Puffin Classics: Taniya

Dr. Arupa Patangia Kalita is regarded as one of the most prominent feminist writers from the North-East. A powerful storyteller of topics, such as insurgency, poverty and women's issues, Dr Kalita's novels speak about the ordinary lives of the common Assamese people. She has been awarded the Assam Valley Literary Award, Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad Award, Katha Prize among other prestigious recognitions. For her acclaimed novel Mariam Austin Othoba Hira Barua, she received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2014. In 2016, Dr Kalita retired as Head of the English Department of Tangla College, Darrang, Assam. She has as many as twenty published books to her credit, mostly novels and short-story collections. Many of her books are also prescribed texbooks in academic institutions in Assam. While her stories have been widely translated into English, Hindi and Bengali, as a translator herself, Dr Kalita has worked on Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, besides collections of Russian and Chinese folk tales into Assamese. A mathematician-turned-anthropologist by profession, Meenaxi Barkotoki, has her roots in Assam but has spent most of the last two decades in Germany. A keen chronicler of the written word, she has been a translator of Assamese literature since the last thirty years. Her translations have appeared in numerous newspapers, magazines and periodicals, including The Oxford Anthology of Writings from North-East India and in Asomiya Handpicked Fictions. As the Managing Trustee of the Munin Barkotoki Memorial Trust, which supports and encourages young writers writing in Assamese, Barkotoki also translates and publishes selected writings of the winners of the Munin Barkotoki Literary Award. She is also a Founding Member of North East Writers' Forum, a society dedicated to supporting writers writing in English from Northeast India and to supporting translations into English from the other languages of Northeast India.