published articles under her belt from prestigious publications like Times of India, Vogue, The Indian Express, Hindustan Times and ET Panache. She holds practical certifications from ACSM (American College of Sports Medicine) and has been a part of some of the most powerful global Transformation Programs like Date with Destiny & Unleash the Power Within with Tony Robbins. Today, Payal is one of the rare few IIN-certified coaches in India who practises Integrative Nutrition and Transformation.
Piyush Jha is an acclaimed film director and the author of bestselling crime fiction novels. His films as a Director/Writer, Chalo America, King of Bollywood and Sikandar are noted for the unconventionality of the subject matter and for their relevance to contemporary society.
As an Author, Piyush Jha’s crime-fiction suspense novel series Mumbaistan, Compass Box Killer, Anti-Social Network and the stand-alone novel Raakshas- India’s No. 1 Serial Killer are noir, page-turners that explore the gritty, underbelly of Mumbai. Piyush Jha’s Mumbaistan- Inspector Virkar Series of novels is being adapted into a web-OTT TV show series starring Prateik Babbar as Inspector Virkar. The first season, titled Virkar Vs.The Anti-Social Network, has already been filmed and is currently in post-production. Girls of Mumbaistan is Piyush Jha’s fifth crime-thriller as an author and is a follow-up to the Mumbaistan Series, this time with compelling female protagonists.Piyush Jha is also currently working to set up his fourth film as a Director where he will be adapting one of the novellas from Girls of Mumbaistan to the screen.
Pramod Kumar KG is the managing director of Eka Cultural Resources & Research, India’s only museum consulting company. He was the founder director of the Anokhi Museum of Hand Printing at Jaipur and was the first director of the Jaipur Literature Festival in 2006. He curated the exhibition, Bhutan: An Eye To History at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi in 2009, which was inaugurated by His Majesty Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, King of Bhutan. He is a co-director of the Mountain Echoes literary festival and the author of Posing for Posterity: Royal Indian Portraits.
Preeti Shenoy, among the top five highest selling authors in India, is also on the Forbes longlist of the most influential celebrities in India. She is the highest selling woman writer in India. India Today has named her as being unique for being the only woman in the best-selling league. Her second book, Life is what you make it, continues to top the best-selling charts and has been translated to several languages, including Turkish. Her third, Tea for two and a piece of cake, made it to the top five best-selling Indian fiction of 2012. Her fourth, The Secret Wish List, was among the top ten fiction of 2013. Her fifth, The One You Cannot Have, debuted at No.2 on the Nielsen list. The sixth, It happens for a Reason, was out in December 2014 and has been on the Nielsen top ten, every week, since its release. Her seventh book, Why We love The Way We Do, was among the top five best selling non-fiction books of 2015. Her latest, It’s all In the Planets, is at No.3 on the Nielsen list. She has been awarded the Academia award for Business Excellence by the New Delhi Institute of Management, which is given to distinguished professionals for innovative best practices for their contribution to their field that adds to India’s international and national reputation. She has also received the ‘100 Young Indian women achievers award’ in the Powerful leader category, given to the top professionals their field, chosen by consumers and Industry. She is also an artist specialising in portraiture. With a very popular blog, she also writes a weekly column in The Financial Chronicle.