Author Archives: Neha Kumar

Preston Merchant’s Festival Photos

We’re delighted to share some photos of the festival.

Photo credits: Preston Merchant

Festival Photos

We are delighted to share some photos from the festival with everyone!

Photo credits: Liz Thomson, Mary Anne Mohanraj

KRITI PANELIST CANCELLATION

Dear Kriti participants: it is with a heavy heart that I announce that literary agent Anna Ghosh and director Riti Sachdeva will not be able attend the festival due to the fire at O’hare which grounded and cancelled several flights. We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused. The rest of the festival will proceed as scheduled.

-Neha

Focus on: Mina Khan, Kavita Das, and Preston Merchant

Reminder: registration rates go up soon! Register for the festival at http://desilit.org/kriti/register/

Donate to the Kriti Festival Kickstarter at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1989320757/kriti-festival-of-south-asian-arts-and-literature

Our three featured panelists for today!

Mina Khan, author

Mina Khan, author

Author Mina Khan , originally from Bangladesh, lives in West Texas. She writes fiction dealing with identity, feminist issues and multicultural influences. She’s also worked for about 20 years as a journalist, covering business, technology, politics, and government in Bangladesh and the U.S. (Texas and Pennsylvania). Now she writes a weekly food column for the San Angelo Standard-Times, part of the Scripps Newspapers Group, for her day job.

Mina was invited to share her literary short story, The Storyteller, at the ASU Writers’ Conference’s in 2010. Her first published work, The Djinn’s Dilemma, won the novella category of the 2012 Romance Through The Ages (published) contest. A Tale of Two Djinns won the

Dead: A Ghost Story, cover

Dead: A Ghost Story, cover

2013 Readers’ Crown for best paranormal romance. Wildfire, her most recent release, is a finalist in the 2014 PRISM and 2014 Daphne du Maurier Award of Excellence.

Also in 2012, Mina was featured as the Lady Lennia in April for Miss Millennia Magazine. Their mission is to inspire, encourage and empower young women. As Lady Lennia, she wrote a series of articles about her writing and community service for the magazine. She is the 2014 president of the Association of Asian-American Women and a founding member of the Peace Ambassadors of West Texas (an interfaith volunteer organization).

 


Kavita Das, writer

Kavita Das, writer

Kavita Das worked in the social change sector for fifteen years on issues ranging from homelessness to public health disparities to most recently, racial justice. She now focuses on writing nonfiction and creative nonfiction and her work has been published in The Aerogram, The Feminist Wire, Quartz, The Rumpus, Colorlines, Thought Catalog, and The Sun. She is at work on a personal biography about Lakshmi Shankar, a Grammy-nominated Hindustani singer who was part of the movement that took Indian music beyond the borders of India. Connect with Kavita on Twitter: @kavitamix

Lakshmi Shankar

Lakshmi Shankar


Preston Merchant, photographer

Preston Merchant, photographer

Preston Merchant lives in the Bay Area, California. He teaches photography as an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York. He is completing INDIAWORLD, a book-length photo essay, about the Indian diaspora communities of North America, the Caribbean, Britain, Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and the South Pacific. A selection of his images are featured in an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute called, “Beyond Bollywood: Indian Americans Shape the Nation.”

Focus on: Vinita Agrawal, Anjali Mitter Duva, and Fawzia Mirza

Registration rates go up on August 1st! — http://desilit.org/kriti/register/

Three more of our wonderful panelists!

Vinita Agrawal, Author

Vinita Agrawal, author

Vinita Agrawal is a Mumbai based, award winning writer and poet. Her poems have been published in Asiancha, Constellations, The Fox Chase Review, Spark, Open Road Review, The Taj Mahal Review, CLRI, SAARC Anthologies, Kritya.org, Touch – The Journal of healing, Museindia, Everydaypoets.com, Mahmag World Literature, The Criterion, The Brown Critique, Contemporary Literary Review of India (CLRI), Twenty20journal.com, Sketchbook, Poetry 24, Mandala, Spark and have found place in several international anthologies.

 

Words Not Spoken, cover

Words Not Spoken, cover

Her poem was nominated for the Best of the Net Awards 2011 by CLRI. She received a prize from MuseIndia in 2010. Her poem was awarded a prize in the Wordweavers Contest 2013 and the First prize in the Feb 2014 Hour of Writes Contest. Her debut collection – Words Not Spoken – published by Brown Critique/Sampark was released in November 2013.

She can be reached at www.vinitawords.com


 

Anjali Mitter Duva, author

Anjali Mitter Duva, author

Anjali Mitter Duva is a writer who grew up in France and has family roots in Calcutta, India. She was educated at Brown University and MIT. Her first novel,Faint Promise of Rain, is due out with She Writes Press in October 2014. She is a co-founder of Chhandika, an organization that teaches and presents India’s classical storytelling kathak dance. Anjali lives near Boston with her husband and two daughters, and is at work on her second novel, set in 19th century Lucknow.

Faint Promise of Rain, cover

Faint Promise of Rain, cover


 

Fawzia Mirza, filmmaker

Fawzia Mirza, filmmaker

Fawzia Mirza is an actor, writer, and educator and has performed at theatres all over Chicago, most recently starring in Brahman/i produced by Silk Road Rising and About Face Theatres. She’s been featured in Chicago Fire, and a number of indie films. She writes and produces short films (The Queen of My Dreams & One Night Stand) and web series, most notably, Kam Kardashian. Her ‘day job’ has her touring yearlong to universities and military installations performing Sex Signals, the most popular sexual violence prevention show in the world. http://fawziamirza.com/

Me, My Mom & Sharmila, poster

Me, My Mom & Sharmila, poster


Call for UIC desi folks — South Asian American History and Culture: Images and text from the UIC and Chicago communities

Call for University of Illinois at Chicago South Asian / Diaspora Photography Submissions (Students/Faculty/Staff/Alumni)

Deadline: Monday, August 4, 5 p.m.

DesiLit’s Kriti Festival, in partnership with UIC’s Asian American Resource and Cultural Center, Asian American Studies, Asian Studies; Campus Programs, and the South Asian American Policy and Research Institute (SAAPRI), invite your photographic contributions to a collaborative exhibition, to be held in the Ward Gallery in Student Center East.

We welcome submissions of your own or family photos featuring South Asians and their families/communities, to be presented in conversation with informative panels from the Smithsonian’s Beyond Bollywood exhibit and SAAPRI. Both contemporary and older photos are welcome; we’re especially interested in seeing images from earlier years of South Asian presence in Chicago.

Possible topics include:

· Family
· Culture and Identities
· Immigration & Citizenship
· History
· Youth & Youth Cultures
· Community Organizing
· Chicago and or Community neighborhoods
· Arts and Literature, including dance, music and theater
· Food
· Religion and Spirituality

Media: Please send in up to 5 digital images (in .jpg format) for consideration; if you need help scanning photos in, AARCC has a scanner that you may use. Many libraries can also help with scanning. When submitting, smaller images are welcome (maximum 500K file size per image).

Work Size: The final work, once accepted, should be high res images (300 dpi), suitable for printing. Larger images are welcome, to maximize potential printing size.

Entry requirements: This exhibit is open to UIC students / alumni / faculty / staff.
Exhibit Run: August 25-October 30, 2014; reception on September 25
Entries Due: August 4, 2014, 5 p.m. by e-mail
Selection Process: By a committee consisting of UIC faculty and staff; we will review the week of August 4
Notification: By August 8, we will notify all submitters by e-mail
Accepted Work: If accepted, UIC will install and print images; students will be able to pick up work after November 1
Reception: Thursday, September 25, from 4-6 p.m.
Sales: No artwork will be offered for sale

Submit to: Neha Kumar, Festival Assistant Director, nehakritiplanning@hotmail.com; In e-mail subject line, please put – “Kriti Exhibit Submission”

Contact with questions: Dr. Mary Anne Mohanraj, Festival Director, mohanraj@uic.edu

Focus on: Nura Maznavi

We’re thrilled to announce that Nura Maznavi, co-editor of Love, InshAllah and Salaam, Love, will be joining us for the festival!

 

Nura Maznavi, author

Nura Maznavi, author

Nura Maznavi is an attorney, writer, and Fulbright Scholar. She has worked with migrant workers in Sri Lanka, on behalf of prisoners in California, and with a national legal advocacy organization leading a program to end racial and religious profiling. Nura is the co-editor of the groundbreaking anthologies “Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women” and “Salaam, Love: American Muslim Men on Love, Sex & Intimacy.” She is an alumna of VONA/Voices of Our Nations writers’ workshop. She lives in Chicago.

Salaam, Love, cover

Salaam, Love, cover

Love, InshAllah, cover

Love, InshAllah, cover