Karthika NaÏr

French-Indian, poet and dance producer, Karthika Naïr calls herself a portmanteau person, "like sofa-beds and motels". Author of four books, Naïr was also the principal scriptwriter of DESH (2011), choreographer Akram Khan's dance production and its adaptation for children, Chotto Desh (2015).  The Indian edition of Until the Lions: Echoes from the Mahabharata (HarperCollins), her reimagining of the Mahabharata in multiple voices, won the 2015 Tata Literature Live! Award for Book of the Year (Fiction). The Honey Hunter, her children's book illustrated by Joëlle Jolivet and published in English, French, German and Bangla, made its way into several year-end lists of must-read books for children in France and India. In Karthika Naïr's résumé as a dance enabler, one finds mention of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Damien Jalet, Käfig/Mourad Merzouki, Auditorium Musica per Roma, the Louvre, the Villette, the Shaolin Temple in Henan, misadventures with ninja swords and pachyderms, among others, many of which materialise in her poetry (though, hopefully, not in the retelling of the Mahabharata).