Arjun Rajendran│Founder and Curator
Arjun Rajendran is the author of Snake Wine (Les Éditions du Zaporogue, 2014), The Cosmonaut in Hergé’s Rocket (Paperwall, 2017) and a chapbook, Your Baby Is Starving (Aainanagar / VAYAVYA, 2017). Arjun was the Charles Wallace Fellow in Creative Writing at The University of Stirling, Scotland in 2018. He was the Poetry Editor of The Bombay Literary Magazine. His third book, One Man: Two Executions, was published by Westland in 2020. Arjun is the founder of TQT, a poetry workshop that is an answer to the great pandemic.
Sivakami Velliangiri │ Co-Curator
Sivakami Velliangiri is a senior poet, born in Madras and brought up in Trivandrum, and now living in Chennai. When Sivakami Velliangiri was Sivakami Ramanathan, she published her poems in Youth Times. After coming to Chennai she has been published in various literary journals. Professor Srinivasa Iyengar included her among the women poets in his History of Indian Writing in English (1980). She is a founding member and Co-Curator at TQT. Her chapbook In My Midriff was published by Lily Literary Review online. How We Measured Time (Paperwall, 2019) is her debut poetry book.
Sobhana Kumar│Co Curator
Shobhana Kumar‘s book of haibun, A Sky Full of Bucket Lists was published by Red River in January 2021 to critical acclaim. She has authored two books of free verse by Writers Workshop, Kolkata and six works of non-fiction covering industrial and corporate histories. She works in the spaces of education, communications, and social work. She is Associate Editor of Sonic Boom and its imprint, Yavanika Press. As Co-Curator at The Quarantine Train, she hopes to work to build a meaningful community of poets and writers, along with its deeply committed and extraordinary people.
Aswin Vijayan│Managing Editor
Aswin Vijayan is an Assistant Professor at the Zamorin’s Guruvayurappan College, Calicut and has an MA in Poetry from the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University Belfast. His poems have been published in The Bombay Literary Magazine, Verse of Silence, The Tangerine, and Coldnoon among others. Aswin was the first runner-up for Bound Poetry Contest 2020 and was longlisted for TOTO Funds Award 2020. His poems are slated to be published in the Hyderabad Project: Art for Causes book and The Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English. He also curates a “New in Poetry” section for Nether Quarterly and is the Managing Editor at The Quarantine Train.
Pervin Saket│Managing Editor
Pervin Saket is the author of the novel Urmila and of a collection of poetry A Tinge of Turmeric. She is the 2021 Fellow for the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, and was shortlisted for the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize 2020. Her novel has been adapted for the stage, featuring classical Indian dance forms of Kathak, Bharatnatyam, and Odissi. Her work has been featured in The Indian Quarterly, The Joao-Roque Literary Journal, Paris Lit Up, Singapore Unbound, Usawa Literary Review, Tiferet, Borderless Journal, The Madras Courier, Alipore Post, Cold Noon, Breaking the Bow and others. Pervin is Poetry Editor at The Bombay Literary Magazine and co-founder of the annual Dum Pukht Writers’ Workshop.
Soni Somarajan│Creative Director
Soni Somarajan‘s poetry and writing have featured in anthologies, magazines, and newspapers including The Bombay Literary Magazine, North East Review, The Four Quarters Magazine, Muse India, Kitaab, The Bangalore Review, New Indian Express, Marie Claire, Madras Courier, The Alipore Post, Samyukta Poetry, and Bengaluru Review. His poetry has been featured in two anthologies: Witness: Indian Poets Define Dissent and The Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English 2020-21. An alumnus of the University of Iowa’s IWP Advanced Poetry Seminar 2013, Soni is the Creative Director at The Quarantine Train, a poetry collective, and an Associate Editor at Yavanika Books. First Contact, his debut book of poetry, was published by Red River in 2020.
Devanshi Khetarpal│Translations Coordinator
Devanshi Khetarpal is the editor-in-chief of Inklette Magazine and a Translations Coordinator for The Quarantine Train. Her work has been published in The Bombay Literary Magazine, nether Quarterly, Diacritics blog, Scroll.in and Transom, among others. Her research focuses on Elena Ferrante, and the relationships between sexual violence and urbanities. Khetarpal is currently pursuing her Master’s in Comparative Literature at New York University. She is from Bhopal, India, and currently lives in Manhattan, New York. Website: www.devanshikhetarpal.co.
Kinjal Sethia│Editor
Kinjal Sethia is a freelance writer-editor based in Pune. Her work has appeared in the Nether and EKL Review. She is the fiction editor at The Bombay Literary Magazine. She is also one of the organisers of Pune Writers’ Group.
Prashant Parvatneni │Allied Arts Coordinator
Prashant lives in Bangalore, writes poetry, and teaches cinema and art. He won the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize, 2019. His writings have appeared in Deep Focus Cinema, Seminar, and The Bombay Literary Magazine among others. Prashant works with the Kabir Project and is part of an arts collective called brown-study works. For him, TQT opens up a space for experimenting with the art of writing, in a collective manner with peers of poetry, and to play with its possibilities – both aesthetic and political.
Anesce Dremen│International Coordinator
Anesce Dremen is a U.S. poet, travel blogger, and aspiring novelist. A first-generation college student and domestic violence survivor, she studied in four cities in China (Xi’an, Beijing, Chengdu, and Suzhou) with the support of the Critical Language Scholarship and the Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship. She graduated from Carthage College with degrees in Chinese and English literature. Her bilingual work has been featured in Xi’an Daily, Shanghai Poetry Labs, T Ching, Global Tea Hut, Persephone’s Daughters, and Tiny Spoon, among others. She is a Fulbright ETA in India. Anesce is often found with a teacup in hand, travelling between the U.S., China, and India. She is the international coordinator of The Quarantine Train. Her writing can be found @WritersDremen or on neverthelessaway.wordpress.
Abbas Bagasrawala│Funds Manager
Abbas Bagasrawala is a writer of poetry, fiction, restaurant reviews and curiously long surnames, especially his own. TQT for him represents an opportunity for a tête-à-tête with diversity—through an interaction with poetry and the people behind the poetry. He’s been published in several magazines and periodicals notable of which is The Bombay Literary Magazine, Vayavya, and Nether for fiction and poetry. He’s also an alumnus of the prestigious Dum Pukht writing workshop for fiction.
Mandakini Pachauri│Ideations Team Head
Mandakini Pachauri is a poet and creative non-fiction writer of Indian origin, living at the edge of the Viennese Forest. She writes predominantly in English and less often in German and Hindi. She has been published in Words and Worlds Magazine (PEN Austria), World Literature Today, Berfrois Journal, and most recently in Setu Journal. Currently, she is working on a cross-media book of poetry and photography as well as a literary correspondence in collaboration with other artists and writers. She has been a digital pioneer and technology consultant in design strategies. Mandakini is a Yoga and meditation teacher and a women’s activist at present. With TQT, she means to work toward creative connection and integrity.
Arathy Asok│Moderator
Arathy Asok is a is a bilingual writer, poet, and translator whose debut poetry collection Lady Jesus and Other Poems is described by Journal of Commonwealth Literature as “Resistance poetry with a sharp edge” (2019, Vol. 54(4) ). Her recent work in translation is The Lost Heroine (Speaking Tiger Press, 2020). She was a featured poet at The Blue Nib Magazine (Issue 37, Ireland) and at Poethead, Index of Women Poets, Ireland. Her poetry installation titled Word Me Out was showcased at the fifth edition of the South Indian Poetry Carnival at Pattambi, Kerala. Most recently, her poems have been included in The Kali Project and Witness: Indian Poets Define Dissent (forthcoming). Arathy writes short stories in Malayalam and English and recently a short story was included in the anthology One Surviving Story (icoe press, Australia). Her articles have appeared in The Hindu Blink and elsewhere.
Sumit Chaudhary│Moderator
Sumit Chaudhary is a writer and programmer living in New Delhi. He holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT, Delhi. Modernist literature and Artificial Intelligence fascinate him endlessly. Apart from writing in English, he is also working on translating works from Rajasthani, his mother tongue, into English. His poems are forthcoming in 14 International Younger Poets by Art and Letters Press, Boston. He seeks to make difficult classics accessible through memes which can be found at www.instagram.com/coldsteelpen