Writers Workshop is a

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

-based literary publisher founded by the Indian poet and scholar Purushottama Lal in 1958. It has published many new Indian authors of post-independence urban literature. Many of these authors later became widely known.

History

The Writers Workshop company was first founded as a group of eight writers (Lal, Deb Kumar Das, Anita Desai, Sasthibrata Chakravarti writing as

Sasthi Brata Sasthibrata Chakravarti (1939–2015), known as Sasthi Brata, was a British-Indian Indo-Anglian Indian English literature (IEL), also referred to as Indian Writing in English (IWE), is the body of work by writers in India who write in the Engli ...

, William Hull, Jail Ratan, Kewlian Sio, and Pradip Sen) in 1958. It was an initiative of Purushottama Lal (1929–2010), a professor of English at St. Xavier's College, Calcutta. Although it mainly publishes Indian writing in English, it has also published books in other modern Indian languages. To date, the press has published over 3500 titles of

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek '' poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings ...

novels A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...

drama Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Play (theatre), play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on Radio drama, radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a g ...

, and other literary works, with two focuses: experimental literature of the present day, and

translation Translation is the communication of the Meaning (linguistic), meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The ...

s from

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominalization, nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cul ...

and other classical Indian languages. Writers Workshop of

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

has published the first books by many authors who have gone on to become famous, including A. K. Ramanujan, Asif Currimbhoy, Agha Shahid Ali, Adil Jussawalla,

Arun Kolatkar Arun Balkrishna Kolatkar (Marathi: अरुण बालकृष्ण कोलटकर) (1 November 1932 – 25 September 2004) was an Indian poet who wrote in both Marathi and English. His poems found humour in everyday matters. Kolatkar i ...

, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Chandrakant Bakshi, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Gieve Patel, Hoshang Merchant, Jayanta Mahapatra, Joe Winter, Keki Daruwalla, Kamala Das, Meena Alexander, Mani Rao,

Saikat Majumdar Saikat Majumdar is an Indian novelist, critic and academic. A professor of English and Creative Writing at Ashoka University, Majumdar is the author of four novels: ''Silverfish'' (2007), ''The Firebird'' (2015), ''The Scent of God'' (2019), an ...

, Nissim Ezekiel, Pritish Nandy,

Poile Sengupta Poile Sengupta (nee Ambika Gopalakrishnan) (born 1948) is a notable Indian writer in English. She is especially well-known as a playwright and writer for children. Her formal first name is Ambika but she writes, and is known, as Poile. Sengupta ...

, R. Parthasarathy, Ruskin Bond,

Shiv Kumar Shiv Kumar may refer to: * Shiv K. Kumar (1921–2017), Indian writer in English * Shiv Kumar Batalvi Shiv Kumar Batalvi (23 July 1936 - 6 May 1973) was an Indian poet, writer and playwright of the Punjabi language. He was most known for his r ...

, Saleem Peeradina, Tijan Sallah,

Vihang A. Naik Vihang A. Naik or Vihang Ashokbhai Naik (2 September 1969) is a modern bilingual poet from Gujarat, India. He has authored many collections of poetry in English and Gujarati, besides translating poems from Gujarati into English. He died in the ...

Vikram Seth Vikram Seth (born 20 June 1952) is an Indian novelist and poet. He has written several novels and poetry books. He has won several awards such as Padma Shri, Sahitya Academy Award, Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, WH Smith Literary Award and Crosswor ...

, and William Hull among others who have been included in ''The Golden Treasury of Writers Workshop Poetry''

. As Writers Workshop enters its sixth decade of existence, it has become an extremely important part of the literary history of India. Its titles are printed as hand-loom sari-bound volumes with exquisite calligraphy on them. Throughout its history, this alternative publishing venture has published authors without a distribution system to back it. Perhaps the most important publishing venture Writers Workshop has undertaken is Lal's translation of the entire Indian epic

Mahabharata The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; sa, महाभारतम्, ', ) is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India in Hinduism, the other being the '' Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the K ...

in 18 volumes (appearing 2005–2009). After Purushottama Lal's death in 2010, his family members now run his publishing house.

References

* *

External links

* {{Authority control Book publishing companies of India Companies based in Kolkata 1958 establishments in West Bengal Publishing companies established in 1958 Literary publishing companies