Malathi Maithri (b.1968) is an acclaimed Tamil feminist poet, social activist, and public intellectual. She has been contributing to literary and political magazines with her poems and articles since 1989. She is the founder of the feminist literary movement Anangu and published a feminist political magazine with the same name. She has been actively participating in and organizing movements for women’s rights, rights of the marginalized, and empowerment of fisher-folks in Puducherry, her native state, and Tamilnadu. She is a part of the People’s Movement against Koodankulam Nuclear Plants. Now she lives in Delhi.
She has published four collections of poems: Sankaraaparani (Name of a River, 2001); Neerindri Amaiyathu Ulagu (No World without Water, 2003); Niili (Name of a Goddess, 2005); and Enadhu Madu kuduvai (My Toddy Jar, 2012), and three collections of essays: Viduthalaiyai Ezhuthuthal (Writing the Freedom, 2004); Nam Thanthaiyarai Kolvatheppati (How to Kill Our Fathers, 2008); and Vettaveli Sirai (Open Prison, 2014). She has edited three anthologies of women’s writings. Her works have been translated into English, Galician, French, German, Malayalam, Hindi, and Kannada.
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Lakshmi Holmström is a writer and translator. She has translated short stories, novels and poetry by the major contemporary writers in Tamil. Her most recent books are Fish in a Dwindling Lake, a translation of short stories by Ambai (2012); A Second Sunrise, poems by Cheran, translated and edited by Lakshmi Holmström & Sascha Ebeling (2012); Wild Girls, Wicked Words, a translation of poems by four Tamil women (2012). In a time of Burning, a translation of another collection of poems by Cheran, was published by Arc Publications in 2013. This won an English PEN award. In 2000 she received the Crossword Book Award for her translation of Karukku by Bama; in 2007 she shared the Crossword-Hutch Award for her translation of Ambai’s short stories, In a Forest, a Deer; and she received the Iyal Award from the Tamil Literary Garden, Canada, in 2008. She is one of the founding trustees of SADAA (South Asian Diaspora Arts Archive).
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