Recognising Honest,

Compelling And

Unadulterated 'Queer Writing'

From India

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ABOUT THE RAINBOW AWARDS

The purpose of the awards is to recognise work done by queer and cis-het writers who are creating and building narratives around LGBTQIA+ lives. It is also about encouraging more people to come forth to write, as much as it is about telling the publishing and media world that this ‘genre’ and ‘our’ lives deserve attention, that every story makes a difference to social constructs and perceptions, that each of these narratives add to the community’s sense of belonging.

 

The awards are about identifying and rewarding exemplary affirmative work that brings to life authenticity, realities, stories of love, trials, tribulations, vulnerabilities and strength. It is about recording such stories and that of history being made or retold and revisited through this process.

Every year a jury would read and access the variety of entries from publishers, authors, journalists and editors. The endeavour will be to ensure fairness and studied assessments. The selection of eligible entries will be taken solely and only by the jury. Their decision is and will be final and binding.

  • Entries Have Closed For The 2023 Awards
  • Shortlist by November 15, 2023
  • Award Ceremony, December 10, 2023*
 
Venue: At the Rainbow Lit Fest – Queer & Inclusive, Gulmohar Park, New Delhi  

CATEGORIES

Literature:

1 Fiction – This includes novels, graphic novels and collections of short stories (by a single author).

 

2 Non-Fiction – This includes memoirs, biographies, history and anything that doesn’t fall under Fiction

Journalism:

3. Feature
the write up must be of a minimum of 1200 words


4. Op-Ed
the word length must be a minimum of 600 words

event schedule

Time

Events

Speakers

Registration & opening

Steering Committee

Spokesman in the world

By : Pandja Giwaksana

World tour with make money

By : Ailysh Bella, Gerald Naldo

Lunch time

Steering Committee

Freedom in Joking

By : Karina Kath, Sharoon Jay

Appreciate Freebies

By : Made Jackson, Jeff Rendi

Time

Events

Speakers

Registration & opening

Steering Committee

Appreciate Freebies

By : Made Jackson, Jeff Rendi

Freedom in Joking

By : Karina Kath, Sharoon Jay

Lunch time

Steering Committee

World tour with make money

By : Ailysh Bella, Gerald Naldo

Spokesman in the world

By : Pandja Giwaksana

Time

Events

Speakers

Registration & opening

Steering Committee

World tour with make money

By : Ailysh Bella, Gerald Naldo

Spokesman in the world

By : Pandja Giwaksana

Lunch time

Steering Committee

Appreciate Freebies

By : Made Jackson, Jeff Rendi

Freedom in Joking

By : Karina Kath, Sharoon Jay

JURY

Parmesh Shahani

CHAIR

Parmesh Shahani is an author and an activist for LGBTQ inclusion in corporate India who has guided many of the country’s leading companies on their inclusion journeys. Most recently, he served as Vice President at Godrej Industries and founded and ran the award-winning Godrej India Culture Lab for a decade, between 2011 and 2021. His first book Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)Longing in Contemporary India (Sage Publications) was released in 2008 and his second book Queeristan: LGBTQ Inclusion in the Indian Workplace (Westland Business) was released in August 2020 and won the CK Prahalad Award for Best Business Book of 2021 and well as the Laadli Award for Gender Sensitivity in 2021.  Parmesh holds an MS in Comparative Media Studies from MIT. He is a TED Senior Fellow, a Yale World Fellow, and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, and also a board member of KHOJ International Artists’ Association, and Breakthrough.

CHAIR

Parmesh Shahani
Parmesh Shahani

Parmesh Shahani is an author and an activist for LGBTQ inclusion in corporate India who has guided many of the country’s leading companies on their inclusion journeys. Most recently, he served as Vice President at Godrej Industries and founded and ran the award-winning Godrej India Culture Lab for a decade, between 2011 and 2021. His first book Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)Longing in Contemporary India (Sage Publications) was released in 2008 and his second book Queeristan: LGBTQ Inclusion in the Indian Workplace (Westland Business) was released in August 2020 and won the CK Prahalad Award for Best Business Book of 2021 and well as the Laadli Award for Gender Sensitivity in 2021.  Parmesh holds an MS in Comparative Media Studies from MIT. He is a TED Senior Fellow, a Yale World Fellow, and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, and also a board member of KHOJ International Artists’ Association, and Breakthrough.

MEMBERS

Adrija Bose
Adrija Bose

Adrija Bose is a Senior Editor at BOOM Live. She has previously worked at Firstpost, HuffPost India and CNN-News18. Her reportage of over the last 11 years focussed on gender, politics, human rights, environment and the Internet culture. She has won three UN Laadli Awards for gender sensitivity in reporting, the 2019 RedInk Awards for her reporting on Meghalaya’s coal miners and the Polestar Award for her story on Haryana’s female footballers. She leads Decode, a vertical for BOOM that covers the intersection of technology and human lives. She commissions, edits and reports on polarisation, disinformation and human rights.

Dr Alka Pande
Dr Alka Pande

Dr Alka Pande is an art historian, author and curator with two post-graduation degrees one in history and the second in history of art. Followed by a PhD in Art History and a Post-Doc in Critical Art Theory, University of London. She is Recipient of the Charles Wallace Award, Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by French government, Australian-India Council Special Award, L’Oreal Paris Femina Women award and Amrita Sher-Gil Samman. She built the collection of Indian Artists for the Essl Museum, Vienna, Austria. (2010). The Divine Gesture Gallery at the City Palace Museum, Udaipur, and the Outdoor Sculpture Park for the Fateh Prakash, a Taj Property at Udaipur (2020). Dr Pande has also authored a number of books on Indian Art and Culture. Ardhnarisvara: The Androgyne Probing the Gender Within, Body Sutra, Shringara: The Many Faces of Indian Beauty, Pha(bu)llus: A Cultural History. She was the Artisitic Director of Photosphere an initiative of the India Habitat Centre in 2016 & 2019, the Project Director of the First Ever Bihar Museum Biennale, 2021. Currently, Dr Pande is a consultant art advisor and curator of the Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi.

Anish Gawande
Anish Gawande

Anish Gawande is a writer and translator. He is the director of the Dara Shikoh Fellowship, an interdisciplinary arts residency, and the founder of Pink List India, the country’s first archive of politicians supporting LGBTQ+ rights. Gawande is a Rhodes Scholar and holds postgraduate degrees in intellectual history and public policy from the University of Oxford.

Jyotsna Siddharth
Jyotsna Siddharth

Jyotsna Siddharth (She/They) is an actor, artist and writer and Country Director, Gender at Work India. Jyotsna’s practice spreads across institutional building, intersectionality, arts, activism, theatre, and development. Jyotsna has master’s in Development Studies from TISS Mumbai and Social Anthropology from School of Oriental and African Studies, London and a recipient of Chevening Scholarship, British High Commission (2014). In 2023, Jyotsna was Cosmopolitan Blogger’s Award Nominee for Dalit Feminism Archive and in 2020 they were featured as 40 under 40 by Edex and New Indian Express. They are also a peer advisor to Feminism in India, The Rights Collective UK, Giving Tuesdays India and CPA Project.

Jyotsna’s work has featured in Times of India, The Hindu, Roundtable India, Savari, Feminism in India, Smashboard, Ashoka Literature Festival, Vogue India, Mid-Day, The Rights Collective UK, Feminism in India, The Swaddle, The Citizen, DHRDNet, UN Women Asia and Pacific, Manchester University Press, India Culture Lab, Grazia India, Party Office, Documenta Fifteen, News18, Khirkee Voice, Khoj and more. Jyotsna is currently fundraising and working on a self-written play, ‘Clay’.

Kalki Subramaniam
Kalki Subramaniam

Kalki Subramaniam is a transgender rights activist, Inclusion Catalyst, Artist and Writer from Tamil Nadu India. She runs the Sahodari Foundation which works for the social, political and economic empowerment of the transgender community. She has empowered and mentored so many role models in the transgender community including transgender doctors, lawyers, engineers, corporate professionals etc. She has spoken at several corporate companies including Google, Facebook, Adobe, Walmart, Uber etc. for the inclusion of transgender people in jobs in all levels of the companies and creates inclusive policies in the companies.

Kalki has won several awards for her contribution towards transgender people’s empowerment in India. Through her writings, art and films she inspires thousands of transgender people with hope and dignity for a promising future. She has spoken at Harvard, Yale, Cornell and University of Philadelphia in USA. She is the author of the famous book; We Are Not The Others; which is available on Amazon. She is also the Ambassador of  Trans Amsterdam organization in Netherlands. She lives with her family in Pollachi, Tamil Nadu.

Parvati Sharma
Parvati Sharma

Parvati Sharma has written across genres. Her most recent books are two historical biographies: Jahangir: An Intimate Portrait of a Great Mughal and Akbar of Hindustan. Her debut was a book of fiction, The Dead Camel and Other Stories of Love. She has also written a novella, Close to Home, and two books for children, The Story of Babur and Rattu & Poorie’s Adventures in History: 1857. Sharma lives in New Delhi, where she has studied English literature and Indian history, and worked as a travel writer, editor and journalist.

Poonam Saxena
Poonam Saxena

Poonam Saxena is a journalist, writer and translator. She worked with The Hindustan Times for several years. She launched and edited the HT Sunday magazine, Brunch, for twelve years, before moving on to edit the weekend section. She has written extensively on popular culture, film, television and books. She continues to do a regular column for Hindustan Times, The Way We Were, which looks at our past through Hindi literature and cinema. She translates from Hindi to English and has translated Dharmvir Bharati’s Gunahon ka Devta (Chander & Sudha, Penguin Viking), Rahi Masoom Raza’s Scene : 75 (HarperCollins) and also The Greatest Hindi Stories Ever Told (Aleph). She was the co-author for filmmaker Karan Johar’s memoir, An Unsuitable Boy (Penguin).

Sindhu Rajasekaran
Sindhu Rajasekaran

Sindhu is an acclaimed author & researcher. Her debut novel Kaleidoscopic Reflections was nominated for the Crossword Book Award, while her latest book of nonfiction is the best-selling Smashing the Patriarchy – A Guide for the 21st century Indian WomanSindhu’s fiction, poetry & essays have been published internationally by literary magazines & leading platforms. She’s currently pursuing her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde, where she’s a recipient of the Dean’s Global Research Award. She’s exploring queer South Asian pasts, creative epistemologies & queer decolonial storytelling.

Bookstore and Process Partner

Supporting Organisations

Co-ordinator

Rohin Bhatt
Rohin Bhatt

Rohin Bhatt (he/they) is a non-binary queer rights activist, lawyer and bioethicist. He currently works with Senior Advocates Indira Jaising and Anand Grover. He graduated from Gujarat National Law University in 2021 with a B.Sc. LL.B. (Hons.) and with a Master of Bioethics at Harvard Medical School in 2022. He is a co-founder of the Indian Bioethics Project at Gujarat National Law University which aims to bring Indian voices to the intersections of law, medicine and bioethics.

Apart from being a regular contributor to The Leaflet where he writes on issues of queer rights, reproductive justice and constitutional law,  his work both public platforms such as the Hindu, The Indian Express, India Forum, The Probe, and the Wire Science and academic journals like The Law School Policy Review, The Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, Voices in Bioethics, and the Hastings Center Report. His work focuses on constitutional law, and bioethics, with a particular focus on feminist and queer approaches to bioethics to make healthcare policies and laws more accessible for queer persons, and the effects fascism has on human rights and their intersections.

For any queries related to the process of the awards, you may check the FAQ first

 

If you have any further queries, you may write to Rohin Bhatt at contact@therainbowawards.in

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