The Year That Was….
The New year is barely a week old and while ‘looking back’ is still in fashion, we thought we’d start 2012 with the things that made us happy in 2011.
- We ended up representing 79 authors; a big leap from 51 at the start of the year.
- Siyahi mid-wifed 15 new titles into the world this year.
- Some of our authors made news:
- NDTV Highway On My Plate by Rocky Singh and Mayur Sharma was declared as winner of Gourmand World Cookbooks Awards 2011 in India in the category “TV Celebrity-Rest of the World” and qualified for Gourmand Best in the world competition.
- Devdutt Pattanaik’s 7 Secrets of Vishnu and 7 Secrets of Shiva and Sidin Vadukut’s God Save The Dork: TheIncredible International Adventures of Robin Einstein Varghese were declared national bestsellers for the year2011.
- Tabish Khair’s The Thing About Thugs shortlisted for DSC South Asia Literary Prize.
- What kept us busy through the year:
- Mountan Echoes done again - An initiative of the India-Bhutan Foundation in association with Siyahi, it aims to provide a platform for authors to engage in cultural dialogue and celebrate tales of a shared landscape in the Himalayan region. The festival enjoys the patronage of Her Majesty, the Queen Mother Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck. Inspired by this poetic phenomenon, Mountain Echoes made a comeback in 2011 following the overwhelming response received by the literati in both Bhutan and India last year. In its second year, Mountain Echoes was received with much bigger and better response. And what better to say than “We will be back this year !”
- Lit for Life – The festival was held across the cities of Delhi and Chennai in the months of September and October in 2011. The festival played host to some eminent speakers including Indrajit Hazra, Kavery Nambisan, Khalid Mohamed, Mohammed Hanif, Rahul Bhattacharya, Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra, Rana Das Gupta, Shabana Azmi, Urvashi Butalia and saw some great performances by Bharatnatyam dancer Alarmel Valli and actor- comedian Vir Das. Siyahi was the creative consultant for the programme.
- Frankfurt Book Fair – With just third year of our presence at the Frankfurt Book Fair, we received an overwhelming response from foreign publishers and agencies and it was good to know that many of Siyahi’s authors caught their interest. The fact that the four days of our trip to the fair were much tight on schedulewas enough to make us realize that Siyahi’s efforts were making a mark for itself in the much renowned book fair.
- Siyahi branched out to sell “Movie Rights” – Our books have made it to the ”Bestsellers list of 2011″ and to sell the movie rights of the likes of such promising books by Siyahi authors, we are already in talks with India’s most famous media houses viz Yash Raj Films, Walkwater Media, Balaji Telefilms, Star TV, UTV etc.
