Jaya Posts

Press Release: HarperCollins India to represent Manjul Publishing House

16 01 , 2018 No Comments

The acquisition of exclusive distribution rights of the English language books published by Amaryllis of Manjul Publishing House. It is a strategic move by HarperCollins India. It enables Manjul to access English language markets and readers even within the subcontinent which is very familiar to Manjul, considering they made their mark with Hindi publishing. This partnership epitomises the challenges that even homegrown publishers have accessing markets locally. This region is a subcontinent with markets within markets defined by its linguistic and cultural diversity. 

The first writer to benefit from this arrangement will undoubtedly be Sreemoyee Piu Kundu with her book Status Single for which she has interviewed more than 3000 women. It is a book that many have been waiting for some months. Sreemoyee too has been posting snippets of her research online while writing the book. With this new distribution arrangement the book will have a wider reach.  

 

HarperCollins India is delighted to announce the acquisition of exclusive Indian Subcontinent distribution rights for the English language books of Manjul Publishing House.

Manjul Publishing House is an independent publishing company established in 1999, with 18 years of publishing experience in English and several Indian languages, including Indian language translations of internationally popular books. MPH’s English list comprises titles in genres like self-help, mind-body-spirit, health and well-being, business, besides fiction. MPH’s English only imprint, Amaryllis, established in 2010, publishes fiction and narrative non-fiction (current affairs, politics, biographies, etc.), with main focus on Indian authors.

MPH currently has over 250 titles in print and under the new distribution partnership with HarperCollins India, it will also launch a brand new business list under licence from Amacom USA. HarperCollins India will start selling MPH’s new titles in the Indian Subcontinent from the month of February and the back list from April this year.

This new distribution arrangement will add great value to the HarperCollins catalogue and significantly enhance viability and availability of MPH authors and their books in India, infusing new energy in our endeavor and commitment to bring a wider range of books to the Indian reader.

6 January 2018 

2018: All set to sparkle with new voices

07 01 , 2018 No Comments

( On Sunday, 7 January 2018, Asian Age published my article on the highlights of 2018. Unfortunately due to the constraints of space the sections on commercial fiction and children and young adult literature was dropped from the published article. So while I am reposting the original article, I have also included the sections that were dropped by highlighting the portions in red. )

The Indian book market, worth $6.76 billion, is perhaps one of the few where English language books sell well. As expected, 2018 is all set to sparkle — with new books and voices.

Among the prominent narrative non-fiction is the much-anticipated debut of Dreamers written by journalist Snigdha Poonam. It is a remarkable cultural study of the unlikeliest of fortune hawkers’ travels through the small towns of northern India to investigate the phenomenon that is India’s Generation Y. The other equally anticipated titles are Why I am a Hindu? by Shashi Tharoor; The Gujaratis: A Portrait of a Community by award-winning journalist Salil Tripathi; Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar, a collection of stories depicting the lives of Arab women, ranging from hypnotic fables to gritty realism; Legendary Maps from the Himalayan Club by mountaineer and Himalayan Journal editor, Harish Kapadia.

Devdutt Pattanaik’s The Book of Numbers: An Indian Perspective, about the significance of numbers in Indian culture, also delves into Vedic and Puranic connotations of each key number.

Some quirky titles to look forward to are Jadoo-wallahs, Jugglers and Djinns: A Magical History of India by John Zubrzycki which tells the extraordinary story of how Indian magic descended from the gods and came to be a part of daily rituals and popular entertainment. Also on the shelves this year will be Showtime: A Spectacular History of the Indian Circus by Anirban Ghosh, which tells the incredible story of the circus in India from the 19th century to the present.

It would be interesting, and topical, to read Past, Present and Future; Dissent, Despair, Dreams: Student Activism in India by Anirban Bandhopadhyay and Umar Khalid; Economics for Political Change: The Collected works of Manmohan Singh; Demonetisation and Black Money by C. Rammanohar Reddy.

Power by Barkha Dutt is about the twinned stories of the changing fortunes of the Congress Party and the rise of the BJP through the men and women who shaped events before 2014, and after.

Then there is Note by Note: The Great Indian Playlist by Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh and Ankur Bhardwaj that uses one song from each year, accompanied by a brief essay, and tells the story of India since 1947.

Two critical books on free speech include The Free Voice: On Democracy, Culture and the Nation by Ravish Kumar in which he examines while debate and dialogue have given way to hate and intolerance in India, how elected representatives, the media and other institutions are failing us, and looks at ways to repair the damage to our democracy; as will be Why India Needs a Free Press by N. Ram.

Biographies
Some of the biographies/ memoirs to look forward to in 2018 are on film actors — Sanjay Dutt by Yaseer Usman, Sanjay Khan, Priyanka Chopra by Aseem Chhabra – and politicians. There’s veteran journalist Kuldip Nayar’s Close Encounters: The People I have Known and Biography of Mohan Bhagwat by Kingshuk Nag. The life stories of musicians Ilyaraja, Asha Bhonsle, S.D. Burman and Zakir Hussain (with Nasreen Munni Kabeer); spiritual leaders Dalai Lama (by Raghu Rai), Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (authorised biography, Gurudev, by his younger sister) and Shankaracharya (by Pavan Varma) and Amrita Sher-Gil will also be out this year.

Celebrity memoirs this year include actress Manisha Koirala’s cancer memoir and model-turned-health enthusiast Milind Soman’s book and Gauri Lankesh and the Age of Unreason by her close friend and former husband Chiddanand Rajghatta. Mentor by Hussain Zaidi about Dawood Ibrahim’s mentor, Khalid Pehelwan, who was instrumental in the formation and success of the D-gang are going to be the highlights of 2018.

Other notable books to look forward to are Nalini Jameela’s Romantic Encounters of a Sex Worker; Yashica Dutt’s Coming out as Dalit: A Memoir and The Idol Thief by S. Vijay Kumar, the shocking true story of one idol thief, Subhash Kapoor, behind the most outrageous thefts of Indian antiquities.

Literary memoirs not to be missed are Rosy Thomas’ memoir about her husband He, My Beloved CJ (translated from Malayalam by G. Arunima) and Na Bairi Na Koi Begana by crime fiction writer Surendra Mohan Pathak. It is the first in the three-volume autobiography of crime fiction writer Surender Mohan Pathak and chronicles his childhood in Lahore. The Hungrialists by Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury tells the remarkable story about how a generation of Bangla poets braved state censorship, loss of income and even imprisonment, and went on to transform literary culture in Bengal.

Fiction
Established writers too are coming up with their new books this year. These include Anita Nair’s Eating Wasps, Esther David’s Bombay Brides, Tabish Khair’s Night of Happiness, Rita Chowdhury’s Chinatown Days, Shandana Minhas’ Rafina, Anuradha Roy’s All the Lives We Never Lived, Mirza Waheed’s In His Hands, Amitabh Bagchi’s Half the Night Is Gone, Mahesh Rao’s Polite Society and Chandrahas Choudhury’s Clouds.

Travails with the Alien: The Film that Was Never Made and Other Adventures with Science Fiction by filmmaker Satyajit Ray brings together a collection of his many writings on the subject, including the script he wrote in the 1960s, based on a short story of his, for a science fiction film called The Alien. On being prompted by Arthur C. Clarke, who found the screenplay promising, Ray sent the script to an agent in Hollywood, who happened to represent Peter Sellers. Then started the “Ordeal of the Alien”, as some 20 years later, Ray watched Steven Spielberg’s film Close Encounters of the Third Kind and realised its bore and uncanny resemblance to his script The Alien, including the way the ET was designed! The book includes Ray’s detailed essay on the project with the full script of The Alien, as well as the original short story on which the screenplay was based, apart from some of his most celebrated writings on science fiction.

Commercial fiction writers like Nikita Singh, Yashodhara Lal, Trisha Das, Ravi Subramanian, Ira Trivedi and Sachin Bhatia, Ashwin Sanghi, Amish Tripathi, Durjoy Dutta, Ravinder Singh, Novoneel Chakraborty, Kevin Missal have books lined up in the new year. Also expected is the debut novel by Shweta Bachchan (Paradise Towers) and short stories by Shubha Mudgal.

Political narratives scheduled for 2018 include The Aadhar Effect by N.S. Ramnath and Charles Assisi; The RTI Story: The People’s Movement for Transparency by activist and main architect of Right to Information movement, Aruna Roy; AAP & Down: An Insider’s Account of India’s Most Controversial Party by Mayank Gandhi with Shrey Shah; and BJP: From Vajpayee to Modi by Saba Naqvi.

Equally fascinating should be Strongmen: Trump-Modi-Erdogan-Duterte, essays by Eve Ensler, Danish Husain, Burhan Sonmez and Ninotschka Rosca. An account of Kashmir by historian Radha Kumar and another one by former chief minister Omar Abdullah should be worth waiting for. At a time when “talaq” is being discussed, two timely books slated are by Salman Khurshid’s Three Times Unlucky and Ziya Us Salam’s Till Talaq Do Us Part.

Graphic novels
Graphic novels are steady sellers with a well-defined market too. Some of the titles anticipated are: Long Form Annual: The Best of Graphic Fiction & Non-Fiction edited by Sarabjit Sen, Debkumar Mitra, Sekhar Mukherjee and Pinaki De. It consists of stories about ordinary people, autobiographies, travel tales etc. As yet unnamed graphic novel about a teenager in America trying to come to terms with her Indian roots by new voice — Nidhi Chanani. Also to watch out for are First Hand 2: Graphic Nonfiction from India and Lotus and the Snake by Appupen.

Translations
Rich translation works worth a read include The Book of Mordechai and Lazarus: Two Novels by Gábor Schein (translated from the Hungarian by Adam Z. Levy and Ottilie Mulzet and Very Close to Pleasure, There Is a Sick Cat and Other Poems by Shakti Chattopadhyay (translated from the Bengali by Arunava Sinha). Some other notable titles slated in 2018 are: Chandni Begum: A Novel by Qurratulain Hyder (translated from the original Urdu by Saleem Kidwai); Tiger Women by Sirsho Bandhopadhyay (translated by Arunava Sinha) — it is the fictionalised story of Sushila Sundari, the first woman to perform in Indian circuses and gain immense popularity, Moisture Trapped in Stone: An Anthology of Modern Telugu Short Stories, translated by K. N. Rao; Timeless Tales from Bengal edited by Dipankar Roy and Saurav Dasthakur; Perumal Murugan’s double-sequel to One Part Woman; Jasmine Days by Benyamin.

Sahitya Akademi award-winning book If a River and Other Stories by Kula Saikia, currently DGP, Assam; On a River’s Bank by A. Madhavan (translated from Tamil by M. Vijayalakshmi); Here I am and Other Stories by P. Sathyavathi (translated from Telugu); Echoes of the Veena and other Stories by P. Sathyavathi (translated from Tamil); Havan by Mallikarjun Hiremath (translated from Kannada by S. Mohanraj) — this novel focusses on one of India’s most colourful wandering tribe, the Lambanis, who are found in large numbers in Karnataka and Maharashtra.

Some of the important women-centric publications of 2018 are: The Short Life and Tragic Death of Qandeel Baloch by Sanam Maher. The 25-year-old Qandeel Baloch who was Pakistan’s first celebrity-by-social media, shot to fame when she uploaded a video on Facebook mocking a presidential “warning” not to celebrate Valentine’s Day — a “Western” holiday. At the time, the Valentine’s Day video had been seen 830,000 times. Five months later, Qandeel Baloch would be dead. Her brother would strangle her in their family home, in what would be described as an “honour killing” — a murder to restore the respect and honour Qandeel’s behaviour online robbed him of.

Other titles are: Civilisations how do we look/ Eye of Faith by Mary Beard; Women Rulers of India by Archana Garodia; Tiger Women: Profile of Women Militants in India by Rashmi Saxena; Being “Her” in New India by Rana Ayyub; Like a Girl by Aparna Jain; Feminist Rani by Shaili Chopra and Meghna Pant; Daughters of the sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire by Ira Mukhoty; A Legal Handbook for Women by Nivedita Guhathakurta and Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan by Ruby Lal, a historical biography. The Bourbans and Begums of Bhopal: The Forgotten History by Indira Iyengar, a descendant of Jean Philippe de Bourbon, who arrived in India in the 1560s and was appointed a senior official by the Mughal Emperor Akbar, at his court in Delhi.

Children and young adult literature 

Children’s and young adult literature is a vibrant space with the healthiest growth rate. Some of the titles planned are a poetry and song collection by Gulzar; Vaishali Shroff on a journey of the Narmada to learn about the dinosaurs of India; a new Hill School Girls series by A. Coven; Timeless Biography series of HCI launches with Amrita Sher-Gil, a painter whose biography has also been released by Alka Pande for Tota Books. DK India has a phenomenal collection of heavily illustrated titles planned – The Ultimate Children’s Encyclopaedia, DK Indian Icons are their easy-to-use biographies, Birds about Delhi, 3D Printing, Robot. Indian myths for children by the brilliant storyteller Arshia Sattar; a delightful picture book The Cloud Eater by Chewang Dorji Bhutia and Prankenstein: The Book of Crazy Mischief edited by Ruskin Bond and Jerry Pinto. YA literature has some extraordinary titles such as The Other by Paro Anand; When Morning Comes by Arushi Raina in Duckbill’s ‘Not Our War’ series and is set in South Africa. It is about teenagers during the Soweto uprising of 1976. Why I Lie by Himanjali Sankar is a YA novel about mental health issues. Fireflies in the Dark by Shazaf Fatima , a young adult fantasy title that takes the reader deep into the world of jinns and shape changers and hidden family secrets. The Legend of the Wolf by Andaleeb Wajid , a fantasy horror novel for young adults.Refugee by Alan Grantz; The Lines We Cross by Randa Abdel Fattah and A very, Very Bad Thing by Jeffery Self. 

2018 will sparkle with new books and voices!

7 January 2018 

 

Poetry in India

06 01 , 2018 1 Comment

For some peculiar reason poetry is quoted and used extensively everywhere but rarely does it get a regular space in a publishing house. It is often said poetry is too complicated to publish and to sell. It is subjective. Also many customers prefer to read poetry at the store and put the book back on the shelf. For many poets in India, self-publishing their poems has been popular. For generations of poets the go-to place was Writers Workshop begun by the late P. Lal. Some of the poets published by Writers Workshop included Vikram Seth, Agha Shahid Ali, Adil Jussawalla, Arun Kolatkar, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Jayanta Mahapatra, Keki Daruwalla, Kamala Das, Meena Alexander, Nissim Ezekiel, and Ruskin Bond. Some of the other publishing houses published occasional volumes of poetry too.

Of late the practice has continued. Only the rare volume or two is published. Aleph Book Company has published some fine volumes of poetry which has included translations ( Mirabai and Tirukkal) and contemporary poets such as Jeet Thayil, Sridala Swami and Vikram Seth. Some years ago Harper Collins India published The HarperCollins Book Of English Poetry (ed. Sudeep Sen) and recently the excellent collection of poems by Tishani Doshi Girls are Coming Out of the Woods. Also that of  Sharanya Manivannan ‘s The Altar of the Only World which is considered as well to be a very good volume. Penguin Random House India has a reputation for publishing good volumes of poetry particularly of established poets such as 60 Indian Poets edited by Jeet Thayil. A volume to look forward to in 2018 will be Ranjit Hoskote’s Jonahwhale . The feminist publishing house Zubaan books published a fascinating experimental volume Andal: The Autobiography of a Goddess edited and translated by Priya Sarukkai Chhabra and Ravi Shankar.

Speaking Tiger Books has begun to actively publish poetry — at least far more frequently than the other firms. In the past few months alone some of their titles include Rohinton Daruwala’s The Sand Libraries of Timbuktu: Poems  ; Manohar Shetty’s Full Disclosure: New and Collected Poems (1981-2017) ;  C.P. Surendran’s Available Light: New and Collected Poems ; Guru T. Ladakhi’s Monk on a Hill: Poems ; Ralph Russell’s translations and edited by Marion Molteno A Thousand Yearnings: A Book of Urdu Poetry & Prose  ; Ruskin Bond’s I Was the Wind Last Night: New and Collected Poems ; Michael Creighton’s New Delhi Love Songs: Poems . Later this year the Sahitya Akademi is publishing what looks to be a promising collection of poetry by “younger Indians”, edited and selected by noted poet Sudeep Sen.

Having said that the self-publishing initiatives still continue. For instance a young poet and writer ( and journalist) Debyajyoti Sarma launched the i, write, imprint, press to publish poetry. Some of the poets published ( apart from him) include noted playwright Ramu Ramanathan, Uttaran Das Gupta, Sananta Tanty  and Paresh Tiwari. 

Now there are more opportunities for poets to publish in literary magazines as well. For instance well-known poet Sampurna Chattarji has been appointed the poetry editor of IQ magazine and is looking for submissions and hoping to be read as well! She writes about it on her blog. Another active space for poets is Poetry at Sangam which is edited by Priya Sarukkai Chhabra. It showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases. Another vibrant space for poetry especially Urdu is the Jashn-e-Rekhta festival. 

There are plenty more initiatives in other local languages, meet ups, open mike sessions etc where poets can recite/perform their work. In the past decade there has been a noticeable increase in these events whether informal groups that meet at local parks or coffee shops to more formal settings as a curated evening.

Undoubtedly poets and their poetry is thriving, just more publishers are needed to publish the poets.

6 January 2018 

 

 

 

 

On Priyanka Chopra delivering the Penguin Annual Lecture ( 26 Dec 2017)

04 01 , 2018 2 Comments


...[it is a ] culturally awkward relationship between the voice of women and the public sphere of speech-making, debate and comment…the fact that women, even when they are not silenced, still have to pay a very high price for being heard, we need to recognise that it is a bit more complicated and that there is a long back-story.”

Mary Beard Women & Power: A Manifesto 

On 26 December 2017, actress Priyanka Chopra delivered the annual Penguin Lecture — “Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Chasing a Dream”. The invitation came with the following note:

One of the most prestigious and eagerly awaited cultural events on the calendar, the Penguin Annual Lecture, hosted by Penguin Random House India, was started in 2007 as an initiative to bring leading writers, artists, thinkers and key personalities from India and across the world in direct contact with audiences and admirers in India. The first such event to be organized by a publishing house in India, the Penguin Annual Lecture is immensely popular with readers, book lovers, and the youth in particular. This will be the eleventh edition of the Penguin Annual. Lecture; over the past ten years, speakers have included thought leaders like His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, Professor Amartya Sen, Thomas Friedman, Amitabh Bachchan, Ramachandra Guha, and beloved authors from both India and abroad like Dan Brown, Jeff Kinney and Ruskin Bond. Through the Penguin Annual Lecture, Penguin Random House India aims to spread the thrill of fresh ideas to a new generation of readers, thinkers and future achievers.

The fact that this invitation to speak at a publisher’s annual lecture had been extended to a woman speaker for the first time, that too a popular Bollywood-transiting-into-Hollywood desi actress, caused a great deal of furore. ( Scroll and Feminism India ) Even feminist publishing house Zubaan Books released a series of tweets questioning the decision to invite Priyanka Chopra instead of the more established Indian women writers — referenced in the links provided. All had valid reasons for their objection.

Now hear Priyanka Chopra’s speech:

 

Penguin Annual Lecture 2017

#Throwback to the time Priyanka Chopra delivered the #PenguinAnnualLecture and told us how to be fierce, fearless and flawed.

Posted by Penguin India on Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Unfortunately what irks a larger group of people is that Priyanka Chopra has no credentials as an author. Even when she was being introduced at the lecture there was no mention of her as an author though during the speech Priyanka Chopra fleetingly refers to herself as one. Many of the critics are disappointed that no woman writer was considered as is evident from the many names shared on social media. In fact on previous occasions some of the prominent male authors were flown in from different parts of the world to deliver the lecture. Surely such arrangements could have been made to locate an equally prominent woman speaker? Mary Beard, for instance, who is quoted at the beginning of this article, or PRH writers like Elif Shafak, a popular novelist and TED talk speaker — “Politics of Fiction” ( 2010) and “The revolutionary power of diverse thought” (2017). An extensive list of possible women writers — whether from India or abroad —  can easily be drawn up from within the PRH stables itself!

Having said that the lecture borders on being motivational. Priyanka Chopra speaks well. She speaks forcefully and clearly. However she may couch the words, the fact is Priyanka Chopra is living her feminism by negotiating her spaces every single day. Years ago, when she was a relatively new to Bollywood, she gave an interview where she did not mince words about the fees she charged, the quality of her work and the fact she had to pay bills and needed to earn well to do so. It was refreshing to hear her say this. She continues to be frank and honest about her opinions. In a sense she is also representative of the second wave of feminists — the modern generation. Women of today who may not like to believe they are feminists as they do not necessarily practise it in the activist mould, and yet celebrate and believe these spaces are their birthright –ironically spaces which were made visible and won by many of the very same activists modern women shun. Yet they live it, imbibe it and continue to make choices which challenge boundaries — constantly. Priyanka Chopra symbolises this generation of women and is a fine role model for many. She also have the gift of being able to communicate as is evident from her interaction with the audience.

Penguin Random House India like many other publishing firms at this point of time are in the process of evolving, responding to  new market forces, the alignment of the hyper-local publishing programme with the global scenario as in emergence of new business models. At the same time the brand identity of the firm has to be maintained and strengthened. This can only be done by reaching out to newer audiences that will in the long run ( hopefully!) convert to new readers as well. The fact remains Penguin Random House India with this event has ensured its brand recall has only became stronger irrespective of the animated conversations that have taken place in the past few days. It is a complicated space to be inhabiting today and for now, the celebrity publishing space has PRH India at its helm. This despite the actress’s biography by well-known film critic Aseem Chhabra is to be published by Rupa Publications in 2018.

Ultimately Penguin Random House India did well in their choice of speaker — it made good business sense!

Update ( 5 January 2018)

Writers Kiran Manral and Anil Menon have pointed out that in 2013 the superstar Amitabh Bachchan was invited to give the Penguin Annual Lecture. At the time there was little outrage as has been expressed now at inviting a Bollywood star to the event. Anil Menon adds “I don’t remember anyone complaining then, even after he pointed out in his discussion with Rajdeep Sardesai that ‘I would never have imagined 50 years ago that a publishing house would invite a film actor to speak’. The Penguin Annual Lecture is not a celebrity event. It is an event where someone who is famous for something other than just being famous is called to talk about books. That is a good thing.”

4 January 2018 

Updated on 7 Dec 2018 

Mary Beard has released an updated version of her book Women and Power. The new edition has an afterword written after the #MeToo movement that unleashed a flood of testimonies or as she sees them, “self-empowering” narratives. Beard’s essay reflects when as a PhD student she was travelling in Italy for research and was towards the end of her stay when she was raped in a train. This happened over four decades ago.

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“…in some respects, the Me Too movement fits my arguments in this book uncomfortably well. As I have tried to show, right back to Philomela ( who wove denunciation of her rapist into her tapsestry), women have often been allowed a limited voice, at least, in raising questions of their own treatment and abuse as women. #MeToo has made a gratifingly loud noise that, for once, has been transmitted over most of the planet, but it still falls into that general category. Even more to the point, the root cause of the harassment that women have suffered (and the root cause of the earlier silence of so many) surely lies in the structures of power. If so, then the only effective remedy lies in a change to those structures. While fewer than ten per cent of the directors of the top Hollwood films are women (that was the case in 2017), men will remain the gate-keepers of success in the film industry, and the effect of women’s voices on its sexual culture — however loudly those voices have now been raised — is likely to be limited.

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Mary Beard will also be one of the speakers at the Jaipur Literature Festival 2019.

“Engage Learning”: An interview with Pooja Vir

03 01 , 2018 No Comments

Engage Learning is a new classroom science magazine, available in four reading levels for children between 3 and 13 years of age, launched in July 2017. Created especially with the children of India in mind, its content is thoroughly researched, with stories and activity pages complementing the school curriculum. The nonfiction content teaches STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics), environmental education and social studies, while improving vocabulary and introducing children to what scientists are doing in real science today. The richly-designed 32-page magazine with activities is published six times a year in July, August, September, November, January and February to coincide with the academic calendar.

Here are links to the Flip Books from the August 2017 issue.

 

Schools and educational institutions receive preferential rates. When a school subscribes they also receive Teaching Guides with worksheets, answer keys, additional activities and links to videos that will help them explore the subject even further with their students.

Engage Learning is created by an international team of experienced classroom magazine writers and local curriculum advisors.

Lata Vasvani – began her career with India Book House. She went on to become their head of sales and subscriptions as well as co-found Crossword, the bookstore. She then went on to lead the launch and sales of National Geographic Explorer in India. Lata leads all school relationships and sales for Engage Learning.

Francis Downey – has been involved with education for more than 35 years as a lecturer, teacher, and publisher. His career has included work with the Dinosaur State Park in Connecticut (designing curriculum that integrated environmental instruction with core curriculum); various planetariums and science museums; teaching history for a decade at the college level (developed courses in US history, African-American history, the history of Puerto Rico, European history, and world history); National Geographic Explorer Magazine (leading the team that developed the magazine). Francis is Editorial Director at Engage Learning, responsible for all content.

Pooja Vir – Grew up in a family of publishers – with one grandfather having founded India Book House, and another the Hindi Milap newspaper. She is responsible for  Engage Learning’s communications and digital divisions.   

Excerpts of an email interview with Pooja Vir:

Why did you start these school magazines?  We created Engage Learning to engage students in nonfiction reading and learning. If you ask a teacher what her/his greatest challenge is today, you will find that it is engaging students in the learning process. Once the student is engaged, the teacher can teach just about anything. We do this through great storytelling and fantastic photos. We also differ from textbooks in that we provide depth and context. A textbook provides a lot of facts and breadth, but cannot develop context. We also work with scientists on our stories and report on what they are doing in real science today. Far too often textbooks concentrate on the science of the past and rarely update their content to what is also being done today.

What prompted you to launch a digital and a print version when most firms are opting for digital? We want teachers and students to be able to access the content on their preferred platform. They may prefer one over the other. Or, if they are like many people, they may want to use print at certain times and digital at others. We are also integrating digital material into the print product through QR Codes that allow students to use their devices to continue the learning. We are really platform agnostic. We want students to access the content any way they want to and when they want to.

How do you propose to enter the school market? Will parents and educators subscribe to the magazine? Is it not an additional expense to the school fees etc? We look at it as an essential expense for schools/parents, and not an extra expense. By engaging students in the learning process, teachers will save time. Also by giving students an authentic reading experience through a magazine that looks like it could be purchased on the newsstand, students will want to read this teaching tool. The magazine format provides a less intimidating format than a textbook. How many children or adults want to read a textbook? As far as how we propose to enter the school market – given our directors existing relationships with several hundred school principals we introduced the magazine via prototypes in January this year and have since been following up individually with each school which have resulted in our current school subscriptions. We also conducted teacher’s training and demo workshops in our subscriber schools in Dharamshala, Mumbai and Chennai.

What are the extra features that the digital version will offer as compared to the print edition? I did not see anything else except for it being a flip book version of the print edition? Right now they are identical, but as we move ahead, we will be adding extra features to both (including voice and video). We are somewhat limited by accessibility. The digital infrastructure in many schools is insufficient and cannot handle a sophisticated digital experience. We provide teachers with the material that they can use in the classroom right now and will add to it as the infrastructure improves. Also, many schools push back on too much digital content. For instance, despite the tremendous teaching power that mobile devices offer, most schools do not allow them. As this environment changes, we will adapt to it. We are already pushing schools to do more digitally.

Who is selecting the content for these magazines? We look at school curriculum and then select stories that support and augment that curriculum. Story suggestions come from a variety of sources, including teachers and students. We also work with a variety of scientists from around the world. They tell their stories and relate them to school curriculum. We are also working with a school curriculum advisor who helps inform the story choices.

All though the magazines are levelled readers the content seems to be more or less the same except scaled to the age appropriate reader. Is that the case? The same basic story is told in all four editions, but the content is levelled. For example, we covered a boiling river in our second issue. This river which flows in Peru is nearly boiling hot. In Levels 3-4, the stories were basically the same. In Level 2, we used the boiling river to talk about how water changes shape and state, and then ended with the water cycle. In Level 1, we used the boiling river as an entry into what a river is. So we changed the content to match what is appropriate at each level. Sometimes that changes are subtle. At other times they are transparent.

3 January 2018 

An interview with Manoj Pandey, curator of “StickLit”

02 01 , 2018 1 Comment

Manoj Pandey, curator of #StickLit, Literature on Stickers, believes that literature needs to be made more public and the elitism needs to be removed from it. Hence he co-founded the movement #StickLit. There are stickers being posted worldwide on streets and in multiple languages.

Here are excerpts from an email interview with Manoj Pandey:

How did #StickLit come about?
In the same manner #MeToo did. It just surfaced. Because enough was enough. In this case it was the abuse of talent and passion. By institutions of art and literature.

Do you find that with the digital tools, literature has become accessible to many more people but at the same time, ironically elitist?
Yes, because digital has no reach or impact.

Who are the writers contributing snippets on the stickers? Are these new writers or established writers?
They have chosen to remain anonymous. It could be anyone, from household names to rising stars to nobody. They’re just people who’re thrilled by radical ideas such as Aristotle being read by a rickshaw puller. They feel that even this dialogue between two disparate minds, Aristotle and the rickshaw puller, deserves a chance. They feel that even a rickshaw puller deserves more than just a marginal experience. He too deserves once in a day to entertain a phrase such as: ‘To be or not to be.’ He too deserves the luxury of thought.

Who is selecting, rather curating, the information on the stickers?
We initiated it. But now the network and the movement has its own independent bases. Which no one has control over. The power is in the hands of the writers and the artists who feel for the cause and are doing their bit.

Who can print and paste the stickers? As the co-founder of the movement do you keep an eye on all the material using your platform or is it democratic in its use allowing anyone and everyone to use it? ( In this article on #JLF read what Sanjoy Roy has to say about making literature accessible to everyone. Sanjoy Roy’s favourite memory was the most heart-warming of them all; he narrated the story of how once an underprivileged man walking with his child was stopped by the security guard, because he “didn’t look like he belonged”. )
Like I said we initiated it. But now we have no control over it. And we don’t want to also. We wanted to question the institutions on why they’ve turned this dialogue between a writer and a reader merely into a function of money. We wanted to shake things a little before a book, too, turned into a bottle of cola. Or a candy. We wanted to bring back joy in the simple act of writing. That’s all.

Will these stickers be available in all languages or only Hindi and English to begin with?
It’ll be available in as many regional languages as possible.

Why are the authors not identified on the stickers? Does it not defeat the purpose of making literature available to everyone? Or is this a design restriction of being unable to accommodate the writer and translator?
Purpose comes before the person. This whole system of credit, brand name, following, etc., were created by marketers. Note: this is not a promotional platform for authors to sell their work.

2 January 2018 

 

An interview with Venita Coelho, “Boy No. 32”

01 01 , 2018 1 Comment

Venita Coelho works with images, words and paint. She is a writer who has worked in film, television and literature. Her published work includes  Dead as a Dodo  which won the Hindu Award for the Best Fiction for Children 2016.  The Washer of the Dead  was long listed for the Frank O’Connor award. She is a screenwriter with films for Dharma Productions and Sanjay Leela Bhansali Productions to her credit. As an artist she works with charcoal and with acrylic paint on glass. She is about to set off on a great adventure – having converted a Tempo traveller into a caravan, she and her daughter are off to travel across India.

Venita Coelho’s recent young adult novel Boy No. 32 is an incredibly gripping book about Battees, an orphan named so after the number given to him — 32. ( In Hindi, the number 32 is called “battees”.) The story is about Battees winessing the presence of a dreaded terrorist, Kashmiri Lall, in his city, Mumbai, and he is now the only one who can help put him behind bars. It is a tremendously well-paced and tautly written book. Impossible to put down once you begin it. Also for the fact Venita Coelho never for an instant “talks down” to youngsters, nor is ever apologetic about the violence around us. Absolutely fantastic!

In this novel intermixing the orphans’ quest for locating Kashmiri Lall with encounters with the eunuchs, the Beggar King, and the horrific complicity of even the adults responsible for them such as Aunty and the cop, is done crisply. The “traditional” bad guys of literature like the eunuch are actually shown to be humane with a little more insight on how their community operates. Equally well-made are the cop and the “aunty” who are so incredibly corrupt, they would do anything for a few extra bucks. Venita Coelho is constantly challenging pre-conceived notions about characters. For instance, instead of giving the warden of the orphanage a name, she is referred to as “Aunty” — a big learning curve for Indian readers who are taught to practically revere an older woman, inevitably calling her “Aunty”, sort of seals this relationship.

Boy No. 32 is highly recommended!

Here are excerpts from an email interview:

I could not help wonder how you came upon this idea? Why?
It came out of the years I spent in Mumbai. The many times I caught the last train out of Churchgate and chatted with all the urchins in the compartment. It came out of all the stories they gave me and the adventures that the city gave.

How long did it take to write? How many revisions did it require?
I am a three draft writer. Knocked the first draft out across one November ” Nanowrimo”. That is ‘National Novel Writing Month’. You sign up at the website and for one month you get cheerleaders who push you along as you frantically write. People around the world are racing to finish their novels and the collect energy is quite astounding. The next two drafts took about eight months. But that was along side being a single mum, earning my living, and surviving Hindi films.

I can see it easily adapted for a school theatre performance — was that your intention?
It’s a movie! We don’t make children’s films in India. Every Hindi film with its songs and dances is essentially a children’s film. There is never a budget to make a ‘children’s film’. So I just put it in a book – Item number and all.

How did these characters come about? Which one struck you first?
Definitely Battees. He’s based on all the cocky little boys who sat down next to me at stations and launched into long stories. I so deeply admire the sheer courage and unputdownability these kids display, and I really wanted one of them to tell his story in his voice. And I have a very big soft spot for Item. Such courage. Such a diva!

Has your day job of writing scripts for the Indian film industry help craft young adult novels?
Not really. Hindi films have no idea of how to talk to young adults. All they ever offer them are mushy love stories. In fact to switch from writing films to books I normally have to do a couple of weeks ‘detox’ when I consciously switch from writing scenes and move to writing descriptions. Another level is moving from the superficial level of films to a deeper emotional level for books.

What has been the response of the kids who have read the book? Have you encountered them at your sessions in different cities?
We’ve had riotous sessions. The kids always love the elephant story – and it gets them thinking about real patriotism. And I always tell them that only one thing separates them from the kid on the street – sheer luck. They could have been born anywhere. And it is their duty to pass that luck on. It always makes for lively discussions.

Do you get different responses to your stories from boys and girls or does a gendered reading not matter?
I haven’t found that gender makes much difference to the response. Girls tend to ask more questions though.

Do you write with a specific reader/audience in mind?
Nope. Never do that. You can never tell how a story is going to turn out. An adult story might find it’s own way to be a children’s story. A writer can’t really predict how pitch and tone will finally tune itself. I let the story find it’s own audience. I try to write interestingly enough for anyone at all to be able to read the story.

Before publishing, do you “test” the story out or go with your instinct. I ask since I found the novel pitch perfect.
I did have three readers for the final round. It was a first for me. I got some good feedback and I will try it. again. But basically I have had so much damn writing practice doing television that it’s finally coming easy. When you do a daily soap you write 5 episodes a week. That’s ten hours of TV a month. That’s a heck of a lot of writing!

What is next on the cards?
I’m working on three different books. I tend to bounce between books. The one closest to my heart is a story based on my growing up in Kolkata. I grew up in a building that the Indian government had acquired to house the jews that it rehabilitated after the holocaust. I grew up hearing stories of the concentration camps. Now I’m finally ready to write them down.

Would you ever consider writing a series arc for young adults?
Of course. Just finished the first book of what is meant to be three books in total. I love the space that ‘Fault in our Stars’ occupies. Now that is really young adult space. So I have done a book that is for really young people, with a love story at the heart of it – but also the issues of terrorism, violence and ahimsa. Let’s see how it does!

Venita Coelho Boy No. 32 Scholastic India, Gurgaon, India, 2017. Pb. pp.186 Rs. 295 

Scott Galloway “The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google” and Yanis Varoufakis “Talking to My Daughter About the Economy”

06 12 , 2017 No Comments

Imagine: a retailer that refuses to pay sales tax, treats its employees poorly, destroys hundred of thousands of jobs, and yet is celebrated as a paragon of business innovation. 

A computer company that withholds information about a domestic act of terrorism from federal investigators, with the support of a fan following that views the firm similar to a religion. 

A social media firm that analyzes thosands of images of your children, activates your phone as a listening device, and sells this information to Fortune 500 companies. 

An ad platform that commands in some markets, a 90 percent share of the most lucrative sector in media, yet avoids anticompetitive regularion through aggressive litigation and lobbyists. 

This narrative is also heard around the world, but in hushed tones. We know these companies aren’t benevolent beings, yet we invite them into the most intimate areas of our living. We willingly divulge personal updates, knowing they’ll be used for profit. 

Scott Galloway’s debut The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google is a brisk analysis of these four technology driven companies. This is the man who week before the deal actually happened predicted that Amazon would buy Whole Foods. He argues in his book that these companies will be the first to break ( if they have not already done so) the trillion dollar barrier. The secret of their success is dependant not necessarily on their providing services such as being an effective online search engine (every one in six questions asked of Google has never been posed before), a massive marketplace ( Amazon’s online retail store purports to be the biggest shopping complex making it convenient for shoppers to buy from the comfort of their homes), connecting people across the world by preying on their psychological need to be loved and cared for as exemplified by the “like” button on Facebook or that the of the iconic design of Apple products creating a desire amongst people “permitting” the firm to price its commodities exorbitantly, earning irrational profits and yet, always have ready customers. According to the author, Apple controls 14.5 % of the smartphone market but captures 79% of global smartphone profits. In his TED Talk he says “the combined market capitalization of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google is now equivalent to the GDP of India. ”

The Four is narrated at a brisk pace, almost as if Galloway is lecturing to his students in the classroom. It is a sharp understanding of these four modern day business empires which together are worth $2.3 trillion. He focusses on the speed at which technological advancements permit people to buy, mine the Internet for information or even be connected to people across the globe in miliseconds whether using social media platforms or their smartphones.  He recognises how these companies synonymous with the information age are focussed on delivering a product or a service for the prime objective of earning a profit — a fact often concealed niftily from the end consumer, i.e. you and I, but making these four no different to any other manufacturing firm. Oddly enough these companies such as Google “ages in reverse,becoming more valuable with use” which harnesses the power of 2 billion people every 24 hours. Facebook connects 1.2 b of the 7.5 people in the world.  Apple’s cash on hand is nearly the GDP of Denmark. Amazon is growing at the rate of 20% plus each year. He acknowledges in the book that these companies have benefitted in a manner of speaking by governments which grant them special treatment regarding antitrust regulation, taxes, even labour laws.  The financial worth of these companies is heavily dependant upon the sensitive personal and credit information shared willingly by millions and millions of humans around the globe.

The Four  is very readable in its arguments except that by focussing primarily on the branding and market identity of these companies. Galloway prefers to focus on the consumerism of these services without ever really discussing the impact it has on humans, particularly in terms of the debt incurred by consuming these services offered. This is where Yanis Varoufakis preferance for calling this consumerism as a “a commodification of everything” and how the rise of profit as a major incentive for people to do things come hand in hand with a new role for debt. According to Varoufakis this commodification is the “unstoppable vicotry of exchange value over experiential value” — a characterstic trait of the market society which most modern economies have transformed into.  Individuals now have to rely upon multinational companies that have technological capability to  fulfil their every need. The companies in order to guarantee their profits, use patents to assert legal onwership of their produce. Usually this shift in produce and consumption patterns is done with the help of the state. “To put it simply, private wealth was built and then maintained on the back of state-sponsored violence.” This lucid historical analysis of  modern economy or global capitalism is available in the former Greek Finance Minister’s brilliant Talking to My Daughter About the Economy. Or watch this fantastic lecture on the concept of money he gave at the Google HQ on 29 April 2016 called “And the Weak Suffer What They Must?”

These two illuminating books are significant publications of 2017 and very worth reading!

*****

Scott Galloway is the founder of L2 Inc, teaches brand strategy and digital marketing and the NYU Stern School of Business.  He was named “one of the world’s 50 best business school professors” by Poets & Quants in 2012. He is also the founder of Red Envelope and Prophet Brand Strategy. He was elected to the World Economic Forum’s Global Leaders of Tomorrow and has served on the boards of directors of Urban Outfitters, Eddie Bauer, The New York Times Company and UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

Yanis Varoufakis is a former finance minister of Greece and a cofounder of an international grassroots movement, DiEM25, that is campaigning for the revival of democracy in Europe. He is the author of the international bestseller Adults in the Room, And the Weak Suffer What They Must?, and The Global Minotaur. After teaching for many years in the United States, Great Britain, and Australia, he is currently a professor of economics at the University of Athens.

6 December 2017 

Amazon KDP event in New Delhi, 30 Nov 2017

01 12 , 2017 3 Comments

I moderated a panel discussion on self-publishing for Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing  Author Academy. The panelists included  Sanjeev Jha, Director,  Kindle Content, India, successful fiction writer Vineet Bajpai, and romance novelist Sundari Venkataraman on Thursday, 30 November 2017, Le Meredien,  Delhi.

It was a fabulous event consisting of an informative presentation by Sanjeev Jha after which a lively discussion ensued. The presentation was an excellent walk through about the various features KDP offers. For instance, KDP Select, the helpline support, digital tools to help upload illustrated books particularly children’s books etc. Apparently since the KDP was launched in September 2015 there are now more than 3.2 million books available on the platform. He reisterated that many readers like to browse through books digitally and if the author is readable or establishes their reputation there is the likelihood of the book translating into actual sales of print editions. Some of the most popular genres remain romance and self-help. A categorisation which is also noted in the traditional forms of publishing too. KDP was launched with the view to allow authors to access their readers with only the digital platform in between. Over time it has proven to be quite a popular way of publishing. In Dec 2016, ebooks in five Indian regional languages were launched on the Kindle. As of now it is possible to publish books on the KDP in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Gujarati and Malayalam but it still in the Beta version so is not being publicised too much for now. Interesting facts emerged for instance that Amazon pays royalties to its authors depending upon how many pages have been read and not necessarily by the book. For instance, Sundari Venkataraman ( who has been a regular user of KDP since Feb 2014 and now has 20+ books on the platform) mentioned that there are months when she measures her books by the number of pages read and has notched up numbers such as 15-18,000 pages. It is not very clear how many books were opened and read or whether there was a “read through” in the process or not. Vineet Bajpai made it amply clear with his lucid interventions that publishing on KDP is a convenient process for it gives access to ready data immediately yet it also requires immense discipline and dedication to ensure that the book is discovered and read. In the short span of five months since his book was launched in August 2017, he has sold more than 25,000 print copies. Both the authors agreed that they dedicate time to marketing and promotion, otherwise as another author from the audience mentioned her ten books languish on the platform.

The audience consisted of a diverse cross-section of people. There were seasoned, award-winning authors to debut authors who had unpublished manuscripts but were not sure which method to adopt — traditional or digital. There were quite a few teenagers interested in writing who were being represented by their parents. There were storytellers in various languages keen to understand how KDP will be beneficial ? Would they be able to publish stories  + audio clips of their performances? There were authors who were puzzled by the distinction between KDP and KDP Select and what it meant in terms of exclusivity and support they could expect from Amazon. There were KDP authors who had had a good experience of the platform and wished to understand how to exploit it further for everyone in the hall was in agreement that Amazon, unlike other publishing firms, is responding in real time to its users ( authors/readers) and constantly improving its bouquet of offerings. There were book bloggers, journalists ( all media), ex/servicemen, doctors, strategic study analysts, translators, poets, print publishers wishing to understand the mechanisms of digital publishing etc.  Some of the pertinent questions asked by the audience present were about editing a manuscripts, ROI on publishing a book using  KDP, how are  books discovered from the 3.2m Kindle titles available, how do authors earn royalties especially if their books are offered in the  Kindle Unlimited bundle, how is  plagiarism detected, what is the ideal length of a book?  The conversations went on for much longer than expected and were continued over lunch.

2017 marks ten years of Kindle. When it was first launched traditional publishers were not sure how it would affect publishing. For some years thereafter a “disruption” was noticed when ebooks became exceedingly popular and many publishers made modifications to their business models. For instance by doing away with renting spaces in warehouses for stocking printed copies of their backlists and moving to the print-on-demand ( POD) model where it is possible to order one copy at a time. Another way was to penetrate newer markets using digital devices by launching apps on smartphones and not necessarily restricting themselves to specific hardware such as the Kindle. Now notably there has been a plateauing of ebook sales and print books are becoming more and more scrumptious in production. Having said that there is no doubt that Amazon with the launch of Kindle and its KDP programme with its mechanised process has democratised the publishing of a book in a manner seen first with Gutenberg. The Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century scaled up the productivity of printing presses by improving their construction and using steam power to operate them. Now with the digital process it has made it easy for every person to publish, circumventing publishing gatekeepers and tastemakers, accessing readers worldwide, in a very short span of time — a few hours. It is this seeming collapse of time which has sped up the process of production and expectations. Of course there is the flip side of this that despite Amazon offering its KDP authors the tools create book covers, many individuals need to invest in having their manuscripts edited as that is not a service option. Also to have the book discovered the onus of promoting the book lies with the author and not with Amazon.

The response to it has been enthusiastic with many participants writing in with appreciative notes of thanks, particularly how informative the session was!

1 Dec 2017 

Judith Kerr

29 11 , 2017 No Comments

Since the Nazis came, we haven’t belonged in any place, only with refugees like ourselves. And we do what we can. I make soup and bake cakes. Your mother plays bridge and counts the miles of Konrad’s car. And Konrad — he likes to help people and to feel that they love him. It’s not wonderful, but it’s better than Finchley, and it’s a lot better than Theresienstadt. 

Judith Kerr A Small Person Far Away 


The Out of the Hitler Time trilogy by award-winning children’s writer Judith Kerr are novels that recount her escape from Berlin, days before Hitler came to power, their move to Switzerland, Paris and finally London.

She began writing these books — When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit , Bombs on Aunt Dainty, and A Small Person Far Away — for her children to give them some idea of her childhood and the challenges of living in war zones. Her children had been born and brought up in peaceful times  and were monolingual, absolutely different to their mother’s experience.  While writing the books she realised it was impossible to put herself as the central character and write about Nazi Germany and World War II, so she created the character of Anna. It is a literary device often used — consciously or unconsciously– by writers, particularly women, when trying to describe particularly traumatic events. They prefer to use the third person narrative voice. Reading the three volumes in quick succession is an interesting experiment. Although she wrote these once her kids were in their adolescence, its remarkable to see how the tenor of her writing is influenced by her memory. The first volume,  When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit , is about her as a nine-year-old escaping Nazi Germany and it has a gentle pace to it with an almost childlike wonderment to it. The second volume, Bombs on Aunt Dainty, is set in war-time London, where she witnessed the bombing and her beloved elder brother was taken away from Cambridge University and interned at a camp as he was still not a naturalised British citizen. The tone of this book is of a bewildered teenager who has plenty of her own opinions to share, though not always readily shared. It also marks her transition from a child to a responsible young woman who joins the workforce. The final book, A Small Person Far Away , is about the newly married Judith Kerr visiting her sick mother in Berlin and revisiting the places she grew up in. Since it was still soon after the war, links and memories to Nazi Germany are still fresh as evident in the drapes of the decrepit hotel she was staying in. It was a hotel, probably once upon a time a lively household, managed by an elderly woman who had presumably fallen on hard times. Despite having lived in the room for more than a week while visiting her ailing mother, Judith Kerr had not realised that the design woven in the drapes was of tiny swastikas — a chilling reminiscent of Nazi Germany which to her relief she discovered only on the day of her departure home.  A Small Person Far Away is the most mature in tone with a greater control of her prose as by this time she had become a professional writer too.

Like her successful writer father and her screen writer husband, Judith Kerr, too went on to become a successful writer when the picture book she wrote for her daughter sold favourably — The Tiger Who Came to Tea. Years later it continues to sell. In fact, now at the age of ninety-four she is still writing. Her latest publication is a picture book about her eleven-year-old cat Katinka’s Tail ( to be published by HarperCollins) . In fact she describes her writing day in a recent issue of The Guardian “Judith Kerr: ‘I’m still surprised at the success of The Tiger Who Came to Tea’” ( 25 November 2017).

I would be very sad and lonely if I didn’t work. I finished this book a few weeks after the last one was published, which is unlike me, and I’m already thinking about the next one. There is a new urgency to my working. Maybe it is like the disease, honey fungus, that trees get when they have an incredible display one year and look better than they ever have before. And then it kills them. Perhaps you get something like that at the age of 94, because, after all, I can’t rely on going on and on. 

Her joi de vivre is magical and infectious!

29 November 2017 

 

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