Na. Parthasarathy

Na. Parthasarathy was born in 1932 in a small village in Ramanathapuram district of southern Tamil Nadu. After a brilliant academic career leading to an MA in Tamil Literature from the University of Madras, his first job was as a teacher of Tamil in Sethupathy High School in Madurai. This was the same school where the celebrated poet Subramania Bharati had once taught. Parthasarathy, a prolific writer, then moved into the area of magazine editing. He was Assistant Editor at Kalki before taking up the reins of chief editorship of the respected Tamil monthly Deepam, and later of Dinamani Kadir of the Indian Express group of publications.

His style of writing, meshing the literary with the popular, won him a large reader base and multiple awards. He was honoured with the Sahitya Akademi Award for his novel Samudhaya Veedhi. Many of his works have been translated into English and several Indian regional languages. He passed away in 1987 with his autobiography still incomplete. At the time, his Ph.D thesis submitted to the University of Madras was still under evaluation but was later adjudged to be 'brilliant'.

Malini Seshadri

Malini Seshadri is a freelance writer, editor and translator. She has co-authored the textbook series Living in Harmony (2004) for schools, as well as Reading and Reality and A Window to Your World for undergraduate courses. Her translations from Tamil to English include Vanmam and Just One Word by Bama and contributions to short story anthologies: The Oxford India Anthology of Tamil Dalit Writing (2012), Katha Vilasam (2022), In Defiance (2022), and The Greatest Tamil Stories Ever Told (2021).