Meet the Speakers
Meet the creators of the books encourages the children to read more and fall in love with the books. Join us in celebrating The One and Only Exclusive Children’s Literary Festival of Tamil Nadu.
Vithya Danaraj
Vithya is a professional storyteller, kids enthusiast, theatre trainer, and budding writer who weaves any complex topic into an interesting story. A nature lover who promotes environment and culture through her stories. She is closely associated with National Green Corps and performs at public libraries, government schools, public spaces and Story Fests.
Ashok Rajagopalan
An illustrator since 1989 and a writer since 2006, Ashok Rajagopalan’s main aim in life, is to laugh and make people laugh. A shy bookworm, he manages this by writing and drawing funny books. Or he would have joined the circus and become a clown!
Ashok Rajagopalan’s Gajapati Kulapati is just epic as our kids would say.
Meenu Sivaramakrishnan
Performance Storyteller, Story-Writer, Voice-Artist, Carnatic Singer and Educator.
In her humble attempt to rekindle the love for oral storytelling, she began her own initiative called “KATHA GALATTA – Unleash Ur Joy Thruʼ Stories” and handles interactive storytelling sessions and story-based workshops for children and adults.
Savio Mascarenhas
Growing up with a galaxy of characters from Tinkle and Amar Chitra Katha, Savio Mascarenhas subconsciously chose to belong and live in this Neverland.
So for the past 28 years, he has spent most of his time with the indomitable and unarguably hilarious characters from TINKLE. And the heroes and legends in the world of Amar Chitra Katha.
Savio Mascarenhas is currently the Group Art Director at Amar Chitra Katha Pvt Ltd.
Anusha Veluswamy
Anusha is an award winning author who loves to paint her stories with the colours from her childhood and attempts to represent the deep stories, flavours, and the soul of Southern India. She holds a masterʼs degree in architecture and was awarded the REX Karmaveer global fellowship for young leaders instituted by iCongo in partnership with the United Nations, the Rex Karmaveer Bronze Award in 2018, and Woman Lit of the year award in 2021 by Inspire beyond Motherhood annual awards.
'Vishnupuram' Saravanan
Vishnupuram Saravanan is known for his poems, articles, and more specifically his contributions to Children’s Literature. His recent short work “Kayiru” received wide appreciation and had a record-breaking sale. His earlier book “Otrai Siragu Oviya” is an important Children’s Novel that deals with contemporary social issues. He strongly believes that social issues need to be introduced to children and a dialogue has to be kindled among them.
Vizhiyan
Vizhiyan is a prolific writer, he writes books for children of all categories in Tamil. He writes not just stories, but also for the overall development of a child. He has written 36 books so far. Many of his books have bagged various awards. Vizhiyan also loves traveling and enjoys meeting children across the state. Vizhiyan is the first general secretary of Tamilnadu Children Writers Artists Association.
Paro Anand
A fearless writer and performance storyteller with a big heart”, best describes Paro Anand who has been honored with the Sahitya Akademi Bal Sahitya Puruskar Award, 2017 for her book, Wild Child, now published as ‘Like Smoke’ with additional content.
She received the Kalinga Karubaki Award for Fearless Writers in 2019.
Geeta Ramanujam
Geeta Ramanujam is a multi-faceted persona- a Master Storyteller, Trainer, author, TEDx speaker, and an Ashoka fellow that spans 27 years since 1996 in the field of Storytelling.
She is the pioneer of the Storytelling movement in India and has trained over 99491 people and has been the ambassador of the Storytelling movement in 48 countries around the World.
Geeta takes great pride in being the founder and director of Kathalayaʼs International Academy of Storytelling which certifies people in the art.
Rachna Chhabria
Rachna Chhabria was a very curious child, always asking questions. Now she is a curious adult weaving stories around those questions. She loves traveling the world through her imagination. Short stories are her favorite, especially animal stories. She enjoys creating funny and weird creatures. She wishes she had several superpowers, as it would have made her life easy. She draws inspiration for her stories and books from everywhere. People she meets end up in her stories and if they bug her, she puts them in difficult situations.
Shoba Viswanath
Award-winning author, publisher, and educator, Shobha Viswanath, is the co-founder and publishing director of Karadi Tales. For 27 years, Shobha has actively made an effort to seek out and publish books on important topics such as disability, gender, and the environment, to name a few. Under her leadership, the company has received recognition and acclaim from all over the world.
Shobha continues to consult for schools and conduct workshops and seminars alongside her work for Karadi Tales. She has always been an aggressive proponent of making education less intimidating and continues to pave the way for children’s literature in India.
Jeeva Raghunath
Jeeva Raghunath, storyteller/author. Pioneered the storytelling movement in Tamilnadu, India. She has represented her country in 27 countries at various storytelling/literature festivals. Awarded ” Best Entrepreneur award” for her contribution to storytelling and “Pride of Asia ” awarded by Surindra Rajabhat University, Surin, Thailand. Her company Kathaikalatta organizes an international storytelling festival “Under the Aalamaram “since 2014 and featured over 45 international Storytellers.
She is one of the directors of the “Federation of Asian Storytellers (FEAST).
Vaishali Shroff
An award-winning author. She has published over 250 stories, fiction and nonfiction, with Indian and international publishers—Penguin, Harper, Oxford, Westland, Tulika, Pratham, Eklavya, Mango DC, Daffodil Lane Books, Art1st, among others. She loves writing about unexplored places, untold histories, unsung people, and giving agency to voiceless nonhumans. She is the recipient of the AutHer Award 2023 for Best Children’s Book, and twice recipient of the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators, USA, Fellowship Awardee, among other recognitions.