Speakers

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Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma

(Seattle, USA)
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Perundevi Srinivasan

(Loudonville, USA)
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Navin Monogaram

(Malaysia)
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Priyamvada Ramkumar

(Chennai, India)
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Nanjil Nadan

(Chennai, India)

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Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma
(Seattle, USA)

Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma is an author, translator, teacher, and performer. His translation of the classical Tamil masterpiece on ethics, power, and love, The Kural: Tiruvalluvar’s Tirukkural, was published by Beacon Press and awarded the 2025 Ancient Tamil Literature Promotion Award by the government of Tamil Nadu, India. Other books include The Safety of Edges (poems), Give, Eat, and Live: Poems of Avvaiyar (translated from the Tamil) and Body and Earth (with the artist C.F. John). He speaks and performs widely, mentors writers and translators one-on-one, teaches for the Cozy Grammar series of online video courses, and has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, 4Culture, Artist Trust, and the U. S. Fulbright Program. thomaspruiksma.com

Perundevi Srinivasan
(Loudonville, USA)

Perundevi is the Department Chair and Professor of Religious Studies at Sienna and a modern Tamil poet. Her first poem was published in 1995. She believes that her writings are influenced by Pudumaipithan, Ashokamitran, Atmanam, Emily Dickinson, Rilke, Charles Bukowski, and Nicanor Parra. She writes aesthetic theories on poetry. She was awarded for her poems by Tamil Literary Garden for 2020.  Her translation work includes Muche Narumanamanal from Kannada to Tamil , Chonnathaiyellam Thirumba Eduththukkolgiren from English to Tamil.  The Best Stories of Our Times, edited by Perundevi, brings together twenty-two outstanding short stories published over the past three decades by some of the finest contemporary writers of Tamil fiction. 

Navin Monogaram
(Malaysia)

Alongside being a teacher in a Malaysian Government Tamil school, Navin is the editor of Vallinam online magazine, the author of eighteen books, and has contributed to Malaysian Tamil Cinema. He runs the literary organization, Vallinam, and its subsidiaries such as Sadaku.

Priyamvada Ramkumar
(Chennai, India)

Priyamvada Ramkumar translates literary fiction from Tamil to English. Her debut translation, Jeyamohan’s Stories of the True (Juggernaut Books, 2022) was a finalist for ALTA’s National Translation Award – Prose (2023). She was part of the inaugural cohort of South Asia Speaks’ mentorship programme in 2021 and selected into the 2022 ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship Program. She was also awarded a 2023 PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant for her work on Jeyamohan’s White Elephant. Her works have been published in various journals including Usawa, Spillwords Press, and Asymptote. Her first two books in translation are forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She co-founded Mozhi, a translation initiative for Indian languages. 

Nanjil Nadan
(Chennai, India)

Nanjil Nadan’s writing, which is satirical and uses regional dialects, is well received by readers and critics alike. He has authored short stories, novels, poems, and essays. He has been writing and giving speeches about Classical Literature. He has received twelve awards through his literary career including the Sahitya Akedemi Award (2010) for his  Soodiya Poo Sudarga short story collection and  the Iyal Virudu 2012 by the Tamil Literary Garden (Canada). 

Arun Mahizhnan

Advisor

He has spent most of his career in culture and communications fields as practitioner, policy analyst and educator. He works for the Institute of Policy Studies and taught at the National University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technological University. Beyond his professional career, he has been active in serving the Tamil community. Over four decades, he has collaborated with government agencies and community organisations to develop the community’s intellectual and cultural resources. His current project is to launch the first Encyclopedia of Singapore Tamils, an online resource in Tamil and English.

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