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Contributors SHASHI DESHPANDE is a novelist, literary critic, and translator. She has published nine novels, including A Matter of Time; The Binding Vine; Small Remedies ; and Moving On. Among her nine short story collections, one of special interest to Ramayana and Mahabharata fans is The Stone Woman and Other Stories. She has also translated the memoirs and a play of Kannada playwright Adya Rangacharya into English. Her Writing from the Margin and Other Essays deals with literature, Indian writing in English, feminism, and women’s writings . She also wrote the screenplay for the prize-winning Hindi feature film Drishti, served on the Advisory Board for English for the Sahitya Akademi, chaired the 2000 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize jury, is a trustee of the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, and advises Sanskriti, which promotes India culture, especially among children. [JOHN] RICH[ARDSON] FREEMAN holds an M.A. in South Asian studies and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. His research and publications focus on the interrelation between folklore, classical and regional literatures, and the cultural anthropology of South India, specializing in Kerala. His articles have appeared in Modern Asian Studies and South Asia Research, and in Questioning Ramayanas, a South Asian Tradition, the Blackwell Companion to Hinduism, and Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia. He has taught cultural anthropology and religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan, and will begin teaching at Duke University in 2008. LAKSHMI HOLMSTROM, translator and literary critic, studied at Madras and received her B.Litt. from Oxford University. Her translations of Tamil short stories include Na. Muthuswamy’s Neermai; Ambai’s A Purple Sea and In a Forest , a Deer; Mauni: A Writer’s Writer; and Pudumaippittan Fictions. Her translations of longer works include Ashokamitran’s Water; Karukku, the autobiography of Bama, a Dalit woman, which won the Crossword Translation Award in 2000; and Bama’s Sangati: Events. She edited Clarinda, an English novel by A. Madhaviah that has been republished by Sahitya Akademi. Her essays have been published in South Asia Research and Nivedini: Journal of Gender Studies. She was chosen as a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia from 2004 to 2006. GIRISH KARNAD studied at Karnataka University, Dharwad, and at Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. His plays include Hayavadana, win- 244 Contributors ner of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Prize; Nagamandala, which premiered in the United States at the Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis; The Fire and the Rain, commissioned by the Guthrie; and Bali the Sacrifice, commission by the Leicester Haymarket Theatre. His other plays include Yayati, Tughlaq, Anjumallige, Taledanda, and Tipu Sultan Kanda Kanasu [The Dreams of Tipu Sultan]. His film Samskara, for which he wrote the script and played the lead, was initially banned by censors and when released won the President’s Gold Medal. He has appeared in the films of Shyam Benegal as well as television serials of Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen. He also served as director of the Film and Television Institute of India (1974–1975), chairman of the Sangeet Natak Akademi (1988– 1993), and director of the Nehru Centre in London (2000–2003). He received the Bharatiya Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary award, in 1993. GITA KRISHNANKUTTY, who received her Ph.D. in English from University of Mysore in 1987, has published many translations from Malayalam into English , including Anand’s Death Certificate; Cast Me Out If You Will: Stories and Memoir by Lalithambika Anterjanam; V. K. Madhavankutty’s The Village Before Time; A Childhood in Malabar: A Memoir by Kamala Das; and M. T. Vasudevan Nair, Master Carpenter. Her translation of N. P. Mohammed’s The Eye of God won the 1999 Sahitya Akademi Prize for translation, and her translation of M. Mukundan’s On the Banks of the Mayyazhi won the Crossword Translation Award in 1999. She has provided subtitles for more than ten Malayalam films and published a historical monograph titled A Life of Healing: A Biography of P. S. Varier, about a major figure in the Ayurvedic medicine movement in Kerala. KRISHNA RAO MADDIPATI, Assistant Professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Wayne State University, Detroit, received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He conducts basic research on the design, synthesis, and evaluation of anticancer agents targeting enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of eicosanoids that play a central role in carcinogenesis and metastasis. A...

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