Ketaki Kushari Dyson was born in Calcutta in 1940 and educated at Calcutta and Oxford. The first Indian woman to gain a First in English Literature at Oxford, she also has a doctorate from there. Based in Britain since her marriage to an Englishman, she maintains close links with the literary life of her native city and is regarded as a significant Bengali writer of her generation. She writes in both Bengali and English, and has published over thirty titles in a diversity of genres. She writes original poetry in two languages and translates between her two languages in both directions.

In Bengali her publications include six collections of poetry, four novels, three plays, four collections of essays, a major scholarly work in collaboration with others on Tagore’s colour vision, translations of Anglo-Saxon poetry, of Argentine Spanish poetry and prose, and of folk songs from the Judaeo-Spanish dialect Ladino. In 2007 she participated in a poetry translation workshop in Slovenia.

In English she has published four poetry collections, two substantial works of poetry translation (of Rabindranath Tagore and Buddhadeva Bose), two research-based books including one on Tagore’s friendship with the Argentine woman of letters, Victoria Ocampo, and the translation of her own first play. Her plays have been staged in both England and India.

She has received prestigious literary awards from Calcutta and a medal from the University of Calcutta for ‘eminent contribution’ to contemporary Bengali letters. In 2009 she received a media trophy for being the Best Bengali of the Year in Literature. She has given lectures, poetry readings, and papers in numerous venues across the world, including a lecture on Buddhadeva Bose in 2008 and two lectures on Tagore in 2010 and 2011.

Further information on her is available from: www.virgiliolibro.com/kkd