Ajmer Rode (born 1940) is a Canada-based Punjabi poet, playwright and translator with five volumes of poetry to his credit. He writes in Punjabi and English, and his work has been featured in literary magazines and anthologies in Canada, India and the UK. In 1994, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the state government of Punjab.

Born in Kerala, Jeet Thayil is a performance poet, songwriter and musician. He has authored four collections of poetry in English, and is editor of the forthcoming Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets (2008). Educated in Hong Kong, New York and Mumbai, he is currently based in Bangalore. As a musician who plays guitar, he works with ‘Bombay Down’ (NYC) and ‘Sridhar/ Thayil’ (Bangalore).

Robin Ngangom (born in Imphal, Manipur) is a bilingual poet who writes in English and Manipuri. A lyric poet and translator of long standing, he is a significant presence in the literature of North-eastern India. Since the publication of his first volume of verse in 1988, he has proceeded to consolidate his literary reputation with a poetry collection in every subsequent decade. He studied literature at St Edmund’s College and the North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, where he currently teaches.

Sitanshu Yashaschandra is among contemporary Gujarati literature’s most eminent representatives. A poet, playwright, translator and academic, he has received several awards over the years from the Sahitya Akademi Award (1987) for his significant opus, Jatayu, to the Padma Shri (2006) from the Government of India. He has authored three books of poetry.