Events

Tishani Doshi is an award-winning writer and dancer of Welsh-Gujarati descent. Born in Madras, India, in 1975, she received a masters in writing from the Johns Hopkins University, and worked in London in advertising before returning to India in 2001, where a chance encounter with the choreographer Chandralekha led her to an unexpected career in dance. In 2006, her book of poems, Countries of the Body, won the Forward Poetry Prize for best first collection in the UK. She is also the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award for poetry and winner of the All-India Poetry Competition. Her first novel, The Pleasure Seekers, was published to critical acclaim in 2010 and has been translated into several languages. Her most recent book is a collection of poems, Girls are Coming out of the Woods (Copper Canyon Press). She lives on a beach in Tamil Nadu with her husband and three dogs

Vivek Narayanan was born in India and raised in Zambia. He earned an MA in cultural anthropology from Stanford University, and an MFA in creative writing from Boston University.  He was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University (2013-14) and a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library (2015-16) for work on his ongoing current project, an experimental “writing through” of the Sanskrit of Valmiki’s Ramayana.  Narayanan’s books of poems include Universal Beach and Life and Times of Mr S. A full-length collection of his poems in Swedish translation was published in 2015 by the Stockholm-based Wahlström & Widstrand. He is co-editor of Almost Island, a ten-year old India-based journal, literary organization, and publisher.

Diversity & Pluralism Seminar