South Asian Voices Event, 24 October 2024: Curated by romesh dissanayake and Sudha Rao

Dinithi Nelum Bowatte is a Sinhala Sri Lankan New Zealander from Te Papaioea Palmerston North. She has written essays for various zines and the Pantograph Punch. Her short story ‘Three gigs’ is featured in ‘Visible Cities,’ a collection of writing published by the Cuba Press in 2023. 

Rajorshi Chakraborti was born in Kolkata and grew up there and in Mumbai, and now lives in Wellington with his family. He has published a collection of short fiction and six novels for adults. His latest book is The Bad Smell Hotel, a novel for children co-written with his daughter Leela.

romesh dissanayake is a Sri Lankan and Koryo Saram writer, poet and chef from Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. His work explores ideas of identity, decolonisation and place. romesh’s poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in various print and online publications. His chapbook poetry collection, Favourite Flavour House, is featured in AUP New Poets 10 published by Auckland University Press. His first novel, When I open the shop, was the winner of the 2022 Modern Letters Fiction Prize and is published by Te Herenga Waka University Press.

Brannavan Gnanalingam is an award-winning novelist based in Pōneke. He is the author of Sprigs (winner of the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel and shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Foundation Prize for Fiction at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards), Sodden Downstream (also shortlisted at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards), and A Briefcase, Two Pies and a Penthouse (longlisted at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards). He is also a former columnist for the Sunday-Star Times, and winner of a Qantas Media Award (as it was then known) as a film reviewer for The Lumière Reader. The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat is his eighth novel.

Janaye Kirtikar is a Marathi Indian and Pākehā writer from Pōneke. She reads, she writes, and she stares at the ocean.

Rupa Maitra is a fiction writer born in New Zealand to Bengali parents. Her book of short stories, Prophecies, was published in 2019. 

Katya Mokha is a mixed Punjabi/English writer who grew up in various places, though she most closely identifies with Whanganui. While Katja feels new to the writing world, she has previously written short stories for personal enjoyment and, on a few occasions, for anthologies and competitions. Currently, she is an MA student at Te Herenga Waka and is just weeks away from submitting a full manuscript.

Nipuni Ranaweera is an academic and poet from Sri Lanka who is currently based in Wellington, New Zealand where she is reading for her PhD in English and Poetry at Massey University.

Nipuni has published two collections of poetry which were nominated for major awards in Sri Lanka.  Her work has also appeared in several local and international journals.

Sudha Rao is originally from Karnataka, South India, migrating to New Zealand. She trained in classical South Indian dance and established Dance Aotearoa New Zealand. Sudha completed an MA in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters and published her first collection of poems On elephant’s shoulders, Cuba Press in 2022. Sudha’s poems other works have appeared in several anthologies including in Landfall and Best Poems New Zealand. Sudha was invited to participate in the International Bengaluru Poetry Festival.