Siyahi, in Urdu means ‘ink’, the dye that stains the shape of our thoughts. We try our best to cherish and nurture the timeless magic of words.
At the heart of our organisation is an insatiable need to find meaningful stories and then help these voices reach out into the world. We enjoy working with authors from all backgrounds and genres. But we do stay away religiously from hackneyed, unimaginative manuscripts and instead value originality and a sense of adventure in our potential writers.
Our portfolio goes beyond just literature and links together various aesthetic and artistic fields such as dance, cinema, music, textiles, et cetera. We have a special interest in regional works and are enthusiastically involved in facilitating translations of books to and from various languages. We not only aim for higher sales figures but also to promulgate a healthy reading habit, especially amongst the youth.
Mita Kapur
CEO
Mita Kapur is a freelance journalist regularly featured in many newspapers and magazines. She covers social and developmental issues along with travel, food and lifestyle humor stories. She has co-directed and directed the Jaipur Literature Festival in 2006 and 2007. She is the founder and CEO of Siyahi, a literary consultancy where she doubles up as a literary agent along with conceptualizing and directing literary events. Her first book, The F-Word is being published by HarperCollins.
Namita Gokhale
Founder Director
Namita Gokhale is a writer, publisher and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival. Her works include Paro: Dreams of Passion, A Himalayan Love Story, Mountain Echoes: Reminiscences of Kumaoni Women, Gods, Graves, and Grandmother, The Book of Shadows, Shakuntala: The Play of Memory, The Puffin Mahabharata, The Book of Shiva and Priya: In Incredible Indyaa. Her latest book, The Habit Of Love was released in January, 2012. Founder director for Siyahi’s Translating Bharat conferences, Namita is the co-director of Mountain Echoes Literary Festival.
Neeta Gupta
Director – Languages
Neeta Gupta is a publisher at Yatra Books. Besides translating and contributing to various magazines, she has been the editor of Bhartiya Anuvad Parishad’s quarterly journal on translation, Anuvaad. Yatra Books has been coordinating the Indian Languages Publishing Programme of Penguin Books India. They have published over a two hundred books in Hindi, Urdu and Marathi.
Jaya Bhattacharji
Literary Director
Jaya Bhattacharji is an Editorial Consultant for Puffin. She has also worked as the Commissioning Editor and Marketing, Promotions and Publicity Director for Zubaan. She has also been a Guest Editor for Folklife, a quarterly for the National Folklore Centre as well as the Children and Young Adult Books Special of The Book Review.
Pramod Kumar KG
Literary Director
Pramod Kumar KG is the Managing Director of Eka Cultural Resources & Research, a museum consulting company in New Delhi. He also set up the Anokhi Museum of Hand Printing at Jaipur and was its founder director. He was the first director of the Jaipur Literature Festival in 2006 and is currently the consulting editor from India for the Textiles Asia Journal. He curated the exhibition, Bhutan: An Eye to History at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi in 2009, which was inaugurated by His Majesty Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, the King of Bhutan. His book on Royal Photographic Portraiture in India was released in 2011. Pramod is also the co-director of the Mountain Echoes Literary Festival. His book, Posing for Posterity: Royal Indian Portraits in Princely India will be launched in May 2012.
Neerja Misra
Literary Director
Neerja Misra, a Fulbright Fellow, has been Head of the Department of English and Vice-Principal, Kanoria College, Jaipur. Currently, she is involved with Bodh, an NGO working for primary education. She has translated both prose and poetry from Hindi and Rajasthani and has edited a number of publications.
Aditi Goyal
Event consultant
Aditi completed her PG in Event Management Advertising and Media from National Institute of Event Management, Mumbai. She has been a part of Siyahi since its inception and handles logistics for Siyahi events. She also manages Public Relations and Human Resource for the organization. Aditi is a keen photographer and an ardent traveler.
Zoya Wahi
Creative Communication Manager
Zoya is part of the core team responsible for all marketing, promotion and event related activities in Siyahi. A post graduate from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) – Delhi, Zoya specialised in advertising and public relations after completing her graduation in English (Hons.) from the Delhi College of Arts and Commerce, University of Delhi. She is currently also working with a start-up NGO for animal welfare, Aashray, and with TEDxJaipur. When she’s not working, Zoya likes to experiment with baking.
Nupur Maskara
Agency Manager
Nupur Maskara has an MBA from the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi and a BA (Honours) degree in English from St.Stephen’s College, Delhi. At Siyahi, she is responsible for manuscript assessment, managing agency affairs, and liasoning between authors and publishers. She is an avid reader and enjoys writing poetry on her blog.
Editorial Manager
Mihir Manker
Tech. & Advertising Consultant
Yogesh Narula
Senior Consultants (Public Relations)
EDITORS – CONSULTANTS:
Rajul Bhargava
Rajul has thirty-eight years of experience teaching ELT and literature. Her works have been published widely, nationally and internationally. Her areas of specialisation include course designing, curriculum development and material production in ESF, translation theory and practice, women’s writing, diasporic writing and narratology.
Amrita Chatterjee
Amrita is a graduate in English Literature and Creative writing from the University of Leeds; U.K. She is aprodigious reader with unwavering dedication to the written word in a variety of genres. She is also a budding writer and journalist, having written for various magazines and online journals in the U.K. She has also recently written a trilogy of historical children’s fiction, which will be published in early 2011. Over the past few months she has read and reviewed several manuscripts for Siyahi as an Editorial Consultant.
Meera Kumar
Meera is a Corporate Communications professional. She has worked for U.S. multinationals, academic start-ups, Fortune 500, multi-lateral banks and has worked with leading media outlets world-wide like the Wall Street Journal, NBC and the BBC.
Shubhangi Swarup
Shubhangi is a post graduate with an M. Sc. In Violence, Conflict and Development from SOAS, University of London. She has worked with the UNHCR in the UK, Save the Children, India and done social research for production houses in the UK and China. She currently heads the community group Hamara Footpath and is working with Open, a monthly magazine.
Rashmi Sahi
Rashmi is based in Hong Kong, where she is teaching at various academic levels. She has a Ph. D. in English Literature. She has presented papers like Mother – Daughter Relationship in the Novels of Shashi Deshpande, Grace Under Pressure, Breaking the Sati Savitri Image in the novels of Shashi Deshpande, Human Relationship in the novels of Shashi Deshpande.
Preeta Kuhad Balia
Preeta Kuhad Balia holds an honours degree in Economics and a master’s degree in Law. She practiced as a lawyer for a few years. She is an avid reader and a ready traveler. Currently she is a freelancing writer writing for different entities. She recently collaborated with a photographer and wrote verses for a picture book centred on women to be released in December, 2010.
Sweta Srivastava Vikram
Sweta Srivastava Vikram (www.swetavikram.com) is a multi-genre writer and marketing professional living in New York City. She has published three collections of poetry and co-authored one upcoming collection. Her work has appeared in six countries across three continents. She is a graduate of Columbia University, New York. She serves on the board of DesiLit, a literary organization that builds support for South Asian and Diaspora writers.
