litfest2026

Roopa Unnikrishnan has always loved a good shot and a good plot twist. A Rhodes Scholar, Arjuna Awardee, and Commonwealth Games gold medallist in rifle shooting, she spent years helping global companies navigate high-stakes strategy and innovation before turning her sights to the world of mystery fiction. Now, instead of boardroom battles and market manoeuvres, she crafts devious whodunits where motive, opportunity, and human frailty collide.

Her nonfiction debut, The Career Catapult, won the Independent Press Award, and provided deeply researched strategy and career advice. But Roopa’s heart has always belonged to storytelling, and she interspersed the research with true coaching tales of transformation. Her mystery, The Jasmine Murders, grew out of the same instinct that once led an Oxford tutor to complain that her thesis was “too entertaining.” Roopa took that as a compliment and never looked back. She delights in building intricate puzzles, layering in red herrings, and exploring the secrets that hide beneath seemingly ordinary lives.

Drawing on her background as a strategist, she brings an insider’s understanding of power, ambition, and high-pressure environments to her fiction. The result: mysteries that are as psychologically sharp as they are page-turning. Her essays on strategy and creativity have appeared in Knowledge@Wharton and The Economic Times, reflecting her belief that the best stories—on the page or in business—are ultimately about people, choices, and consequences.

Roopa lives in New York City with her professor husband, their beagle, Tara, and an ever-growing stash of notebooks filled with clues, half-heard conversations, and suspicious characters. Their twins, Durga and Krishna, have launched into the world, but still occasionally get late-night messages that begin, “Would this murder method actually work…?”

Book
Set in 1960s South India, The Jasmine Murders follows a young bride and her police chief husband whose arrival in a remote town is marked by a man delivering a woman’s severed head to their doorstep. As a historic cyclone bears down on Manamadurai, the duo must navigate a covert network of local gossip to help her husband untangle a web of communal tension and buried secrets before the violence consumes them both.

Book Reviews
“The novel grabbed me and didn’t let go. Unnikrishnan has a deft hand. The characters are compelling. I eagerly await the next offering.” — Peter Herford, international journalist.

Deepanjana Klein, PhD, is the Special Advisor to the Chairperson, and the Director of Acquisitions and Development, at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), New Delhi. She has been documenting the Ellora cave temples since 1993. After conducting doctoral research on Ellora, she was awarded a Mellon Foundation grant to create the first comprehensive photo documentation of the site with her husband, Arno Klein, and in conjunction with Dr. Walter Spink, then Professor Emeritus of the University of Michigan. Before KNMA, Dr. Klein served as the International Head of Modern, Contemporary, and Classical Indian and Southeast Asian Art at Christie's for fifteen years, and has also taught art history and theory. Arno Klein, PhD, is a research scientist and the Director of Innovative Technologies at the Child Mind Institute in Manhattan. Dr. Klein has held positions at Columbia University, Stony Brook University, and The New School. He first visited Ellora in 1992 with Professor Walter Spink and has since taken over 10,000 photographs of the site and created the elloracaves.org website.

Book
Ellora: Cross-Fertilization of Style in Buddhist, Hindu and Jain Cave Temples, is a new book about Ellora, a UNESCO World Heritage Site excavated between 600 CE and 1000 CE and the only cave temple site that houses Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain temples. The contributing authors investigate the caves by religion and myth, patronage and support, stylistic influence and exchange, chronology, and the process of carving and completion of these rock-cut temples. The book includes extensive photographic documentation, ground plans, and rarely seen 19th-century archival materials. [Co-edited by Deepanjana Klein and Arno Klein, with contributing authors Nicolas Morrissey, Lisa N. Owen, Vidya Dehejia, and Pia Brancaccio; with a foreword by Naman Ahuja. Contains 203 photographs by Arno Klein, 29 illustrations, and 22 drawings.]

Manil Suri is the author of three internationally acclaimed novels including The Death of Vishnu, and a book on popular mathematics, The Big Bang of Numbers. His work has been translated into 27 languages and received several honors, including winning the Barnes and Noble Discover Prize, and being longlisted for the Booker Prize.

Book
Manil Suri is the author of the memoir, A Room in Bombay, three internationally acclaimed novels, The Death of Vishnu, The Age of Shiva and The City of Devi, and a book on popular mathematics, The Big Bang of Numbers. His work has been longlisted for the Booker Prize, shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner, Lambda Literary, and PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Awards, and won the McKittrick Prize and the Barnes & Noble Discover Award, among others. He has served as a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and is an emeritus professor of mathematics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Book Reviews
"Drawing on the 2,711 letters that his mother cherished, Suri has created a probing memoir about his family, especially the deep bond between him and his mother; his homosexuality; and the uncanny hold the apartment exerted on them all. . . . an empathetic portrait of his parents’ entrapment, and a candid account of his struggle to be responsible to them, and to himself." ― Kirkus

"In the Hindu epic, The Ramayan, Shravan exemplifies a devoted son, caring for his aging blind parents. That renowned novelist Suri mentions Shravan’s story in his moving memoir reflects the guilt he struggles with as he immigrated to the U.S. . . . Suri emerges as a Shravan for our times, demonstrating extraordinary patience and service to his parents under severely trying circumstances." ― Booklist

"Suri expertly parallels the apartment's combination of claustrophobia and coziness with his conflicted feelings about his aging parents . . . His portrait of [his mother] is clear-eyed and prismatic, highlighting both her sweetness and her intensity. Readers will find this a moving consideration of the ties that bind." ― Publishers Weekly

"In an effort to make the distance between himself and his parents more bearable, Suri writes letters -- more than 2,700 of them, all addressed to Prem. They show the richness, honesty and humor of his life. You will remember A ROOM IN BOMBAY long after you put it down as you consider your own understanding of home." ― Bookreporter

"Drawing from thousands of letters sent over three decades, Suri’s memoir revisits the single room in a crumbling, crowded apartment in Bombay (now Mumbai) that his family shared. Part prison, part haven, the room is imbued with deeper meaning as Suri wrestles with his enduring love for his mother." ― New York Times

"Rooms in Bombay are not big in size, but huge in heart. Manil Suri’s memoir will make you want to hug your mother. Written in clean, direct prose and without sentimentality, it explores all the dimensions of the complicated bond between parent and child―while also being laugh out loud funny. If you were born of a mother, read this book." ― Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found

I have dedicated my career to the study of Indian aesthetics, philosophical traditions, and the cultural heritage of Kashmir. After serving in senior academic positions at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), New Delhi, INDIA for about three decades, I have continued to publish extensively. The title of my first book published in 1987 is, “Buddhist Savants of Kashmir and their Contributions Abroad". My recent works include the edited volume, "Asian Aesthetic Theories and Art Forms" published by IGNCA & D K Printworld (jointly) in 2021 and my latest book, लल्लेश्वरी के वाख़ was published by the Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi in 2024. It includes the Hindi verse translation of a collection of Kashmiri Vakhs of the14th century Saiva Yogini of Kashmir -Lalded.

Most recently, I conceptualized, curated and edited the commemoration volume titled, “Kapila Jnanagarbha: Knowledge Unfolding Wisdom – Offerings in Memory of Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan". It was Published in February 2026 by one of the leading publishers of Indological book known as Dev Books. The first copy of this volume was presented to His Holiness the Dalai Lama on April 27th at his residence in Macleod Ganj. The Dalai Lama used to address Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan as ‘Mataji’. A formal release and panel discussion on this volume was held at the India International Centre (IIC), New Delhi on May 21st. The volume serves as a comprehensive document reflecting the vision and contributions of Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan, one of India’s leading visionary personalities whose contributions have been immense in the restoration and preservation of India’s holistic art and culture at various levels.

Book
Kapilā Jñānagarbhā is the bouquet of variegated hues presented in the form of a volume of offerings to Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan by eminent personalities, expert scholars and artistes, also her family to keep the fragrance of her vision and contributions fresh and vibrating to inspire future generations. The title, Kapilā Jñānagarbhā: Knowledge Unfolding Wisdom, in itself celebrates the core qualities of the personality whom we have seen in constant search for knowledge till her last breath. Through her wisdom she made use of her acquired knowledge at various levels and in innumerable ways for reviving and saving India’s holistic traditions of knowledge. In achieving her goals, it was her education in the West, that provided her the critical tools and the ability to analyse things from multiple points of view and the learning in India equipped her at the experiential level. Her contributions are immense. Present volume is divided into two parts. Part I has two sections. The section A contains the Tributes by eminent persons and section B has ten papers by eminent scholars highlighting Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan’s vision and contributions. Part II contains academic papers by the scholars, experts in their respective fields, who have remained closely associated with Dr. Vatsyayan and have got benefited or influenced by her knowledge and wisdom by one way or the other. Part II is arranged in the Sections: C on Veda: The Source of Knowledge; D on Sastra/Theory and Prayoga/Praxis; E on Kashmir Śaivism; F on Indian Aesthetics; and G on Culture and Civilization.

Author Bio

Makarand R. Paranjape has been Professor of English at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, for over twenty-three years. He also served as the Director, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. The author/editor of over 50 books and hundreds of academic papers, he is also a poet, novelist, columnist, and public intellectual. His latest books include JNU: Nationalism and India’s Uncivil War (Rupa, 2022), Identity’s Last Secret (BluOne, 2022), and Swami Vivekananda: Hinduism and India’s Road to Modernity (HarperCollins, 2020). He has been in touch with the works of Sri Aurobindo and modern India’s spiritual masters for over forty years.

Book
Hindutva and Hind Swaraj: History’s Forgotton Doubles | The Battle of Ideas in Indian History and Politics | Hindu Identity, Nationalism, and Democracy

Makarand R Paranjape A close reading of the persistent antagonisms in Indian history, Hindutva and Hind Swaraj focuses on the ideological clash between Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, representing the broader ideological, political, and cultural factions within Hindu and Indian society. The central argument is that this antagonism continues to influence national life, both politically and personally, reflecting two contrasting ideologies: Hindutva and Hind Swaraj.

Divided into three parts, the first part addresses the lack of historical records in ancient India and the importance of creating a national history to reclaim India’s past. In the part second part, the author examines the discovery of India’s cultural and historical identity, the impact of colonialism, and the need for a balanced discourse that acknowledges the complexity and diversity of Indian society. While the third looks at the e contemporary political landscape, the rise of Hindutva, and the ongoing struggle between Gandhi’s vision of non-violent resistance and Savarkar’s advocacy of armed rebellion. It highlights the unresolved tensions between these two ideologies and their implications for India’s future.

The book emphasizes the need for a new approach to understanding and reconciling these differences, suggesting that a balanced discourse and a deeper inquiry into the nature of nationalism, democracy, and Indian society are essential for creating a new India.

Preeti Parikh is a poet and essayist with a past educational background in medicine and a recent MFA from The Rainier Writing Workshop. A Kundiman Fellow and National Poetry Series finalist, she is the recipient of a 2023 Sustainable Arts Foundation grant award and a 2024 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence award. Preeti's poems appear in Beloit Poetry Journal, The Cincinnati Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, The Margins, Zocalo Public Square, and other literary journals. Her writing is anthologized in Nonwhite and Woman: 131 Micro Essays on Being in the World, the Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English (2021 and 2022 editions), and The Last Milkweed. Preeti has been a Millay Arts Artist-in-Residence and an AWP Writer to Writer Program mentee and has received staff scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Her work has been performed in a poetry-ballet collaboration and exhibited at the 2025 Creative Asian Society Art Exhibition. Born and raised in India, she now lives with her family in Ohio. Preeti Parikh's collection of poems, BLUE SELVAGE, named by Debutiful as one of The Debut Poetry Collections You Need to Read in 2026, will be out in November from Tupelo Press.

BOOK
Blue Selvage is a formally daring, deeply embodied meditation that weaves lyric, essay, documentary fragments, and historical reckoning into an exploration of skin, cloth, color, and form as living archives. Here, passion for indigo, a medical-science-informed perspective, fascination with the materiality of cloth and skin, and a journeying towards reclamation interlace with feminist inquiries and cultural examination to conceptualize the poems' multivalent inhabitances. Expansive in its rhetorical modes and landscapes, Blue Selvage is unified by a remarkable singularity of voice and vision through which Parikh skillfully invokes form as metaphor, performance, dramatization, and content. What emerges is a capacious field of attention, where intimacy and history press against one another, and where writing itself becomes an act of unstitching and re-making—an ethical, sensuous practice of staying with what the body remembers and what culture would prefer to erase.

BOOK REVIEWS
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR BLUE SELVAGE (TUPELO PRESS, NOV 2026)

Poetry as the work of embodiment, of transformation—this principle manifests as a gorgeous new expression in Blue Selvage. But as Preeti Parikh shows, the arc towards self-realization is also about the tensions between raveling and unraveling, stitching and unstitching, text and lacuna. Delving into the intimacy of memory and the violence of history, Parikh understands that “opacity and translucence” are both necessary to deep testimony. Bold in its forms and defiant in its truths, Blue Selvage is a radiant debut. — Rick Barot, Author of Moving the Bones

The artistry of Preeti Parikh’s debut collection, Blue Selvage, is one of daring precision—an embroidery of vivid, textured language that explores the instability of boundaries and the implications of integument: cover and exposure, clothing and skin, diaspora and the “dreamcloth” of identity. This is the poetics we need today, one that deeply enacts the decentralization of power by meditating on edges both frayed and selvaged and traversing the thresholds of body, language, culture, and memory. Parikh’s multi-lingual, multi-modal tapestry is beautiful, articulate, and brave. A refreshing and liberating voice! — Jennifer Elise Foerster, Author of The Maybe Bird

Blue Selvage is an inventive palimpsest of South Asian history and autobiography, unspooling the female body and the weight of its inheritance. Braiding memory with etymology, and medical terminology with the cadences of Hindi and Gujarati, Parikh navigates multiple geographies—clinical, domestic, diasporic. Here, fabric both covers and bares. The body is archive and anatomy, born a ‘milky clump’ of cotton and marked by indigo's colonial violence. This is fierce work on the gaze and its exposures, a reckoning with touch, shame, and desire that stains the reader's mind blue and selvages the self. A stunning debut by a luminous new voice. — Shikha Malaviya, Author of Anandibai Joshee, A Life in Poems

Blue Selvage is a chronicle of dichotomies, both difficult and joyful. Preeti Parikh’s debut collection of poems is exhilarating. Here we find a convincingly modern mind — one formed in girlhood on one continent and evolving into an empowered woman and poet on another. The tensions of family and culture explored in this book are numerous: what’s lost and what’s found; what’s private and what’s a violation; what’s a mask and what’s a face; what is broken and what is healed. The concentrated, formally varied poems weave shame and empowerment, the buried and the unearthed, the forgotten and the remembered. When Parikh writes, “let the fabric breathe,” she is conveying complexities of feeling, fluency, and morality that any reader will recognize as clarity and grace. — David Biespiel, Author of Beautiful Is the World

Renu Kaul Verma is the Managing Director and Publisher of the Vitasta Blackspine Publishing Group. A former journalist with The Indian Express and Hindustan Times, she founded Vitasta Publishing in July 2004 with the conviction that books have the power to shape conversations, preserve memory, and challenge accepted narratives.

Over the past twenty-two years, she has guided the growth of Vitasta from a single-title independent press into a publishing house with a catalogue of more than 700 books across history, politics, biography, gender, literature, philosophy, culture, translations, and children's publishing. Throughout that journey, she has remained committed to publishing works that combine intellectual depth with accessibility.

Working closely with authors, academics, journalists, public intellectuals, and first-time writers, Renu has championed voices that broaden public conversation and bring fresh perspectives to readers. Her editorial vision continues to be guided by a belief in the enduring relevance of independent publishing and the responsibility of publishers to nurture ideas that inform, question, and inspire.

She is a regular participant in literary festivals and publishing forums, where she speaks on independent publishing, editorial stewardship, and the evolving role of books in a rapidly changing world.

About Vitasta Publishing
Vitasta Publishing is an independent publishing house that believes the most meaningful books are those that ask questions, invite reflection, and remain relevant long after they are first read. Guided by its motto, Books That Dare the System, its publishing programme is shaped not by a single genre or viewpoint, but by an enduring curiosity about people, history, ideas, cultures, and the changing world around us.

From its very first publication, Brahmacharya Gandhi and His Women Associates, Vitasta established a distinctive editorial voice by publishing books that question accepted narratives, recover overlooked histories, and encourage informed dialogue. Today, its catalogue of more than 700 titles spans history, politics, biography, literature, philosophy, religion, sociology, children's books, the arts, translations, and contemporary fiction, bringing together established scholars, journalists, public intellectuals, creative writers, and emerging voices.

As an independent publisher, Vitasta remains committed to editorial freedom and to publishing books that are thoughtful, well-researched, and accessible. Whether exploring the complexities of the past, examining the realities of the present, or imagining new possibilities through literature, its books invite readers to think deeply, question generously, and engage openly with the world.

Sanjay Srivatsa, born in India graduated with a BS in Chemical Engineering, ACTech Madras and MS ChE, IIT Chicago. He joined Nalco in 1979 as a Researcher and was promoted to Group Leader in 1984. Sanjay earned Researcher of the Year awards in 1981 and '82. In 1986, he was promoted to Market Development Manager for the Light Industry Market. In 1989, Sanjay was awarded Marketer of the Year. In 1991 Sanjay joined Sales and was promoted to District Manager in 1997 after successive years of sales accolades, achieving 'All Pro' status, District Salesman of the Year as well as Chairman's Club award. In 1998, Sanjay was promoted to General Manager and Country Manager of Nalco India. Sanjay returned to the US in 2002 retiring from Nalco in the subsequent year. In the next 8 years, Sanjay worked for Tyco (Earthtech), Ecovation and GWE developing his skills in Anaerobic Design and infrastructure management. In 2011 Sanjay returned to Nalco to develop Integrated Water Management services focusing on clients' sustainability goals. After retiring from Nalco (now an Ecolab company) in 2020, Sanjay joined Solecta as Vice President offering process membrane solutions 'Co-Creating' sustainable and disruptive applications. Today Sanjay runs a consultancy Kisan Organics LLC, to help industry improve carbon, water, energy footprints, providing technical/Capex risk assessments. For his work in facilitating a remote IIT campus in Bangalore, India, Sanjay was awarded the International Alum of the Year in 2004. Sanjay served on the board of ISBT (Bevtech) since 2021-25. Sanjay enjoys composing music, producing and public speaking. He is the author of two books, the prior published in 2010: A 'Mischievous Chicken'.

BOOK
This Novel is the culmination of my father's undisclosed wartime story. From 1941 to 1947, my father, K.R. Srivatsa, born 1920 as a citizen of Colonial India, escaped concentration camps in occupied Singapore after it was bombed in '41 and secreted passage to Japan. As a Radio broadcaster in Tokyo for the Indian Independence League (IIL), he witnessed live, the bombings in Singapore and Japan. He later served with the US Eighth Army (SCAP Occupational Services) in Tokyo and Okinawa. He was wrongfully captured by the British accusing him of false propaganda and co-conspiracy and was repatriated to Calcutta to be sentenced to death. The book engages the reader spanning two centuries documenting his ancestral life. It is targeted towards enthusiasts of WWII, conspiracy buffs, and Indian Independence efforts with associated intrigues. Further, the book is a cultural reference delving into the various religious and traditional practices part of the rich fabric in Southeast Asia, China and Japan today. As a narrative of the protagonist, the story provides the reader an opportunity to appreciate how these cultures existed and evolved during that tumultuous period.

Author Bio

From Page to Premiere: Adapting Books to Screen
Have you ever imagined your novel on Netflix or the big screen? In this candid session, a seasoned TV and film executive and an agent share the insider path from bookshelf to screen adaptation. We’ll unpack the steps to get your book optioned, what producers look for, and how to protect your creative vision in Hollywood. Join us for an exclusive conversation designed for authors eager to bring their stories to life on screen. Learn what it really takes to adapt a book into a movie or TV series, from optioning rights and working with screenwriters to navigating Hollywood’s development process. Whether you’re published traditionally or independently, this session will give you the tools and industry insight to turn your narrative into a cinematic experience.

Priya Doraswamy is an Oscar nominated Executive Producer. She is the founder of the Lotus Lane Literary agency where she represents screenwriters and authors from around the world. She is constantly striving to bring lesser known voices to mainstream media and advocating for inclusivity in the book and film/tv industries.