International Publishing Fellowship India 2022

In June 2022, Sarah Braybrooke will be launching a new nonfiction-focussed imprint at Bonnier Books UK. As Publishing Director, she will be acquiring 12 books a year, comprising narrative writing on subjects including technology, history, reportage, popular science, psychology and health. Until recently Sarah was Publisher and Managing Director at Scribe UK.

Hélène Butler is Head of Rights at Johnson & Alcock, an independent London literary agency now in its seventh decade, representing prizewinning and bestselling authors and literary estates across all genres. She joined the company in 2018 to set up the Rights department, and has overseen rapid growth, increasing the agency’s reach to over 40 countries. With over 15years experience, Hélène has previously worked as a scout with Koukla MacLehose and in rights at Denoel and Fayard in Paris as well as A.M. Heath in London. In 2020, she created J&A’s PageOne, one of the first online publishing mentoring schemes for people with underrepresented backgrounds.

Sarabjeet Garcha is a poet and translator. He is the author of four books of poems, including A Clock in the Far Past, and founder and editorial director of Copper Coin, a multilingual publishing company. In 2013, he received a Fellowship for Outstanding Artists from the Government of India.

Riddhi Maitra is an editor and translator from Calcutta. She has graduated from The Seagull School of Publishing, Kolkata, with specialization in editing, and since then has been working on wide array of manuscripts—academic, fiction, non-fiction, Indian writing in English, translations. Currently, she is employed with BEE Books, Kolkata, as Managing Editor. She also has two translated books—'The Last Few Days of the Blue God', Sanjib Chattopadhyay’s Sahitya Akademi Award winning novel; and 'Bheeshma: The Unvanquished Kuru Patriarch' by Tridib Kumar Chattopadhyay.

Yogesh Maitreya is a poet, translator, essayist, and the founder of Panther's Paw Publication. He is a doctoral scholar at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Previously, he has contributed over 100 essays on culture, language, translation, cinema, and caste society to media platforms likes Scroll, Firstpost, The Seminar, Indian Cultural Forum, The Centre for Stories, The Indian Express, News9, Round Table India and Two Circles. He has translated two book of poems into English from Marathi ('Broken Man', 2018 and 'We the Rejected People of India', 2019), and one book of political history ('Ambedkarite Movement After Ambedkar', 2016). He has published one poetry collection ('The Bridge of Migration', 2017), a short story collection ('Flowers on the Grave of Caste', 2020), two books of anti caste essays ('Of Oppressor's Body and Mind', 2020, and 'Singing Thinking Anticaste', 2021). His latest book is a prose poetry collection ('Ambedkar 2021', 2022). As a publisher at Panther's Paw, he has published 11 titles. and is a one-person army.

Alice Kate Mullen is Manager of the Poetry Book Society. She’s worked in poetry publishing since 2010, including at Carcanet Press, Shakespeare & Company in Paris, on a Chicago Poetry Foundation mentorship and as a Sydney Writers’ Festival Bibliotherapist. She co-founded the Northern Poetry Symposium, co-programmes Newcastle Poetry Festival and sits on the Poetry Translation Centre advisory board.

Raman Shresta, (bookseller, publisher) has made Rachna Books and Publications, an independent bookstore and publishing house, the centre of literary and cultural activities in the eastern Himalayas since he took over in 2001. He has been a speaker at several literary platforms including: Jaipur Literature Festival, The Hindu Lit for Life, Goa Arts and Literature Festival, Jaipur Bookmark, Brahmaputra Literary Festival, Kantipur Conclave - Kathmandu. Rachna Books was awarded the Best Bookshop Publishing Next Industry Award in 2015, and the Food for Thought Best Bookstore Award at Hyderabad Lit Fest in 2020. Rachna Books has published fiction, poetry, translation and academic research works.

Tamara Sampey-Jawad is the Associate Publisher of Fitzcarraldo Editions, where she works on both the fiction and essay lists. Her authors include Katharina Volckmer, Vanessa Onwuemezi and Guadalupe Nettel, and she is on the Editorial Advisory Board for HEAT, a literary journal based in Australia.

Molly Slight is the publisher at Scribe Publications UK, the London branch of the award-winning international independent publishing house, where she commissions and edits literary fiction and narrative non-fiction, as well as managing the team. She is a Bookseller Rising Star, an LBF Trailblazer, and a Clore Emerging Leaders fellow.

Leonie Lock joined Firefly Press in 2020, starting as Assistant Editor and building her way up to Editor in 2022. With a decade’s experience in bookselling, specialising in children’s books, Leonie’s passion has always been getting books into the hands of readers; helping them discover titles that reflect their own experiences and that build empathy. She’s looking forward to building further relationships with the other fellows and collaborating with them on future projects.

Rahul Soni is a writer, editor, and translator. He has edited the anthology of Hindi poetry in English translation Home from a Distance, and translated Shrikant Verma’s book of poems 'Magadh', Geetanjali Shree’s novel 'The Roof Beneath their Feet', a selection of Ashok Vajpeyi’s poetry 'A Name for Every Leaf', and Pankaj Kapur's novella 'Dopehri'. He is currently Executive Editor – Literary with HarperCollins India.

When Bijal Vachharajani is not reading a children’s book, she is writing or editing one. As a commissioning editor at Pratham Books, she works with a team that dreams up open-access picture books. Her work focuses on education for sustainable development, climate change and inclusion. She is also the author of multiple planet-friendly children’s books including Savi and the Memory Keeper and A Cloud Called Bhura and has a Master’s in environment security and peace from the University for Peace in Costa Rica. She still can’t believe she gets to make books as a grown-up.