Team

Nirbhay is an avid reader and is deeply passionate about Indian authors. He published the well-known online literary magazine, ‘The Curious Reader’ as a way to promote Indian authors.

Nirbhay founded these awards to honour his grandfather, whom he considered the world’s greatest storyteller and who made it a point to encourage children to remain children for as long as they could.

Mansi is a Montessori teacher and has an innate love for children. She believes that literature is the best medium not only for learning but also for happiness.

Mansi thinks the best gift you can give a child is a book.

Lubaina Bandukwala trained as a journalist, but has followed her heart into children’s publishing as a writer and editor.

She has published both fiction and non-fiction for various age groups for Pratham books, Harper Collins India, Duckbill, Penguin and FunOKPlease. Her latest releases include The Chowpatty Cooking Club and Coral Woman.

For the past eight years she has been curating children’s literature festivals including her own Peek A Book Literature Festival held at the Royal Opera House, Mumbai. As a subject matter expert she has spoken at TedX (DJ Sanghvi, Mumbai). She The People Writer’s Festival, Avid Learning and Kalaghoda Arts Festival.

Yashasvi holds a BA and MA in Literature from SNDT University in Mumbai. She worked as a journalist to begin with and finally found her way into the world of children’s literature and poetry.

She has worked on various festivals over the years such as MAMI, Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, Peek A Book Children’s Literature festival. She wors are a curriculum developer and facilitator of children’s art based programmes in various schools across Mumbai.

Her poetry has been published in Swwim literary magazine and Of Dry tongues and Brave Hearts, an anthology of women’s writing. She is associate editor at The Bombay Literary Magazine.