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Kamala Purnaiya Taylor (1924-2004):

Kamala Markandaya was a pseudonym used by Kamala Purnaiya Taylor, an Indian novelist and journalist. Born Kamala Purnaiya in a small town in Mysore in 1924, Markandaya attended the University of Madras, beginning in 1940, where she studied history. From 1940 to 1947, she worked as a journalist and also published short stories in Indian newspapers. During the war she worked for the army in India and later returned to journalism.

After India declared its independence, Markandaya moved to Britain, though she still labeled herself an Indian expatriate long afterwards. She married to Bertrand Taylor. Fame and success came with her first published novel, Nectar In A Sieve (1954), a Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection and bestseller in the United States. In 1955, the American Library Association named it a Notable Book. Other novels include A Silence of Desire, A Handful of Rice, The Nowhere Man, Two Virgins, The Golden Honeycomb, and Pleasure City. Markandaya died in London on May 16, 2004.

Mahasweta Devi

Mahasweta Devi, the Bengali novelist and champion of tribal communities, has won this year's Magsaysay award for journalism, literature and creative communication. Mahasweta Devi is the second Indian to receive this year's Magsaysay award, considered the Asian equivalent of the Nobel prize.

Born in 1926 in Dhaka, now the capital of Bangladesh, Mahasweta Devi had her education in Rabindranath Tagore's Shantiniketan. She later took her Master's degree in English literature from Calcutta university. She began teaching at Bijaygarh College in Jadavpur; an Indian college for working class women, while simultaneously working as a journalist and creative writer.

she is more famous for her work related to the study of the Lodhas and Shabars, the tribal communities of West Bengal, women and dalits. She is also an activist who is dedicated to the struggles of tribal people in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

Awards:

1979: Sahitya Akademi Award (Bengali): – Aranyer Adhikar (novel)
1986: Padma Shri
1996: Jnanpith Award - the highest literary award from the Bharatiya Jnanpith
1997: Ramon Magsaysay Award - Journalism, Literature, and the Creative Communication Arts
1999: Honoris causa - Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU)
2006: Padma Vibhushan - the second highest civilian award from the Government of India

Mahasweta Devi, 71, has been a writer for more than 40 years. Last year, she won the Jnanpith award, India's highest literary prize, and donated the prize money to a tribal welfare society. "I will continue to work for the tribals, non-tribal poor and people in distress and write for them," she says

Mahasweta Devi -- the 36th woman and 35th Indian to receive the award -- says the tribals would be happy to find out about the award which carries with it a cash prize of $ 50,000. "I get tremendous inspiration from them," she says.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (born February 24, 1942) is an Indian literary critic and theorist. She is best-known for the article "Can the Subaltern Speak?", which is considered a founding text of postcolonialism, and also for her translation of Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology. Spivak currently teaches at Columbia University, where she was tenured as University Professor—Columbia's highest rank—in March 2007, though she is a popular speaker, invited to lecture around the world.

Spivak was born Gayatri Chakravorty, in Calcutta, India, 24 February 1942, to a middle class family. She received an undergraduate degree in English at the University of Calcutta (1959), graduating with first class honours. After this, she completed her Master's in English from Cornell University, and then pursued her Ph.D. while teaching at the University of Iowa. She was the second woman elected to membership in the Telluride Association. She was briefly married to Talbot Spivak in the 1960s. The Bride Wore the Traditional Gold by Talbot Spivak is an autobiographical novel that deals with the early years of this marriage.

Her Writings:

Myself, I Must Remake: The Life and Poetry of W.B. Yeats (1974).
Of Grammatology (translation, with critical introduction, of Derrida's text) (1976)
In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (1987).
Selected Subaltern Studies (edited with Ranajit Guha) (1988)
The Post-Colonial Critic (1990)
Outside in the Teaching Machine (1993).
The Spivak Reader (1995).
A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Towards a History of the Vanishing Present (1999).
Death of a Discipline (2003).
Other Asias (2007).

Anita Desai

Anita Desai is an Indian novelist and short story writer, especially noted for her sensitive portrayal of the inner life of her female characters. Several of Desai's novels explore tensions between family members and the alienation of middle-class women. In her later novels Desai has dealt with such themes as German anti-Semitism, the demise of traditions, and Western stereotypical views of India.

Anita Desai was born in Mussoorie, a hill station north of Delhi, as the daughter of a D.N. Mazumdar, a Bengali businessman, and the former Toni Nime, of German origin. She began to write in English at the age of seven, and published her first story at the age of nine. Desai was educated in Delhi at Queen Mary's Higher Secondary School and Miranda House, Delhi University, where she received in 1957 a B.A. in English literature. In the following year she married Ashvin Desai, a businessman; they had four children.

Career:

She published her first novel in 1963, Cry The Peacock. She considers Clear Light Of Day (1980) her most autobiographical work as it is set during her coming of age and also in the same neighborhood in which she grew up. In 1984 she published In Custody - about an Urdu poet in his declining days - which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 1993 she became a creative writing teacher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her latest novel published in 2004, The Zigzag Way.

Books:

The Peacock(1963)
the City (1965)
Fire on the Mountain (1977)
Where Shall We Go This Summer? (1975)
Clear Light of Day (1980)

Awards:

1978 - National Academy of Letters Award - Fire on the Mountain
1978 - Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize - Fire on the Mountain
1980 - Shortlisted, Booker Prize for Fiction - Clear Light of Day
1983 - Guardian Children's Fiction Prize - The Village By The Sea
1984 - Shortlisted, Booker Prize for Fiction - In Custody
1993 - Neil Gunn Prize
1999 - Shortlisted, Booker Prize for Fiction: Fasting, Feasting
2000 -Alberto Moravia Prize for Literature (Italy)

Arundhati Roy

Suzanna Arundhati Roy (born 24 November, 1961) is an Indian writer (in English) and activist who won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things, and in 2002, the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize. She is also a writer of two screenplays and a number of collections of essays. Roy is a well-known activist for social and economic justice.

Arundhati Roy was born in Shillong, Meghalaya, India, to a Keralite Syrian Christian mother, the women's rights activist Mary Roy, and a Bengali father, a tea planter by profession.

She spent her childhood in Aymanam in Kerala, and went to school at Corpus Christi, Kottayam, followed by the Lawrence School, Lovedale, in Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu. She then studied architecture at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, During this period she met Gerard Da Cunha a fellow architecture student and married him but their marriage lasted only four years.

She took a job at the National Institute of Urban Affairs, met Pradeep Krishen, a film director now her husband who offered her a small role in 'Massey Saab'. She went to Italy on a scholarship for eight months to study the restoration of monuments. She realised she was a writer during those months in Italy. After she returned from Italy she worked with Pradeep Krishen and they planned an episode television for Doordarshan called the 'Banyan Tree’.

In response to India's testing of nuclear weapons in Pokhran, Rajasthan, Roy wrote The End of Imagination (1998), a critique of the Indian government's nuclear policies. It was published in her collection The Cost of Living (1999), in which she also crusaded against India's massive hydroelectric dam projects in the central and western states of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. Arundhati Roy was awarded the 1997 Booker Prize for her novel The God of Small Things. she won the National Film Award for Best Screenplay in 1989 , for the semi-autobiographical screenplay of In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones. In 2002, she won the Lannan Foundation's Cultural Freedom Award for her work "about civil societies Roy was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in May 2004 for her work in social campaigns and advocacy of non-violence. In January 2006, she was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award, a national award from India's Academy of Letters, for her collection of essays on contemporary issues.

In June 2005 she took part in the World Tribunal on Iraq. In January 2006 she was awarded the Sahitya Akademi award for her collection of essays, 'The Algebra of Infinite Justice', but declined to accept it.

Madhavikutty

Dr. Kamala Das (Madhavikutty) the internationally renowned poet, short story writer and novelist. She openly and honestly discussed and wrote about the sexual desires of Indian women, which made her an iconoclast of her generation.

She was born in 1932 at Punnayoorkulam in Kerala. She is one of the very few writers from Kerala who writes effortlessly both in English and Malayalam. Kamala Das grew up in a house where literature and writing was the order of the day—her great-uncle was a writer, her mother, Nalapatt Balamani Amma, was a respected poet, and her father was the managing editor of Matrubhumi. However, she did not start writing professionally until she got married and became a mother. Her views were shocking in that time, her frankness about female desire revelatory and unsettling.

Kamala wished to begin writing, her husband supported her decision to augment the family's income. She would often wait until nightfall after her family had gone to sleep and would write until morning .She started writing in Malayalam under the pen name, Madhavikutty as early as in the 50's. But she became famous in the Malayalam literary world with her work 'Ente Katha' (My Story), which is said to be her real life story. 'Ente Katha' was translated to more than 15 Foreign Languages.

English:

Das' first book, Summer In Calcutta was a promising start.

At the age of 42, she published her autobiography, My Story, which was later translated into many foreign languages.

Malayalam:

Kamala Das wrote about a range of topics, often disparate, from the story of poor old servant Punnayoorkulam. Some of her better-known stories include Pakshiyude Manam, Neypayasam, Thanuppu, and Chandana Marangal. She wrote a few novels, among which Neermathalam Pootha Kalam.

Positions:

She has also held positions as Vice chairperson in Kerala Sahitya Academy, chairperson in Kerala forestry Board, President of the Kerala Children's Film Society, editor of Poet magazine and Poetry editor of Illustrated Weekly of India.

Conversion to Islam:

She was born in a conservative Hindu Nair (Nallappattu) family having Royal anscestry, she embraced Islam in 1999 at the age of 65 and assumed the name Kamala Suraiyya.

Politics:

She has also established a political party of her own named Lok Seva Charitable Trust, to concentrate on humanitarian work as well as to provide asylum to orphaned mothers.

On 31 May 2009, aged 75, she died at a hospital in Pune.

Awards:

Asian Poetry Prize
Kent Award for English Writing from Asian Countries
Asan World Prize
Ezhuthachan Award
Sahitya Academy Award
Vayalar Award
Kerala Sahitya Academy Award
Muttathu Varkey Award

Shobha De

Shobhaa De (born 7 January 1948) is a renowned Indian columnist and novelist. She is Model, copywriter and the first editor of Stardust and Society.

She was born on 7 January 1948, her father was Shobha Rajadhyaksha, and she graduated from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai with a degree in psychology.

In the beginning of her career, she worked as a model and made a name for herself. Thereafter, she thought of changing her profession Journalism in 1970. In the 1980s, she contributed to the Sunday magazine section of the Times of India. In her columns, she used to explore the socialite life in Bombay lifestyles of the celebrities. At present, she is a freelance writer and columnist for several newspapers and magazines.

Shobha De has published seven novels, Socialite Evenings, Starry Nights, Sisters, Strange Obsessions, Sultry Days, Snapshots and Second Thoughts, a collection of short stories, Small Betrayals. She can be held responsible for the speeding up of the pace of sexual revolution in India with her sensuous novels.

Barkha Dutt

Barkha Dutt (born December 18, 1971) is an Indian TV journalist and columnist. She is currently Group Editor, English News at New Delhi Television.

Dutt gained prominence for her reportage of the Kargil War. She has won many awards, including the Padma Shri, one of India's highest civilian honours and has gained an iconic status in Indian popular imagination. However, she has also come in for criticism that her reporting is sensationalist and melodramatic.

Barkha Dutt was born in New Delhi. She studied at Modern School, New Delhi, graduated from St. Stephen's College, Delhi with a degree in English literature. She received a Master's in Mass Communications from Jamia Millia Islamia and a Master's in Journalism from Columbia University, New York. She was one of the winners of the prestigious Inlaks Scholarship, which sends 6 Indians overseas to study every year.

As a journalist, Dutt began her career at NDTV when it was a TV production house creating news programmes and providing content to Star TV. Dutt's reporting of the Kargil conflict in 1999, including an interview with Captain Vikram Batra, brought her to prominence in India. She has since covered conflicts in Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. She won a Padma Shri for her coverage of the 2004 Tsunami. She writes a weekly column, Third Eye for the Hindustan Times.

Awards:

Dutt's work has won her over twenty international and national awards including the Padma Shri (Journalism), 2008.Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards 2005-06and Commonwealth Broadcasters Award for Journalist of the Year.
In 2008, Dutt received the Indian News Broadcasting Award for the Most Intelligent News Show Host.
She has been awarded the Global Leader of Tomorrow Award twice by the World Economic Forum (2001, 2008).
She has also received Society's Young Achievers Award.
She is a nominated member of India's National Integration Council. She was also Asia Society Fellow in 2006 and serves on the International Advisory Council of the Asia Society.
In an SMS survey of the readers of the Hindi daily Hindustan, Dutt won the second place in the "Media Leaders" category.
In 2008, the film Mission Istanbul had a character based on Dutt.
She is currently Group Editor, English News at New Delhi Television

Dina Vakil

Dina Vakil was born in 1946 in Bombay. Dina Vakil is the consulting editor of the Times of India, Mumbai. She has been a journalist since 1971 and was the first woman in India to be appointed Resident Editor of a major English language daily. Dina headed The Times' Mumbai edition - one of the country's largest - for more than a decade (until May 2005). Dina attended Mount Holyoke College and stayed in Massachusetts to work for a local newspaper before attending Columbia School of Journalism. After graduating, Dina worked for the UNDP before returning to India. In Bombay, Dina held jobs at several publishing establishments before landing one at the Times of India. She is now the first woman in the history of the newspaper to hold the position of resident editor. She was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honours society.

Shernaaz Engineer

Shernaaz Engineer, a well known Bombay based columnist is a successful women. Shernaaz Engineer began her career as a journalist in the mid-1990s, writing on Mumbai life, women's issues, and television. In 1997, she won a US Government fellowship to spend a month at various universities across America as part of an international study group on women's rights. She started out at the State Department for Women at Washington DC, and went on to the University of California, the State University of IOWA, Rutgers, the University of Rochester, finally spending a week at the United Nations Women's Commission in New York. She counts it as an amazing experience and wrote prolifically about it. Shernaaz later went on to work freelance as a columnist and writer, writing weekly columns on the social landscape of Mumbai's movers and shakers, and wrote a 'Page 3' column for the Bombay Times - the bastion of the Mumbai 'masala' zone. She starts her own publishing company, Zaanrehs Publishers. She continues to work full time in writing and publishing.

Sathya Saran

Sathya Saran is the editor of the popular women’s magazine Femina,, a DNA publication. She has written awesome short stories, articles on cinema and issues concerning women. She has been a professional journalist since she joined English daily in Nagpur in 1974 as its Assistant Magazine Editor. She joined Femina in 1979 August as a sub-editor. Sathya holds a Masters in English Literature, and a Bachelor's degree in Journalism, both from Nagpur University. She stood second in the University in both examinations.

Since taking over as Editor of Femina in 1993, Sathya has been instrumental in keeping the magazine upbeat, contemporary and in tune with the aspirations and needs of the urban Indian woman.

Sathya has also been involved closely with the Femina Miss India Pageant and Contest as well as the now discontinued Femina Look of the Year Contest in collaboration with Elite Model Management and has had a role to play in the selection and motivation of the Contestants at national and international level.

Sathya is part of an eleven member group of women editors called Women's Edition, funded by the Measure Communication of the USA, and works closely with the group to met, discuss and write on issues connected with women's reproductive health.

She has written for a wide basket of publications in India, and abroad, including Newspapers Today, which is published from the USA. She has also written and produced programmes for radio and television, and has been the pioneer in a counselling show on Star TV called Kashmakash, which deals with marital problems. The show was nominated for an award, and was declared first runner-up.

Awards:

Sathya has received the Young Journalist Award, in 1994, the Bharat Nirman, and the Mahila Shiromani Award, which was presented by the First Lady of India, for her contribution to journalism

She is currently working on a novel as well as a biography of Guru Dutt, a prominent film director. Both books are to be published by Penguin India. Today, Sathya Saran edits India's first weekly magazine for women, ME, and is breaking new ground in women's journalism. Me is part of the DNA basket of offerings, and boasts of a circulation of 300,000 copies.

Subhadra Kumari Chauhan

Subhadra Kumari Chauhan (1904- February 15, 1948) was an Indian poetess famous for her emotionally charged Hindi songs.

She was born in Nihalpur village in Allahabad District of present-day Uttar Pradesh. Subhadra Kumari initially studied in the Crosthwaite Girls’ School in Allahabad and passed the middle-school examination in 1919.

After her marriage to Thakur Lakshman Singh Chauhan of Khandwa in 1919, she moved to Jabalpur. She joined the Non-Cooperation Movement in 1921 and was the first woman Satyagrahi to court arrest in Nagpur. She was jailed twice for her involvement in protests against the British rule in 1923 and 1942.

She has authored a number of popular works in Hindi poetry. Her most famous composition is Jhansi Ki Rani, an emotionally charged poem describing the life of Rani Lakshmi Bai. This and her other poems, Veeron Ka Kaisa Ho Basant, Rakhi Ki Chunauti and Vida, openly talk about the freedom movement. They are said to have inspired great numbers of Indian youth to participate in the Indian Freedom Movement.

Subhadra Kumari Chauhan wrote in the Khariboli dialect of Hindi, in a simple, clear style. Apart from heroic poems, she also wrote poems for children. She wrote some short stories based on the life of the middle class too. She died in 1948 in a car accident. An Indian Coast Guard ship has been named after her.