Indo-American Arts Council

11/01/2026

A spotlight on Odisha literature, in the middle of New York City.

On Saturday, November 14, 2026, the Odisha Society of the Americas joins the IAAC Literary Festival 2026 to celebrate prominent voices of Odisha at Bohemian National Hall, New York. Here is a peek into the programming.

4:00 PM: The Orissan, Sandip Das and Pallavi Das in conversation with Barkha Cardoz

5:00 PM: My Life, My Time: A literary journey with Dr Pratibha Ray, Padma Bhushan and Jnanpith awardee, in conversation with Bhavani Parameswar. For many of us, this is the session we have been waiting years to sit in on.

6:00 PM: History and Evolution of Odia Language and Literature, a conversation with Prasanta Kumar Bhunya, moderated by Ranjita Mishra. This is followed by a book talk on Neeladri Vijaya. The book is reviewed by Dr Adyasha Das and moderated by Deepti Paikray.

Odia is one of India's classical languages, with a literary tradition that stretches back centuries. It rarely gets a stage like this outside Odisha. Having it programmed alongside Booker-longlisted novelists, New York Times editors and national-level policy conversations is not a side note. It is recognition.

If you are in the tri-state area, this is an event not to be missed.

Free to attend but please register at www.iaac.us

10/31/2026

Ten years after The Association of Small Bombs, a National Book Award finalist, Karan Mahajan is back with a new novel. The Complex follows the sons and daughters of SP Chopra, one of India’s political architects, as they fight for influence inside a sprawling Delhi family home, while some of them build new lives in America. Kirkus calls it “a masterly novel, seemingly influenced by Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.”​

Karan is a Granta Best Young American Novelist and an associate professor of Literary Arts at Brown University.​

The session will be moderated by Yosh*ta Singh, an award-winning journalist and the United Nations and New York Bureau Head for the Press Trust of India, India's largest and premier news agency. With nearly 23 years in journalism, including 18 as a foreign correspondent, she has covered every annual high-level United Nations General Assembly session since 2011. She sits on the jury of the New York Indian Film Festival and is the author of Shrilal Shukla's Raag Darbari: Satire in Indian Literature. ​

Join us at the IAAC Literary Festival 2026. His session is on Sunday, November 15, 11- 12 p.m at the Bohemian National Hall, New York City. ​
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The session is free to attend but please register at www.iaac.us ​
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10/31/2026

Meet the poets of The Art of the Contemporary Indian Poem at the IAAC Literary Festival 2026, presented by the Indo-American Arts Council.​

Preeti Parikh, Poet was born in India, lives in Ohio, and comes to poetry from a background in medicine. Her debut collection, Blue Selvage, reads the body as an archive through skin, cloth, and indigo, with the cadences of Hindi and Gujarati running through it. The book releases on November 1, just two weeks before the festival.​
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Subhashini Kaligotla is the Barbara Stoler Miller Associate Professor of Art History at Columbia University and returns to the IAAC Literary Festival after 2019. In My Life Closed Twice, longlisted for the Kalinga Literary Festival’s Best Poetry Collection, she writes about grief that spirals and persists, drawing on the art and literature of premodern India.​

Sudeep Sen, whose Anthropocene won the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize, brings RED, the second volume of his Eco Trilogy, alongside Bhutan and Memory is Starlight: Selected Poems 1977–2027. He will also discuss contemporary Indian poetry through the many anthologies he has edited over the decades, including The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry, Modern English Poetry by Younger Poets and Best Asian Poetry. He was the first Asian to deliver the Derek Walcott Lecture.​

The session will be moderated by Dr. Ravi Shankar, IAAC’s Literary Festival Curator and a Pushcart Prize-winning poet and translator. His books include The Many Uses of Mint: New and Selected Poems 1997–2017, and he co-edited a W. W. Norton anthology of contemporary poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and beyond with Tina Chang and Nathalie Handal.​

The session begins with a conversation among all four poets, followed by a poetry reading. The reading order will be Ravi Shankar, Preeti Parikh, Subhashini Kaligotla, and Sudeep Sen, with time afterward for conversation and book signings.​
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Join us at the IAAC Literary Festival 2026. The session is on Saturday, November 14, 5-5:50pm at the Bohemian National Hall, New York City. ​
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The session is free to attend but please register at www.iaac.us ​
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10/30/2026

What if the Mahabharata were told by Draupadi? Padma Bhushan Dr. Pratibha Ray asked that question in Yajnaseni, a novel that has since run into more than 120 Odia editions. Sahitya Akademi President Dr. Madhav Kaushik calls her “a living legend of Indian literature.”​

A recipient of the Bharatiya Jnanpith Award, the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan, she recently became the first woman writer from Odisha to receive the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship.​

The session will be moderated by Bhavani Parameswar, who serves on the board of the Indo-American Arts Council as Chair of Development. A senior business leader with more than three decades of experience in global business development and cross-border strategy, she built and led ITC Limited's US presence over a 36-year career, and chairs the American India Foundation's Women's Economic Empowerment Council.​
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Supported by the Odisha Society of the Americas.
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Join us at the IAAC Literary Festival 2026. Her session is on Saturday, November 14, 5-5:50pm at the Bohemian National Hall, New York City.​
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The session is free to attend but please register at www.iaac.us​
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IAAC Literary Festival 2026

10/30/2026

A rigorous close reading of the historic ideological clash between Mahatma Gandhi and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Hindutva and Hind Swaraj by Makarand R. Paranjape examines how twin foundational philosophies continue to shape India's public and personal life today. ​
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Makarand was a professor of English at Jawaharlal Nehru University for over twenty-three years and is the former Director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. ​​

The session will be moderated by Indu Viswanathan, an educator, researcher, writer and public scholar, and the author of Hindu at Heart: Education, Faith, and What It Means to Belong in America. A lifelong New Yorker with an M.A. and Ed.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University, her work focuses on belonging, intergroup dialogue and building pluralist communities.​

Join us at the IAAC Literary Festival 2026. His session is on Saturday, November 14, 3-3:50pm at the Bohemian National Hall, New York City.​
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The session is free to attend but please register at www.iaac.us​

IAAC Literary Festival 2026

10/30/2026

What would happen if you bought a handful of great stocks and simply left them alone, like valuables stashed in a coffee can? In The Coffee Can Investor, Neeraj Khemlani follows portfolio manager Matt Ankrum’s study of stocks that grew a hundredfold, and his plan to pass on a half-billion-dollar portfolio to his children. Neeraj even shares the coffee can portfolio he is building for his own kids. Dan Rather calls it “a gem of a book.”​

Before writing it, Neeraj was president of CBS News and Stations and produced award-winning stories for 60 Minutes and ABC News.​

The session will be moderated by IAAC Board Member Mathew Veedon, a Managing Director at Accordion with over 25 years of consulting, operating and investing experience. He focuses on turnarounds and major transformations for portfolio companies of leading private equity firms, and is a Chartered Accountant with an MBA in Finance from Yale University.​

Join us at the IAAC Literary Festival 2026. His session is on Saturday, November 14, 3-3:50pm at the Bohemian National Hall, New York City.​
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The session is free to attend but please register at www.iaac.us​
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IAAC Literary Festival 2026

10/29/2026

New York, 1907. A gangster named Mock Duck, his daughter, and a mayor with a plan to raze Chinatown. Caught in the middle is Archana Morley, an Indian woman journalist. Inspired by real events, No. 10 Doyers Street is the latest mystery from Radha Vatsal, author of the Kitty Weeks novels and film and TV columnist for CrimeReads. Mariah Fredericks calls it “a heartbreaking courtroom drama.”​

The session will be moderated by Ravi Shankar - Poet, Literary Festival Curator at IAAC and a Pushcart Prize-winning poet, translator and professor who has published, edited or has forthcoming over fifteen books. His translation of the 9th-century Tamil poet Andal won a Muse India award, and he founded the electronic arts journal Drunken Boat.​

Join us at the IAAC Literary Festival 2026. Her session is on Saturday, November 14, 2-2:50pm at the Bohemian National Hall, New York City.​
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The session is free to attend but please register at www.iaac.us​

IAAC Literary Festival 2026

10/28/2026

Meet Advaitavadini Kaul, the former Chief Editor and Head of the Kala Kosha division at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) in New Delhi, at the IAAC Literary Festival 2026. A scholar, author, and prominent expert on Kashmir's cultural heritage, she joins us with Kapila Jnanagarbha: Knowledge Unfolding Wisdom, a volume she conceptualised, curated and edited in memory of Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan. ​

During her tenure at IGNCA, she spearheaded key foundational publication series, including Kalatattvakosa (a lexicon of Indian art concepts) and Kalamulasastra (fundamental texts on Indian arts).​

Come, talk to her on Saturday, November 14 at Noon at the Bohemian National Hall, New York City and grab a signed copy! Interesting trivia: The book's first copy was presented to His Holiness the Dalai Lama!​

She will be in conversation with Rakesh K. Kaul, Vice Chair of IAAC and author of the bestseller The Last Queen of Kashmir and the critically acclaimed Dawn: The Warrior Princess of Kashmir. An IIT gold medallist, he helped found the first Chair of India Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and has had a distinguished business career as a CEO.​

The session is free to attend but please register at www.iaac.us​

IAAC Literary Festival 2026

10/28/2026

It's August 14, 1947 and in Alipore Jail, a man waits to be executed and looks back on a life that carried him from Madras to Singapore and Japan during World War II. Want to know more? Join us at the book talk for Four Minutes Past Midnight: A Moment in Eternity, a historical novel that fulfils author Sanjay Srivatsa's decades-long promise to tell his father's untold wartime story. ​

Sanjay spent more than ten years piecing that story together from his father’s original letters and documents. A former Country Manager of Nalco India with 45 years in water management, he is also a musician and composer, and lives in Walnut Creek, California.​

Part of the IAAC Literary festival 2026, it will be held on Saturday, November 14, 11AM at the Bohemian National Hall, New York City. Sanjay will be in conversation with Col Virendra Tavathia, who was commissioned into the 2nd Battalion, The Rajputana Ri**es, in 1977 and later commanded it. Col. Tavathia also co-founded the Shradhaa Foundation, which supports the widows and children of soldiers, and was the first recipient from the Indian diaspora in the US of the "Jai Jawan Jai Kisaan" Award. ​

The session is free to attend but please register at www.iaac.us ​
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IAAC Literary Festival 2026

10/28/2026

Rachelgurjar joins the Literary Festival 2026 with the book East to East: Recipes and Stories from Mumbai to New York . Joining her in the conversation is Tanya Sichynsky, a Food and Cooking editor at The New York Times, NYT Cooking.

Rachel is a Mumbai-raised chef and food writer based in Brooklyn and a former food editor at Bon Appétit. East to East: Recipes and Stories from Mumbai to New York has been named a Best Cookbook of Fall 2026 by Bon Appétit and The Week. Through inventive recipes, she shares the triumphs, hardships and delicious discoveries that come from leaving home and navigating a foreign country.​

Tanya is an author and host of The Veggie, a YouTube series and weekly vegetarian newsletter. Her new cookbook, Veg Everything, brings together 100 recipes from NYT Cooking for weeknight cooking, celebrations and all the bites in between.​

Be sure to hear them both at the IAAC Literary Festival 2026 on Saturday, November 14, 10 AM at the Bohemian National Hall, New York City.​

The session is free to attend but please register at www.iaac.us​

IAAC Literary Festival 2026