Writers Workshop is a

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

-based literary publisher founded by the Indian poet and scholar

Purushottama Lal Purushottama Lal (28 August 1929 – 3 November 2010), commonly known as P. Lal, was an Indian poet, essayist, translator, professor and publisher. He was the founder of publishing firm Writers Workshop in Calcutta, established in 1958. Life a ...

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 Anita Desai, born Anita Mazumdar (born 24 June 1937) is an Indian novelist and the Emerita John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a writer she has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three ti ...

, Sasthibrata Chakravarti writing as

Sasthi Brata Sasthibrata Chakravarti (1939–2015), known as Sasthi Brata, was a British-Indian Indo-Anglian writer of fiction. He is best known for his best selling novel ''Confessions of an Indian Woman Eater''. Early life and education Sasthibrata was ...

, William Hull, Jail Ratan, Kewlian Sio, and Pradip Sen) in 1958. It was an initiative of

(1929–2010), a professor of English at

St. Xavier's College, Calcutta St. Xavier's College is a private, Catholic, autonomous higher education college under Calcutta University run by the Calcutta Province of the Society of Jesus in Kolkata, India. It was founded by the Jesuits in 1860 and named after St. Fra ...

. 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 i ...

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", itself ...

drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...

, and other literary works, with two focuses:

experimental literature Experimental literature is a genre that is, according to Warren Motte in his essa"Experimental Writing, Experimental Reading" "difficult to define with any sort of precision." He says the "writing is often invoked in an "offhand manner" and the ...

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 , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

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 so ...

has published the first books by many authors who have gone on to become famous, including

A. K. Ramanujan Attipate Krishnaswami Ramanujan (16 March 1929 – 13 July 1993) was an Indian poet and scholar of Indian literature and Linguistics. Ramanujan was also a professor of Linguistics at University of Chicago. Ramanujan was a poet, scholar, ...

, Asif Currimbhoy,

Agha Shahid Ali Agha Shahid Ali (4 February 1949 – 8 December 2001) was an Indian-born poet who immigrated to the United States, and became affiliated with the literary movement known as New Formalism in American poetry. His collections include ''A Walk ...

, 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 ...

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra Arvind Krishna Mehrotra (born 1947) is an Indian poet, anthologist, literary critic and translator. Biography Arvind Krishna Mehrotra was born in Lahore in 1947. He has published six collections of poetry in English and two of translati ...

Chandrakant Bakshi Chandrakant Keshavlal Bakshi ( gu, ચંદ્રકાંત કેશવલાલ બક્ષી) was a Gujarati author from Gujarat, India and a former Sheriff of Mumbai. He was known for his bold and new concepts in writing during his time ...

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (born Chitralekha Banerjee, 1956) is an Indian-born American author, poet, and the Betty and Gene McDavid Professor of Writing at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. Her short story collection, ''Arrang ...

Gieve Patel Gieve Patel (born 18 August 1940) is an Indian poet, playwright, painter, as well as a physician. He belongs to a group of writers who have subscribed themselves to the ''Green Movement'' which is involved in an effort to protect the environmen ...

Hoshang Merchant Hoshang Dinshaw Merchant (born 1947) is a poet from India. Most of his writings are in English. He is best known for his anthology on gay writing titled ''Yaarana''. Early years and education Hoshang Merchant was born in 1947 to a working clas ...

Jayanta Mahapatra Jayanta Mahapatra (born 22 October 1928) is an Indian English poet. He is the first Indian poet to win a Sahitya Akademi award for English poetry. He is the author of poems such as "Indian Summer" and "Hunger", which are regarded as classic ...

Joe Winter Joe Winter is a British poet, literary critic and translator of poetry. A recent long poem is '' At the Tate Modern''. His translations of the Bengali poets Rabindranath Tagore and Jibanananda Das are published by Carcanet Press, and his version ...

Keki Daruwalla Keki N. Daruwalla (born 24 January 1937Kamala Das Kamala Surayya (born Kamala; 31 March 1934 – 31 May 2009), popularly known by her one-time pen name Madhavikutty and married name Kamala Das, was an Indian poet in English as well as an author in Malayalam from Kerala, India. Her popularity ...

Meena Alexander Meena Alexander (17 February 1951 – 21 November 2018) was an Indian American poet, scholar, and writer. Born in Allahabad, India, and raised in India and Sudan, Alexander later lived and worked in New York City, where she was a Distinguished P ...

Mani Rao Mani Rao (born 28 February 1965) is an Indian poet and independent scholar, writing in English. Biography Mani Rao has authored twelve poetry collections and three books in translation from Sanskrit including the works of Kalidasa, a translatio ...

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 Nissim Ezekiel (16 December 1924 – 9 January 2004) was an Indian Jewish poet, actor, playwright, editor and art critic. He was a foundational figure in postcolonial India's literary history, specifically for Indian Poetry in English. He ...

Pritish Nandy Pritish Nandy (born 15 January 1951) is an Indian poet, painter, journalist, parliamentarian, media and television personality, animal activist and maker of films, TV and streaming content. He was a parliamentarian in the Rajya Sabha from Mahara ...

, Poile Sengupta,

R. Parthasarathy Rajagopal.Parthasarathy (born 1934) is an Indian poet, translator, critic, and editor. Early life and education Rajagopal Parthasarathy was born on 20 August 1934 in Tirupparaiturai near Tiruchchirappalli. He was educated at Don Bosco High Sc ...

Ruskin Bond Ruskin Bond (born 19 May 1934) is an Anglo-Indian author . His first novel, ''The Room on the Roof'', was published in 1956, and it received the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1957. Bond has authored more than 500 short stories, essays, and n ...

, Shiv Kumar, Saleem Peeradina,

Tijan Sallah Tijan M. Sallah (born 6 March 1958) is a Gambian people, Gambian poet and prose writer. Early life Tijan Sallah was born in Serekunda, The Gambia, on 6 March 1958. His mother was of Wolof people, Wolof ethnicity and his father was a Toucouleur ...

, Vihang A. Naik,

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 Calligraphy (from el, link=y, καλλιγραφία) is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instrument. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as "t ...

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 Kuruk ...

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

References

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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