Dadapeer Jyman is a Kannada poet, writer, and translator based in Bangalore and a member of the Queer Poets Collective. He holds a Master’s degree in Mathematics from Karnataka University, Dharwad. His debut short story collection, “Neelakurinji,” won the 2022 National Sahitya Akademi Young Litterateur Prize for Kannada and the 2021 Masti Venkatesh Iyengar Book Prize. He also received the Rajyotsava award from Gulbarga University, where the title story is part of the BA syllabus. In 2023, he won the TOTO Award for creative writing in Kannada and has been published in leading Kannada newspapers and periodicals.

Shashank Johri is a Bangalore based poet who writes in English. He has performed at many international poetry Festivals in India, Malaysia and Tunisia since 2017. He was felicitated at the International Thinkers and Writers Peace Meet 2022, by ISISAR at Kolkata. Shashank has been an active participant in ‘Kaavya Sanje’, a Bengaluru based multilingual poetry group since its inception. The song he wrote and co-composed, ‘Hum Hain Ugam’ for Ugam, a Mumbai based NGO of childhood cancer survivors was recorded by Shaan in 2012. In 2019, he translated a Kannada Janapada into English. He holds a Master’s degree in Design from National Institute of Design and currently works as the Founding Designer of ABOD- A bunch of designers, that aims to bring about social change through design. He was recently invited as a speaker at the Bangalore Design week. He also teaches Sustainable Design at NIFT Bengaluru.