The Publisher’s Post: Vol. I Ed. LI

Dated: 31st Aug. 2008

The Publisher’s Post is a weekly newsletter that contains information relating to the book publishing and book selling industry in India.

News This Week
On what’s happened in the industry this last week. If there’s news you have heard of and think it would make for interesting reading, please share it with us.

Delhi Book Fair opens - with a special chapter on women
Source: Indian Express

The 14th Delhi Book Fair at Pragati Maidan is here. With its collection of the latest publications, the fair promises to be a draw for all age groups over the next one week.

With the participation from publishers of seven other countries - Pakistan, Iran, Germany, Sweden, USA, Abu Dhabi and Spain-the fair will showcase a collection of books of international authors. With a large variety, the fair proved to be a one-stop shop for any collector right on day one on Saturday.

The annual fair is organised by the Federation of Indian Publishers (FIP) along with Indian Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO) and was inaugurated by Vice President Hamid Ansari. “Books are one’s best companions and such fairs help book lovers to inculcate reading habits in the next generation,” Ansari said.

With a special focus on women’s writing, the book fair this year throws the spotlight on 30 eminent women authors.

“Their inspirational works are being highlighted with an entire stall dedicated to them. Most stalls, national or international, too have stocked up recent publications on women. This is to encourage women authors,” said Shakti Malik, director of Delhi Book Fair.

Orient Longman flaunts their new publication Women of the Mahabharata by Chaturvedi Badrinath while an entire section is based on women’s studies.

“The new book by Badrinath highlights how 12 women changed the story of the Mahabharata, starting from Shakuntalam to all the other female characters like Draupadi, Kunti, Gandhari and others,” said Tanmoy Roychowdhury, manager, sales and marketing, Orient Longman.

The National Book Foundation of Pakistan, too, had a special counter for women’s writings.

The organisers, however zeroed in on authors of repute like Anita Desai, Amrita Pritam, Krishna Sobti, Kiran Bedi, Usha Rani and others whose life and works were highlighted in a special counter dedicated to them.

Narratives in Indian Textiles
Source: indianwriting.blogsome.com/

Mantles of Myth - Narratives in Indian Textiles

13-15 December 2008

Indian textile style has evolved with the development of civilization and its significance is hallowed by traditions. According to the Rig Veda and the Upanishads, the universe is a continuous fabric with a grid pattern upon which cycles of life are painted. In the Atharva Veda, day and night are said to spread light and darkness over the earth as weavers throw a shuttle on the loom.

Textiles with narratives are seen across the country and their range varies from painted and printed textiles to woven and embroidered pieces. These textiles tell us multiple stories and represent myths sacred to indigenous communities across the country. Many have religious and ritual value in the cultures they come from whereas others are folk and tribal textiles that carry narratives of their origins and legends of their ancestors and gods.

These textiles remind us of the riches of material culture in traditional communities and the wealth of accumulated knowledge which is generally ignored. They augment the existing rich verbal and oral literary traditions that record and map cultures. Understanding and translating these is a key element of the Translating Bharat Project. An understanding of the real India is possible only by fathoming its multiple histories in myriad tongues and forms.

Mantles of Myth will be a three day conference wherein textile experts, writers, poets, musicians, performers, narrators, will bring together the diverse riches and variegated forms of story telling. This conference will provide a forum for discussions, debate and interaction to focus on how essential and integral it is for us to protect and preserve our folk lore, literary traditions and the colours and threads of our culture.

Panelists include Mamang Dai, Devdutt Patnaik, Wendell Rodricks, William Dalrymple, Laila Tyabji, Paola Manfredi, Ritu Kumar, Meghnad Desai and Dipankar Gupta.

Writers Retreat in North Goa
Source: women’s writing

Yoga Creatives are currently organizing their annual 10 day Writers Retreat in Mandrem, North Goa, to be held from the 15th to the 24th of October. The ten-day retreat includes a daily yoga session with resident expert Lalit Kumar, breakfast, creative time and workshops dedicated to improving your writing, including instruction on editing, short story writing and scriptwriting. Organizers Eveanna and Maeve promise good energy, creative flow and most importantly, a tranquil space to work on your writing.

Prices start from 569 euros and include accommodation, breakfast, workshops and yoga instruction. Mention www.womenswriting.com when you book and you will receive a 15% discount. Click here for information on how to book.

Course in Publishing
Source: The Hindu
A two-week training course on book publishing is jointly being organised by Literacy House, Andhra Mahila Sabha and National Book Trust India from September 10 to 23. For more information contact 2709 9181.

“Break The Rules”
Source: women’s writing

Independent, Pune-based, publishing house, Mirage Books, invites submissions from writers for an “experimental short story” anthology entitled Break the Rules. “We want writers to let their imagination soar free and break the rules of short story writing. For instance, there need not be a typical beginning, middle and end kind of a story,” says Mirage Books. “It could jump between time and geographical frames or it can be told from a different perspective altogether. We are looking for stories that will reflect contemporary thinking that will connect with the realities of today’s world.”

Mirage Books describes itself as a “new-age publishing house” dedicated to providing a “platform for budding writers so that their ideas and expressions can reach out far and wide”. According to them “most reputed and established publishing houses have no time to spare for budding and amateur writers. All they want to do is to capitalise on recognised names that guarantee sales.”

Co-owner Nikhil Khanna currently works as a visual effects artist at Zee TeleFilms and published his own novel, The Day of the Dead, with Mirage Books. However, it’s unclear who is editing the anthology. Deadline for submissions is October 15th and each submission should be between 1000-1500 words. Fifty stories will be selected from the entries for inclusion in Break The Rules.

Visit http://www.miragebooks.com/contest.html for more information or email miragebooks@gmail.com.

New Book Releases and Events
This section reports on new book and journal releases, new imprints and other similar events.

The First “Pratilipi Event”

Udaharan presents, in collaboration with Instituto Cervantes, New Delhi, the first Pratilipi Event - Danza Poesia,  a recital of poems by Oscar Pujol and Sameer Rawal, in translation and the original (Spanish, Catalan, English, Hindi) and a rendering of Sanskrit verses, in Catalan translation, along with Bharatnatyam mudras by Merce Escrich.

Oscar Pujol is an Indologist from Catalunya, Spain. He has published a Sanskrit-Catalan Shabdkosh having around 60,000 entries, besides having published various academic books and articles. After working as Director, Education Programmes of Casa Asia (Asia House) in Barcelona since its inception he now is setting up the Instituto Cervantes in New Delhi, as its Director, to promote Spanish culture and languages in India. He has a doctorate from BHU, Varanasi in Sanskrit.

Merce Escrich is the Director of Kalavana, Barcelona, dedicated to promote Indian art and Culture in Spain. She is a disciple of Jamuna Krishnan, and performs and teaches Bharatnatyam. She is involved in many projects concerning Indian classical dance and art, and has contributed many times in various forms to their study and promotion.

Sameer Rawal lives in Barcelona, Spain, and teaches Hindi and translation strategies for intercultural communication. He writes and translates narratives and poetry between/in Hindi, English, Spanish and Catalan. He was the first to translate a Catalan novel (La Plaça del diamant) into Hindi and is now translating an anthology of stories by Merce Rodoreda. He has also published Caialx de sandal, a Hindi/Catalan book of poetry.

Venue: Krishnayan, Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur.

Date and Time: September 4, 2008. 5:00 PM.

Contact: +91-98281-12994

Puppet-making workshop with Anurupa Roy

Katha cordially invites you to the colourful, fun-filled and bright puppet-making workshop. Noted puppeteer, Anurupa Roy, recognized as a major creative force in Indian Puppet Theatre- will conduct the workshop.

Venue: Katha, A3, Sarvodaya Enclave

Date: September 6th , 7th , 13th and 14th

(4 Days Week-end Workshop)

Time:10:00am to 12:00 pm

Workshop fee: Rs 1,500/-

Age: 5-10

Workshop Category: The Mask Carnival

Katha will provide all the material needed for this fun-filled hand on craft activity.

We believe that puppets have the potential to make us laugh at ourselves, can teach principals that might otherwise be difficult to grasp and help us empathize with others, all while providing us with entertainment. Similarly, this workshop will help children become innovative and each child will get an opportunity to be creative and develop storytelling and communication skills as they learn to create variety of different puppet forms.

Anurupa Roy is committed to innovative and socially relevant puppet making and has earned a reputation in the circle of puppet theatre, in India and abroad. She went to study puppetry at Dramatiska Institute at the University of Stockholm under the great Michael Meschke, who also taught one of Anurupa’s mentors in Delhi, Dadi Pudumjee. Anurupa holds a diploma in the Guaratelle tradition of glove puppetry from Naples. She trained under Bruno Leone, who was taught by Nunzio Zampella, said to be the last of the old Neapolitan puppet masters.

If you are interested, kindly get your child registered latest by  4th September. There is a “Sibling Discount” of 10 per cent.

A new book from Kaurab
Source: dailyalochona.blogspot.com

late night correspondence
by Aryanil Mukherjee
CinnamonTeal Print and Publishing, 2008
ISBN: 978-81-906900-6-5
Cover Art by Mithu Sen

Kaurab proudly announces the release of late night correspondence, a book of English poems by Aryanil Mukherjee. This is a collection of 42 poems transcreated into English from the author’s original Bengali poems.

“late night corespondence, Aryanil Mukherjee’s first book of Bangla-English transcreations, combines cultural borrowing, scientific logic and everyday life to disrupt isolated systems of culture. Mukherjee’s unique practice of Bangla poetry, as well as essay writing and editing, from deep in Midwest, USA, truly mediates the flip sides of the planet for us. His work reminds us that ultimately our scaffoldings grow out of ignorance.”

Blogs and Articles
Comments and posts on trends and events in the book industry.

Phule
Source: Scholars Without Borders

For anyone interested in the question of caste, this volume from Leftword, The Selected Wrtings of Jotirao Phule, (ISBN: 978-81-87496-77-9), is an indispensable resource.

“Jotirao Phule (1827-1890) was India’s first systematic theorist of caste, and the most radical 19th-century opponent of it, who desired nothing less than a complete smashing up of its oppressive structure. This volume makes available for the first time all his most important prose writings in English.

At the centre of Phule’s thought and analysis are Gulamgiri (Slavery) and Shetkaryacha Asud (Cultivator’s Whipcord), both included in this volume in their entirety. Also included are Phule’s deposition to the Hunter Commission on Education; his response to the Parsi social reformer Malabari’s notes on ‘Infant Marriage and Enforced Widowhood’; his letter to M. G. Ranade regarding the Marathi Author’s Conference; his stirring defence of Pandita Ramabai in two numbers of the journal Satsar; and selections from The Book of the True Faith. All translations have been specially commissioned for this richly annotated volume, and the Editor’s Introduction places Phule’s life, work, and thought, as well as each text included in this volume, in historical perspective.”

Professor G P Deshpande, translator and editor of this volume, taught at the JNU. He is as well known for his contribution to Marathi theater, having written a number of plays, including Satyashodhak, on the life and times of Jotirao Phule.

Reviewing the book in EPW, Gopal Guru says “[Deshpande] makes a brilliant attempt to foreground Phule’s system of ideas in a series of tough arguments… The book is going to have a scholarly impact on those who otherwise have only a political interest in reducing Phule to a cultural symbol. It will prompt some of us to liberate Phule from self-serving cultural symbolism and situate him in the tradition of self-criticism, which was one of Phule’s core intellectual projects.”

Reluctant Writer
Source: The Hindu

This isn’t the first time Kuzhali Manickavel has been published. But it is the first time she’s gotten to actually see her short stories in print; most of the other times, they were published in magazines halfway across the world in the U .S. or Canada or Nigeria.

“They were out on a newsstand somewhere, and I felt like I was the only one who knew I was published,” says the 31-year-old from Chidambaram with a smile. “Now it’s a strange feeling to hear strangers tell me they want to buy my book - I want to go up to them and ask, ‘Why? What attracts you to it?’”

That is a typically quirky and self-effacing response from the reclusive writer whose collection of short stories, bearing an equally quirky title of ‘Insects are just like you and me except some of them have wings,’ was recently launched by Blaft Publications at the Madras Terrance House.

A postgraduate in English Literature from Ethiraj College who grew up in Canada until the age of 13, Kuzhali has taken an unusual route in her writing career -  via the internet. Think the World Wide Web and you don’t immediately think literary excellence, but according to Kuzhali, there’s a world of support out there for emerging writers if you only look.

“When I started out in 2004, I joined online writing workshops where writers from U.K., Israel, France, you name it, would get together and critique each other’s works,” she says. “I owe a lot to the internet - the English literature scene in Chidambaram is not exactly happening!”

Discussions in the workshops helped her understand the different markets worldwide for short stories, and she began to submit her stories (online, of course) for publication to magazines -  first to e-zines or online magazines, and later to well-known print magazines across the world as well. Over the years, she’s built quite an online fan base, and fittingly, it was through cyberspace that she was discovered by Blaft earlier this year.

“They read some of my stuff online and contacted the editor of one of these magazines to get in touch with me,” says Kuzhali. The result, of course, is ‘Insects…’, a collection of short stories and flash fiction (stories restricted to a length of 500 or 1,000 words) that defy categorisation and, in Kuzhali’s words, explore themes of “isolation, dislocation, magic realism and surrealism.”

Sanskrit, Arabic, Latin: enriching spiritual life
Source: Mint

In the Bhagvad Gita, we see Krishna and Arjun conversing in Sanskrit. Sanskrit is widely used in all parts of India in the chanting of mantras and various incantations. Some religious leaders are convinced that when one divinity encounters another, they speak in Sanskrit.

But not everybody accepts this role of Sanskrit. The issue today has taken on political colours. In some states, the government encourages the use of the vernacular in temple rituals. Tamil has an equally rich heritage of devotional literature that goes back several millennia. The government at Chennai is taking steps to introduce and encourage the use of Tamil in temple rituals.

Next to Sanskrit as a language of worship is Arabic. The Islamic world has accepted it as the language of prayer, for it is the language in which the Quran was revealed to the Prophet over a period of 23 years. The Quran is considered to be literally the Word of God.

The entire article can be read here

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This newsletter is developed by Queenie Fernandes and Leonard Fernandes with inputs from various individuals, publishing houses, websites and blogs.

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