Manasa Publications is organizing a discussion forum on women’s writing in Chennai.
Date: Saturday, 11 July 2026
Time: 10:00 a.m.
Venue: Kavikko Arangam, Mylapore, Chennai
This is not a conventional Tamil literary event. Three distinguished figures, whose work spans the fields of Indian and world literature, will be participating in the discussion. In that sense, this is one of the rare and significant literary events to be held in Chennai, offering a unique opportunity for readers, writers, and literature enthusiasts.
Padma Viswanathan is an American writer born in Canada to parents of Tamil ancestry. She is regarded as one of the notable contemporary novelists in the United States. Her acclaimed novels include The Toss of a Lemon, The Ever After of Ashwin Rao, and Like Every Form of Love.
Geetha Ramaswamy is one of the most widely recognized social and literary activists in the Indian literary sphere. As a young woman, she became involved with radical left-wing movements and spent several years living in the forests as an underground revolutionary. During that period, she was declared a wanted person by the government. Today, she is a human rights activist and a literary publisher. Her memoir, Land, Guns, Caste, Woman: The Memoir of a Lapsed Revolutionary, has been widely discussed and is regarded as an important contribution to contemporary Indian political and literary discourse.
Vaishna Roy is one of India’s most respected journalists today. She is the Editor of Frontline magazine and a prominent political commentator.
Padma Viswanathan will speak about the challenges of writing for a global readership while remaining rooted in an Eastern cultural sensibility, drawing on her own novels as examples. Geetha Ramaswamy will discuss the role women can play in grassroots social movements and political activism across India. Vaishna Roy will speak about the contribution of women to shaping India’s political and sociological discourse.
Two books will also be launched at the event. One is A Place of Her Own, an anthology of Tamil short stories selected by Arunmozhi Nangai and translated into English by a team of different translators.
