Deepa Bhasthi is a writer and literary translator working in Kannada and English. She was the first Indian translator to win the International Booker Prize in 2025. Her essays, columns and journalism have been published extensively in Indian and international publications, anthologies and visual art book projects. She is the author of a children’s book titled Champi and the Fig Tree. Deepa’s published book-length translations from Kannada include works by Kota Shivarama Karanth, Kodagina Gouramma and Banu Mushtaq. She was a National Book Critics Circle Awards finalist, and is a recipient of an EnglishPEN Award.

Melissa Gay is a Masters by Research candidate in English Literature at the National University of Singapore on the Margaret Wang Memorial Scholarship. She is working on a thesis on Anglophone and Sinophone literary criticism in mid-twentieth century Malaya and Singapore. Born and raised in Singapore, her research interests are in world literature, comparative literature, literary criticism, literary translation, the intersection between public and private reading, institutional and disciplinary history, and post-critique.