Arts/Books

Photo: Wikipedia India-West News Desk ST.LOUIS, MO - At the Sheldon Concert Hall on April 8, Jhumpa Lahiri accepted the 2026 St. Louis Literary Award, a recognition presented by Saint Louis University to writers whose work expands insight into the human condition. For

India-West News Desk CHICAGO, IL — Marking ten years since its founding, Matwaala Mehfil 2025 reflects the steady evolution of a literary collective focused on South Asian diaspora poetry and community engagement. Launched in 2015 by Usha Akella and Pramila Venkateswaran, Matwaala

India-West News Desk IRVINE, CA – In a rare coming together of lineage, memory, and movement, “Dance Conversations” will bring six pioneering Bharata Natyam practitioners in the US to the stage on May 2, transforming performance into both archive and dialogue. Hosted

India-West News Desk BERKELEY, CA - Berkeley Repertory Theatre Artistic Director Johanna Pfaelzer and Managing Director Tom Parrish have announced the world premiere of ‘The Lunchbox’, a new musical scheduled to run from May 17 through June 28. Staged at the Roda Theatre,

India-West News Desk NEW YORK, NY -Aruni Kashyap, a writer and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Georgia, will translate ‘The Smell of Bamboo Blossoms’, a short story collection by Yeshe Dorjee Thongchi, after Penguin Random House’s

India-West News Desk NEW YORK, NY - Meenal Patel’s forthcoming picture book, 'Where Do Stories Live?' to be released by publishers Kokila on May 5, offers a vibrant exploration of creativity and mindfulness for readers aged four to eight. In the spirit

India-West News Desk HOUSTON, TX- A one-woman theatrical portrayal of Kasturba Gandhi by performer Roopa Mohan drew a standing-room-only audience at the Eternal Gandhi Museum Houston, highlighting renewed interest in lesser-known voices from India’s freedom movement. Titled ‘Kasturba Gandhi – A

Photo: Bob Shomler India-West News Desk SAN JOSE, CA - The California Theatre is set to witness a unique cultural intersection this month as Opera San José prepares to close its 2025–26 season with a bold new staging of Giuseppe Verdi’s 'La

India-West News Desk NEW YORK, NY- Author Arundhati Roy has been awarded the National Book Critics Circle prize for her memoir, 'Mother Mary Comes to Me'.   A ceremony for the 2025 publishing year winners was held at the New School in

MUMBAI - Amid the resounding success of 'Dhurandhar', author Harinder Sikka has expressed regret over the cinematic adaptation of his espionage novel 'Calling Sehmat', which inspired the 2018 film 'Raazi', starring Alia Bhatt and directed by Meghna Gulzar. He shared a

Photo: A transformed saree by Thota Vaikuntam x Sushma Thota. By REENA RATHORE SAN FRANCISCO, CA - The saree has always been more than mere fabric. Flowing, versatile, and timeless, it is a storyteller. Six yards of silk, both beautiful and practical, have

India-West News Desk WASHINGTON, DC - The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art here, has formally agreed to the repatriation of three significant antiquities to India after internal provenance research confirmed the items had been illegally removed from their original sites. The

MUMBAI -Actress Sheena Chohan brought to life the timeless heroines of the legendary painter Raja Ravi Varma with a striking four-image photographic series. The series beautifully reimagines his iconic women for a modern audience. Raja Ravi Varma’s muses have played a significant

India-West News Desk LOS ANGELES, CA - A Southern California dance academy is preparing to bring the vibrant spirit of India to the global stage at Walt Disney World. The Santa Clarita-based Ghungroo Dance School has been selected to perform at the

Kalaivanar Foundation presents  'She’s Auspicious' by Mythili Prakash atThe Eli & Edythe Broad Stage in Santa Monica. 

India-West News Desk BOSTON, MA -Rajani LaRocca, a Newbery Honor–winning author and practicing primary care physician, will release her first young adult novel, ‘Such Great Heights,’ this August. The book presents a contemporary retelling of the Hindu epic ‘Ramayana,’ shifting focus to

NEW DELHI- The Sahitya Akademi Award 2025, presented by the Government of India in the field of literature, was announced recently. This year, the honor in the Sanskrit category has been conferred upon the eminent scholar Mahamahopadhyaya Swami Bhadreshdasji for

BENGALURU- The Karnataka government on March 12 expanded its partnership with the British Council to strengthen English learning and improve library services in rural areas through the state's Gram Panchayat 'Arivu Kendras' (Knowledge Centers). Under the expanded collaboration, the number of

India-West News Desk NEW DELHI- The Sahitya Akademi on March 16 announced its 2025 awards across 24 Indian languages, concluding a three-month delay after a scheduled press conference in December was cancelled. The announcement had been deferred following a Ministry of Culture communication

By EV Master - Ezhilvanan Oppilamani SAN JOSE, CA - Dance is the most visceral language of culture, and few forms speak with as much raw power as Kuthu. Rooted in the soil of South India, Kuthu is defined by an

BHAGALPUR - The traditional, centuries-old Manjusha art of Bihar's Bhagalpur, which received the Geographical Indication (GI) tag five years ago, has emerged as a major source of livelihood for women and has helped the folk-art gain wider national and international recognition. Dating back

Photo: Instagram India-West News Desk NEW YORK, NY - Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani has appointed Diya Vij as commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the nation’s largest municipal funder of arts and culture. She is the first South

MUMBAI- Vineet Kumar Singh recently discussed the trend of Bollywood scripts being written in Roman characters despite the films being made in Hindi. The ‘Chhaava’ actor revealed that he specifically asks for his dialogues in the Devanagari script. He pointed out

Photo: Children's National Hospital WASHINGTON, DC - Second Lady Usha Vance underscored the importance of childhood literacy as she read to young patients at Children’s National Hospital. “Childhood literacy is something that’s very important to me, both as a parent and as

India-West News Desk LITTLE ROCK, AR- Indian Canadian author and playwright Padma Viswanathan has been named to the 2026 International Booker Prize longlist for her English translation of a Portuguese-language novel by Brazilian writer Ana Paula Maia. The work, titled ‘On Earth

India-West News Desk NEW YORK, NY – ‘All That Chandni Knows’, a debut middle grade novel in verse by Khushboo Patel, will be published on March 31, 2026, by G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers. Set in India in 1999, the book follows

India-West News Desk TUSTIN, CA-As conversations around women’s leadership and community evolve, a new book by a teenage author examines how mentorship and shared experience continue to shape modern sisterhood. ‘Bows and Ties,’ the debut work by 16-year-old Orange County writer Kavya

India-West News Desk WASHINGTON, DC-Second Lady Usha Vance, in collaboration with the National Endowment for the Arts, has announced a nationwide Bookmark Design Challenge inviting students in grades K–8 to mark the United States’ 250th anniversary through original artwork. The competition calls on young students

MUMBAI -Veteran actor Anupam Kher has expressed gratitude at seeing his books placed on bookstore shelves, saying he always believed his stories would live on screen and stage but never imagined he would one day be called an author. The 69-year-old

India-West News Desk BHUBANESWAR - Charan Hembram has spent a lifetime doing what many fear is becoming rare in India’s linguistic landscape, protecting, teaching, and writing in a tribal language with deep roots and a fragile future. On January 25, the prominent Santali

By Vidhya Subramanian It’s no longer just an elephant in the room. It’s the whole zoo, no, not a beautiful wild forest but a zoo with caged animals of all kinds. I’m talking about social media. As artists, we cannot function without it anymore.

By Usha Akella In times when one often feels pressured to align with Left or Right and other fractured polarities, a book can point toward reconciliation and harmony. Rooted in the myth of nectar, and expansive in its scope, Seeking the

PANIPAT- Master weaver Khemaraj Sundriyal shared his remarkable journey from a humble farming family in Uttarakhand to becoming the silent architect behind Panipat's rise as a world-renowned handloom hub. India has just awarded him the 2026  , recognizing his six decades of

WASHINGTON, DC- The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art has announced that it will return three historic South Indian bronze sculptures to India after provenance research established that the works had been illegally removed from temple settings decades ago. The museum

KOLKATA- Tripti Mukherjee, a renowned handicraft artist from Suri in West Bengal’s Birbhum district, who has empowered thousands of rural women through the art of Kantha stitch, has credited her mother for her success after being honored with the Padma

India-West Staff Reporter LOS ANGELES, CA - Noel de Souza, actor, journalist, and longtime member of the Golden Globes, marked a rare milestone with the publication of his debut novel, ‘Dust’, on his 100th birthday. The book is co written with

PIcture - Danville.Ca.gov India-West Staff Reporter DANVILLE, CA - The Village Theatre Art Gallery here, is hosting ‘One Voice Many Visions,’ an exhibition presented by the Indian American Artists Association that highlights diverse artistic interpretations of heritage, identity, and cross cultural connection. The

NEW DELHI -Lamenting the minuscule representation by women candidates in Bangladesh’s upcoming elections, a Dhaka daily on January 19 flagged “systemic design and failure” as the main reasons, echoing the voice of writer and activist Taslima Nasreen without naming her. “The

Image: Wikipedia India-West News Desk NEW YORK, NY -  Scott Adams, the creator of the comic strip Dilbert, died this week at 68, closing the chapter on a career that produced one of the most widely recognized workplaces in popular culture. Among

India-West News Desk SAN FRANCISCO, CA - Bollywood spectacle met American sports culture on a December night in San Francisco when the thumping title track of Ranveer Singh’s blockbuster film ‘Dhurandhar’ echoed through an NBA arena. During halftime at the Golden State

Photos: Vino Wong India-West Staff Reporter NEW YORK, NY - In a year crowded with notable debuts, Parul Kapur’s ‘Inside the Mirror’ has quietly emerged as one of the celebrated literary novels of 2025, earning the Pattis Family Foundation Creative Arts Book

India-West News Desk RAIPUR – Renowned Hindi novelist and poet Vinod Kumar Shukla passed away on  December 23, at AIIMS Raipur. He was 89. A towering figure in contemporary Indian letters, Shukla was the first author from Chhattisgarh to receive the Jnanpith Award,

By Michael Borden FAIRFIELD, IA - Interest in sacred architecture and vastu based design has been steadily growing over the past decade, reflecting a wider search for meaning, harmony, and wellbeing in the spaces we inhabit. Fear and the Modern Home In my work,

Photo: Kiran Desai (Left), Arundhati Roy (Right) India-West News Desk NEW YORK, NY - The New York Times Book Review has unveiled its weighty and much anticipated year end list, naming the editors’ top five fiction and top five nonfiction books of

NEW DELHI – Renowned sculptor Ram Vanji Sutar, whose artistic vision gave form to the Statue of Unity in Gujarat and shaped the visual identity of modern India, passed away at his residence in Noida. He was 100. Family sources

India-West Staff Reporter SACRAMENTO, CA - Dr. Vipul Mankad’s new book arrives at the intersection of medicine, memory, and meaning. ‘When Science Meets the Soul: A Doctor’s Quest for Deeper Healing’ is part professional memoir and part philosophical inquiry, offering a conversation between modern

Photo: Smithsonian India-West Staff Reporter WASHINGTON, DC - High in the Himalayan foothills, in small courtly kingdoms far from imperial capitals, artists once created some of the most intimate and refined paintings in South Asia. Next spring, many of those works, including

MUMBAI - Actress Sumona Chakravarti has spoken about the kind of stories that linger long after a book is finished, reflecting on themes of heartbreak, healing, and the quiet comfort of familiar emotions. Sharing her thoughts on a recent read, the actress

MUMBAI- Actress Sonali Bendre has shared her book picks for the month offering a festive dose of literary inspiration to her followers. Calling it the SBC Book(s) of the Month – December Edition, the actress recommended three titles: 'Hercule Poirot’s Christmas'

Photo: Sruti India-West News Desk SAN FRANCISCO, CA - The brilliant classical dancer, choreographer and actress Kumari Kamala passed away on November 24 in California at her son Jainand Narayan’s home. She was 91. Her death closes the chapter on one of Indian