Calling all poets, translators and writers, lay people interested in mental health and dalit issues and everyone else to chai and samosa at Lamakaan on January 29 at 2 pm. We invite you to a quiet moment with Mumbai-based Jerry Pinto. We find it difficult to describe Jerry or his work. Jerry is a visitor to the Hyderabad Litfest and we didn’t want him to leave before you had a moment with him. Jerry is a mentor of debut writers (mahimkajerry on Instagram has got valuable tips for young and old writers) and friend to all marginalised groups and communities. He brings with him the valuable, yet respectful insights of the cosmopolitan city of Mumbai which has been the nerve centre for many social reform movements in India. We will have a one+ hour session at 2 pm at Lamakaan where Jerry will speak for 10 minutes and then we open it to an interactive discussion. This is really not an open meeting but if you want to, you can bring an interested friend along Jerry would like to describe himself as a poet, but he is a novelist, short fiction writer, children’s writer, translator as well as a showman. His Em and the Big Hoom was seminal to a public discussion on mental health in India, his translations from Marathi and Hindi have brought wonderful dalit fiction and non-fiction (including the issue of mental health) to the fore, his writings for children have brought a delightful twist to this literature, and his own novels and other writings mark him as a thinker and chronicler of our times.
His large oeuvre of work include
Poetry: Asylum, 2004. His poems are to be found in Fulcrum Number 4; An Annual of Poetry and Aesthetics, 2005) edited by Jeet Thayl; in Atlas; New Writing, 2006, edited by Sudeep Sen; and Ninety-nine Words (Panchabati Publications, 2006) edited by Manu Dash. I WANT A POEM AND OTHER POEMS, 2021 Prose: Surviving Women, 2000, Bombay meri jaan: Writings on Mumbai, with Naresh Fernandes. 2003, Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb. 2006, Reflected in Water: Writings on Goa. 2006.Bollywood Posters, with Sheena Sippy. 2008. Leela: A Patchwork Life with Leela Naidu. 2009, The Greatest Show on Earth, 2011, Em and the Big Hoom. 2012, Murder in Mahim, 2018, The Education of Yuri, 2022, Citizen Gallery : The Gandhys of Chemould and The Birth of Modern Art in Bombay, 2022
For Children : Talk of the Town with Rahul Srivastava, Puffin, Phiss Phuss Boom, with Anushka Ravishankar and Sayoni Basu. Duckbill, 2013. When Crows Are White, 2013, Monster Garden, 2016, My Daddy and the Well: It's not a book, it's a hook! (Hook Books), Postcards from Bombay, 2019, A bear for Felicia, 2008, Puffin Book of Spooky Ghost Stories Edited A Book of Light: When a Loved one has a Different Mind 2019, A BOOK OF NEW BEGINNINGS, 2022, Indian Christmas : An Anthology with Madhulika Liddle
Translated BATTLEFIELD by Vishram Bedekar, 2021, I HAVE NOT SEEN MANDU : A FRACTURED SOUL-MEMOIR by Swaraj Deepak, 2021, When I Hid My Caste: Stories by Baburao Bagul, 2018, Strike a Blow to Change the World by Meghnath Awad, 2018, Baluta by Daya Pawar, 2015