Governance

Sudeep Sen’s prize-winning books include: Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (HarperCollins), Rain, Aria (A K Ramanujan Translation Award), Fractals: New & Selected Poems | Translations 1980-2015 (London Magazine), EroText (Penguin), Kaifi Azmi: Poems | Nazms (Bloomsbury), Anthropocene (Pippa Rann) and Red. Influential anthologies he’s edited, include: The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry, Modern English Poetry by Younger Indians (Sahitya Akademi) and Converse: Contemporary English Poetry by Indians. Blue Nude (Jorge Zalamea International Poetry Prize) and The Whispering Anklets are forthcoming. Translated into twenty-five languages, Sen’s words appear in the TLS, Newsweek, Guardian, Observer, Independent, Telegraph, Harvard Review & others. He is the editorial director of AARK ARTS and editor of Atlas. The Government of India awarded him the senior fellowship for ‘outstanding persons in the field of culture/literature.’ Sen is the first Asian honoured to deliver the Derek Walcott Lecture and read at the Nobel Laureate Festival.

Menka Shivdasani, a Mumbai-based writer, editor and translator, has four poetry collections. She is co-translator of Freedom and Fissures, an anthology of Sindhi Partition poetry (Sahitya Akademi, 1998) and editor of a SPARROW anthology of women’s writing. She has edited two anthologies of contemporary Indian poetry for the American e-zine www.bigbridge.org and bilingual poetry books by Sindhi author Mohan Gehani. A widely published poet, Menka’s awards include the Ethos Literary Award 2019 and WE Eunice de Souza Award 2020. Menka co-founded Poetry Circle in Bombay in 1986. She has been organising annual poetry festivals since 2011 for the global movement 100 Thousand Poets for Change. Her work as a journalist includes eighteen books as co-author/editor, three of which were launched by then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee 

https://menkashivdasani.in/

Helder Beja is founding director of Eastern Chapter, the first literary agency and publishing house to work between Asia and the Portuguese-speaking countries, based in Macau. As a journalist, Hélder has worked for several Portuguese media, including national newspapers Público and i, and the literary magazine Os Meus Livros (My Books) before moving to Macau in 2010. In Macau, Hélder was the editor and vice-director of the daily newspaper Ponto Final; and editor-in-chief of Macau CLOSER, a bilingual arts and lifestyle magazine. In 2012, he co-founded The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival, acting as programme director for seven editions. Hélder won the Macau Daily Times Short Story Competition, with ‘Fogo Lento’ (Slow Fire) and his first documentary, Once Upon a Time in Ka Ho, premiered at the Macau International Film and Video Festival. He’s a regular contributor to the website Extramuros.net, and the bimonthly magazines Macau and Macao. He’s currently majoring in Asian Studies, writing for cinema and working on his first novel.

Scott Kay has been passionate about learning about business, money and tax since reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad at fourteen. He has worked with a variety of accounting firms and clients since 2003. Scott founded Integrity Plus Accounting to help people avoid “dumb tax” (where you lose money because you didn’t know better).Scott has operated Integrity Plus Accounting full time since July 2016 as a location independent business. The team love helping people with their tax and finances in all usual (and some quite unique!) ways.Scott has also recently started the Make It Better Community – where he shares his key insights into using structures to run business and building your superannuation before you need it. Scott is also a qualified mortgage broker and when not working enjoys playing music, soccer, reading books and spending time with his wife and 6 year old daughter.

www.ipaccounting.com.au

Helen Burns is an Australian writer and poet. She was a recipient of the National Writers House Varuna’s LongLines residency and a Byron Bay Writers’ Festival residential mentorship for The Way is a River of Stars a travel memoir published 2013. Her debut novel Andal’s Garland (Odyssey Books, 2021) was awarded a Varuna In Conversation residency and Hachette QWC Manuscript Development residency. The companion volume, A Garland of Love, created in collaboration with the photographer Alison Taylor, contains Helen’s interpretive translations of verses composed by the ninth century Tamil poet and goddess, Andal.

Sara F. Costa is a Portuguese poet, writer and translator. She has published six poetry collections and has had books translated and published in Spain and India. Her book Transfiguração da Fome won the international award Glória de Sant’Anna for best poetry book published in Portuguese speaking countries in 2018. She has an MA in Intercultural Studies: Portuguese/Chinese from Tianjin Foreign Studies University. Her verses have been translated into several languages and featured in literary journals across the world. As an emerging European poet, she was an invited author of the International Istanbul Poetry Festival 2017. In 2018, Sara worked in the organisation of The Script Road-Macau Literary Festival and China-European Union Literary Festival in Shanghai and Suzhou. In 2019, she was invited to Kolkata, India to share her poetry in the second edition of Chair Poetry Evenings. She translates Chinese poetry into Portuguese and coordinates events for the Spittoon Beijing Based Arts Collective. She translated a collection of Chinese contemporary poetry into Portuguese. In 2021 she received a national grant from the Portuguese Government to write a poetry book River-Being, Bodily-God (Red River, 2022) her first poetry collection in English that she launched in Bangalore, India at APWT India 2022.

Antony Dapiran is an Australian-born, Hong Kong-based writer, photographer and lawyer. He is the author of two books on Hong Kong, including City on Fire: The Fight for Hong Kong which was longlisted for the Walkley Book Award (the premier awards for journalism in Australia). His writing has been widely published, including in The Atlantic, The Guardian, New Statesman and elsewhere, and he is a regular commentator on global television and radio, from Australia's ABC to the BBC and CNN. Antony has lived between Hong Kong and Beijing for 25 years, and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese. He holds an MA in literary and cultural studies from the University of Hong Kong and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Australian-born, Romi Grossberg has been living in Asia on and off since 2006 working at the frontier of using creative arts in challenging communities. After managing a hip hop centre in Cambodia for street kids, Romi has presented in numerous forums about alternative approaches to mental, emotional and physical health, most notably at TEDx Phnom Penh in a talk titled: 'Dance Your Life Around'. Her latest book The Key, A Social Emotional Toolkit for Teens teaches emotional intelligence and practical coping strategies to teenagers and can be used as a school program or in the home. Since 2013 Romi has based herself in Thailand to write and teach. Romi has been published in The Huffington Post and Griffith Review 49; New Asia Now. Her memoir Hip Hop & Hope based on her work in Cambodia is forthcoming in 2020.

Sreedhevi Iyer's The Tiniest House of Time was shortlisted for the SPN Book of the Year Award in Australia (2021). Her short story collection Jungle Without Water was shortlisted for the Penang Monthly Book Award in Malaysia (2017). She has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize in the US, and has been published in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, UK, US, and Sardinia.

With over thirty years in publishing, Shelley Kenigsberg has edited fiction, nonfiction, educational and self-help titles; since 2009, facilitated writing and editing retreats; since 2012, mentored authors and is now developing skills in the world of agenting. The most important aspect of any editing project — copy, structural, developmental, is the collaboration between editor and author. All editing is aimed at harnessing the authentic voice and story in the manuscript and always in collaboration. It’s a mutually trusting, and enjoyable relationship. Shelley is an advocate for the story, the book, the author and the reader.

With over thirty years in publishing, Shelley Kenigsberg has edited fiction, nonfiction, educational and self-help titles; since 2009, facilitated writing and editing retreats; since 2012, mentored authors and is now developing skills in the world of agenting. The most important aspect of any editing project — copy, structural, developmental, is the collaboration between editor and author. All editing is aimed at harnessing the authentic voice and story in the manuscript and always in collaboration. It’s a mutually trusting, and enjoyable relationship. Shelley is an advocate for the story, the book, the author and the reader.

Jennifer Mackenzie' is a poet and reviewer, and the author of 'Borobudur and Other Poems' (Lontar, Jakarta 2012. She has made regular appearances at literary events in the Asian region, and is currently working on a collection of essays, Writing the Continent. Her most recent book is Navigable Ink (Transit Lounge 2020), a homage to Pramoedya Ananta Toer.

Joe Milan Jr. is a second-generation Korean American who taught in Korea for nine years. He’s the author of the novel The All-American (W.W. Norton, 2023) and was the 2019-20 David T.K. Wong Creative Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia. In addition, he has been a Barrick Graduate Fellow and BMI Ph.D. Fellow at the University of Nevada Las Vegas and is a graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts. His work has appeared in wonderful places like The Rumpus, Literary Hub, F(r)iction, The Kyoto Journal, and others. He is now an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Waldorf University in Forest City, Iowa. You can read more of his work at joemilanjr.com

Liz Packer is a writer, editor, and educator. Liz led the Professional Writing program at Adelaide College of the Arts for over a decade. The program also delivered the writing stream in the Flinders University Bachelor of Communication and Professional Writing. Liz taught in both programs. She has degrees in Professional Writing, and Visual Art and Applied Design, a Graduate Diploma in Distance Education, and a Master of Arts, Gastronomy.

Rochelle Potkar is an alumna of Iowa’s International Writing Program and a Charles Wallace Writer’s Fellow, University of Stirling. Her poem ‘To Daraza’ won the 2018 Norton Girault Literary Prize UK and ‘The Girl from Lal Bazaar’ was shortlisted in the Gregory O' Donoghue International Poetry Prize, 2018. She is the author of The Arithmetic of Breasts and Other Stories, Paper Asylum and Four Degrees of Separation. Her forthcoming book The Inglorious Coins of the Counting House was longlisted for the Eyewear Publishing Beverly Prize 2019, UK and shortlisted for the 2nd Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize 2019, Singapore. Rochelle conducts poetry workshops across India and was recently a mentor in creative writing at Iowa's Summer Institute 2019.

Ravi is the founding editor and Executive Director of Drunken Boat, one of the world's oldest electronic journals of the arts. He has published or edited seven books and chapbooks of poetry, including the What Else Could it Be (2015), the National Poetry Review Prize winner, Deepening Groove (2010), and the Finalist for the Connecticut Book Awards, Instrumentality (2004). Along with Tina Chang and Nathalie Handal, he edited W.W. Norton's Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East & Beyond, called a beautiful achievement for world literature by Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer. He has won a Pushcart Prize, been featured in The New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education, appeared as a commentator on the BBC, the PBS Newshour and NPR, received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, and has performed his work around the world.

Born in Mumbai in 1971, Anand Thakore grew up in India and in the United Kingdom. He has spent most of his life in Mumbai. His published collections of poetry include Waking In December (2001), Elephant Bathing (2012), Mughal Sequence (2012), Selected Poems (2017) and Seven Deaths and Four Scrolls (2017). A Hindustani classical vocalist by training, he has devoted much of his life to the study, performance, composition and teaching of Hindustani vocal music. He received musical instruction for many years from Ustad Aslam Khan, Pandit Baban Haldankar and Pandit Satyasheel Deshpande. He is the founder of Harbour Line, a publishing collective, and of Kshitij, an interactive forum for musicians. He holds an MA in English Literature and is the recipient of grants from The Ministry of Human Resource Development and The Charles Wallace India Trust. He lives in Mumbai and divides his time between writing, performances, and teaching music. His fourth collection of verse, entitled Seven Deaths and Four Scrolls, was recently shortlisted for The Jayadeva National Poetry Award.