discussions and ideas
We hold events that bring thought provoking, idea generating topics in the field of art.
art and artists
We support South Asian artists by finding residencies and promoting their work into the mainstream
production
We produce events and festivals that showcase contemporary art and artists from a South Asian view point in all fields of art - literature, dance, music and visual arts.
Program Schedule
We bring to you stellar panelists in the field of literature, art and culinary world from South Asia and its diaspora. Program is subject to change
October 29th
12:00 - 1:00 pm
Carriage House
Breaking Barriers: Sculpting a New Vision
Jaishtri Abichandani
Vikram Chandra
October 29th
1:10 - 1:20 pm
Verandah
DANCE PERFORMANCE
The Jungle Book Rudyard Revised by EnActe
October 29th
2:00 - 3:00 pm
Carriage House
On a High Note
Maestro and public intellectual TM Krishna with Anjali Arondekar
October 29th
3:05 - 3:10 pm
Solarium
BOOK SIGNING
Vikram Chandra and Salil Tripathi
October 29th
3:30 - 4:30 pm
Carriage House
Homeland Elegies
Ayad Akhtar
with Dr. Anuradha Luther Maitra
October 29th
4:35 - 4:45 pm
Carriage House
BOOK SIGNING
Ayad Akhtar
Prof. Suraj Yengde
Zuni Chopra
October 29th
12:00 - 1:00 pm
Historic Villa
The Henna Artist
Alka Joshi with Aarti Johri
October 29th
1:20 - 1:55 pm
Verandah
PROSE READING
Daisy Rockwell, Moazzam Sheikh, Jenny Bhatt, Amit Majmudar, Neerja Raman, Saila Kariat
Curated by Shikha Malaviya
October 29th
2:00 - 3:00 pm
Historic Villa
Threshold of Contemporary Art
Annu Palakunnathu Mathew,
Ranu Mukherjee
Sarah Ahmad with Apoorva Bakshi
October 29th
3:10 - 3:20 pm
Verandah
DANCE PERFORMANCE
The Jungle Book Rudyard Revised by Enacte
October 29th
4:45 - 5:30 pm
Historic Villa
Uncaste the Duality: Talk on caste
Prof. Suraj Yengde with Davan Maharaj
October 29th
5:30 - 6:30 pm
Carriage House
In conversation with Swara Bhasker
Swara Bhasker
with Tipu Purkayastha
October 29th
12:00 - 1:00 pm
Finn Board Room
The Stones Speak: Stories & Poems from a UNESCO World Heritage Site
Rahul Mehrotra
Siddharth Mehrotra
October 29th
1:05 - 1:10 pm
Solarium
BOOKS SIGNING
Alka Joshi
October 29th
2:00 - 3:00 pm
Finn Board Room
Red Earth and Pouring Rain, Sacred Games to Geek Sublime
Author Vikram Chandra with Journalist Salil Tripathi
October 29th
12:00 -6:30 pm
Side Verandah
MARKETPLACE
Artisans by Garima
Marigold Row
Pragati Sharma Mohanty
Saeyri
The Peacock Avenue
October 29th
4:45 - 5:20 pm
Finn Board Room
Stepping into Words
Pavita Singh
Zuni Chopra with Jena Mehrotra
OCTOBER 30TH
October 30th
12:00 - 1:00 pm
Carriage House
H'Art of Giving
Dr. Afzal Ahmad
Dr. Shireen Ahmad
with Dr. Robert Mintz
October 30th
1:05 - 1:10 pm
Solarium
BOOK SIGNING
Amit Majmudar
Jenny Bhatt
October 30th
2:00 - 3:00 pm
Carriage House
The State and Spectrum of South Asian Food
Chef Kauser Ahmed
Chef Nik Sharma
Chef Preeti Mistry
with Sonia Chopra
October 30th
3:05 - 3:10 pm
Solarium
BOOK SIGNING
Nik Sharma, Preeti Mistry
Devi Laskar, Sorayya Khan
October 30th
3:30 - 4:30 pm
Carriage House
Found in Translation
Daisy Rockwell
with Moazzam Shiekh
October 30th
4:40- 4:50 pm
Solarium
BOOK SIGNING
Daisy Rockwell, Moazzam Sheikh, Madhushree Ghosh, Chitrita Banerjee, Vina Patel, Hetal Vasavada, Chaitali Sen, Salil Tripathi
October 30th
12:00 - 1:00 pm
Historic Villa
Wine Shine and Chicken Khurana
Chef Ajay Walia,
Ayesha Thapar (Ettan)
Neeta Mittal
Chef Ranjan Dey
with RItu Marwah
October 30th
1:10 - 1:20 pm
Verandah
DANCE PERFORMANCE
The Jungle Book Rudyard Revised
October 30th
2:00 - 3:00 pm
Historic Villa
Arrived!
Devi Laskar
Sorraya Khan
with Sandhya Gajjar
October 30th
3:10 - 3:20 pm
Verandah
DANCE PERFORMANCE
The Jungle Book Rudyard Revised
October 30th
3:30 - 4:30 pm
Historic Villa
Fiery Tales of the Great Indian Kitchen: Tales of Regional Cuisine
Hetal Vasavada
Chitrita Banerji
Madhushree Ghosh
Vina Patel
with Ritu Marwah
October 30th
5:30 - 6:30 pm
Carriage House
In conversation with Poorna Jagannathan
Poorna Jagannathan with Puneeta Kala
October 30th
12:00 - 1:00 pm
Finn Board Room
South Asian Landing
Amit Majmudar
Jenny Bhatt
with Vishal Ganesan
October 30th
1:20 - 1:55 pm
Verandah
POETRY READING
Amit Majmudar
Monica Mody
Monica Korde
Preeti Vangani
Sarah Mohammad
Shikha Malavia
Urvashi Bahuguna
October 30th
2:00 - 3:00 pm
Finn Board Room
Trauma of Caste
Thenmozhi Soundararajan
with Rajasvini Bhansali
October 30th
12:00 - 6:30 pm
Side Verandah
MARKETPLACE
Artisans by Garima
Marigold Row
Pragati Sharma Mohanty
Saeyri
The Peacock Avenue
October 30th
3:30 - 4:30 pm
Finn Board Room
The Conscious Objector
Chaitali Sen
Salil Tripathi
with Raji Pillai
October 29th
Get Nupur Kundu Art through NFT's for free!
As ArtForum SF celebrates the South Asian Literary and Arts festival in 2022, it is great to commemorate this event as we come out of the pandemic and draw inspiration from the arts to breath anew with optimism. Our own Nupur Kundu has created the QuarantineScapes collection to be minted as NFTs. Support ArtForum and SALA by registering to get the NFTs and enjoy the benefits of becoming an member of the NFT community. We plan to engage you in this new medium in our upcoming events as well as support the cohort of artists as we embrace this new technology. Visit our partner Faro's site, where you can check out the artwork that Nupur has created and register to get NFTs. When you come to the event this weekend, download the mobile pass to stay connected on-site and afterwards.
Art Exhibition and Sale
Come meet our local south Asian artists
Food Trucks
Dance Performance
@ 1:10 pm and 3:10 pm
EnActe Arts will be sharing a dynamic dance excerpt from their production of The Jungle Book: Rudyard Revised - the show is a foot-stomping musical reclaiming, rewriting and reimagining the original novel by Rudyard Kipling, and is touring this Fall and Winter. The excerpt will feature choreography by Aparna Sindhoor and Anil Natyaveda of Navarasa Dance Theatre - the movement is infused with animal-based Kalaripayattu martial arts and is set to an epic original score by the illustrious Jazz and Indian Classical musician George Brooks. For more information visit enacte.org
SALA Participant
Poorna Jagannathan is an actress and producer, best known for her portrayal of Dr. Nalini Vishwakumar in Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I Ever, which premiered globally on Netflix in April 2020 to critical and fan acclaim and has just been renewed for a fourth season
Pulitzer Prize winner playwright and novelist.
Author of the popular trilogy The Henna Artists
Originally from New Delhi, Ajay Walia is committed to changing the perception of Indian food in Western culture. His first restaurant, Saffron Indian Bistro, has enjoyed 20 years of success serving traditional North Indian Cuisine in San Carlos. His second restaurant, Rasa, in Burlingame, won a Michelin star within two years of opening.
Amit Majmudar is a novelist, poet, translator, essayist, and diagnostic nuclear radiologist.
Annu Palakunnathu Matthew is a Professor of Art at the University of Rhode Island and contemporary artist.
Chaitali Sen is the author of the novel The Pathless Sky (Europa Editions 2015) and the short story collection A New Race of Men from Heaven, which won the Mary McCarthy Prize for Short Fiction
Chitrita Banerji is a bengali-american writer. She uses both fiction and nonfiction to examine the relationships between memory, history, culture, religion, and food. She is the author of several books on the food and culture of her native India,
Daisy Rockwell is a painter and translator of Hindi and Urdu literature, living in northern New England. Shd along with Gitanjali Shri have won the booker prize for the novel Tomb of Stone
Devi S. Laskar is the author of The Atlas of Reds and Blues, winner of 7th annual Crook’s Corner Book Prize (2020) for best debut novel set in the South, winner of the 2020 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature & finalist for the Northern California Book awards. Her second novel, Circa was published May 3, 2022, by Mariner Books. Her third novel, Midnight, At The War will be published by Mariner in early 2024.
Hetal Vasavada is a Bay Area-based cookbook author and blogger at Milk and Cardamom. Her recipes have been featured in New York Times, Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, and more. Her cookbook was named one of the best cookbooks of 2019 by the San Francisco Chronicle and The Washington Post. In addition to blogging and writing, she owns an online bakery called Milk and Cardamom Sweets where you can buy her delicious Indian-inspired baked goods.
Jaishri Abichandani (she/her; b. 1969, Bombay, India) immigrated to New York City in 1984. She received her MFA from Goldsmiths College, University of London and has continued to intertwine studio and social practice, art and activism in her career, founding the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (SAWCC) in New York (1997) and London (2004). Abichandani has exhibited internationally including a mid career survey at the Craft Contemporary Museum in Los Angeles in 2022.
Jenny Bhatt is a writer, literary translator, and book critic. She is the founder of Desi Books, and teaches creative writing at Writing Workshops Dallas and the PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship Program. Her story collection, Each of Us Killers: Stories won a 2020 Foreword INDIES award. Her literary translation, Ratno Dholi: Dhumketu’s Best Short Stories was shortlisted for the 2021 PFC-VoW Book Awards. One of her short stories was included in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021.
Born in Karachi, Pakistan, Kausar Ahmed is a chef instructor, recipe developer, food consultant, food stylist, entrepreneur and author with over 35 years of experience in culinary arts and education.
Madhushree Ghosh’s debut food narrative memoir, KHABAAR: An Immigrant Journey of Food, Memory, and Family was published by the University of Iowa Press (@uiowapress) in April 2022. Hailed by Ms Magazine as a ‘Most Anticipated Read for the Rest of Us in 2022’, a Chicago Review of Books: 12 Must-Read Books of April, a Phenomenal Books Must Read Memoir (2022) as well as a Brown Girl Bookshelf and Cold Tea Collective must-read 2022 memoir,
Neeta Mittal is the first Indian women to own a winery in the US, Her wine, “LXV”, has its roots in the sixty-four sutras from our vedas - music, dance, architecture, feng shui, et al - that weave the rich fabric of Indian culture. The story of her wine is the 65th sutra.
Nik Sharma is the best-selling cookbook author, photographer, and writer behind A Brown Table, an award-winning blog. Season, his first cookbook was a James Beard Foundation and IACP Awards finalist and his second cookbook, The Flavor Equation is a finalist for the IACP and The U.K. Guild of Food Writers award finalist and was also named Book of The Year by Delicious. Nik lives in Los Angeles, California.
Chef, author, activist and budding farmer. Chef Preeti was co-founder & chef of the dearly departed Juhu Beach Club & Navi Kitchen, and co-author of The Juhu Beach Club Cookbook. They were twice nominated by James Beard Foundation as Best Chef of the West.
Pavita Singh is a polymath whose mission is to spread light, love, learning, and laughter. She is the Executive Director of Girls Health Ed and the award-winning, international bestselling author of To All the Magic in Me, a poetry collection on mental health, emotions, and self-care. Calling Palo Alto, California her "other home," Pavita currently lives in New York City.
Chef Ranjan of New Delhi Restaurant is also the creator of New World Spices, a special blend of six different spices inspired by the favorite dishes of three kings and three queens from six different regions of ancient India. And Ranjan’s other delicious creation, New Delhi Restaurant has been consistently voted the best Indian Restaurant in the Bay Area over the last 33 years.
Ranu Mukherjee makes hybrid work with painting, moving images, and installation to build new imaginative capacities, drawing on collage, feminist science fiction, and Indian mythological images. Recent honors include a Lucas Visual Arts Fellowship at Montalvo Arts Center (2019-2022), Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2020), and a residency at 18th Street Arts Center Los Angeles (2022). Her first monograph, 'Shadowtime,' was published in September 2021, with Gallery Wendi Norris.
Rahul lives in California, retired from a lifetime in the high-tech industry, trying to figure out what he is going to do when he grows up. Memories of time spent with old friends and total strangers fuel his writing. He is currently working on a collection of short stories.
Salil Tripathi was born in Bombay, India and lives in New York. He is a contributing editor at the Caravan and wrote a column for 14 years at Mint before it ended in 2022. He chaired PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee from 2015 to 2021 and is now a member of its board. Between 2009 and 2013, he was on the board of English PEN, where he co-chaired English PEN’s Writers-at-Risk Committee (with novelist Kamila Shamsie).
Ahmad’s artwork has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in museums, cultural centers, and galleries throughout the United States and internationally.Ahmad’s public art projects were sponsored by the Regional One Hospital in Memphis; the Greenwood Art Project in Tulsa; the Metro Nashville Arts Commission; and the Tennessee Arts Commission.
Shikha Malaviya, curator of SALA poetry, is an Indian American poet, writer, and publisher. She is co-founder of The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective, a mentorship model press publishing powerful voices from India & the Indian diaspora. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and featured in Catamaran, PLUME, Prairie Schooner & other fine publications. Shikha has been a featured TEDx speaker and was selected as Poet Laureate of San Ramon, California
Sonia Chopra is the executive editor at Bon Appétit and Epicurious, where she helps lead content and strategy across platforms for both brands.
Siddharth is a prolific writer of poetry and fiction, and holds a Master’s degree in critical comparative scriptures. He lives in California immersed in his study of ancient texts and mythologies, the search for planets in outer space, and a lifelong practice of Tae Kwon Do. He is currently working on a collection of poems.
Sorayya Khan is the author of We Take Our Cities with Us: A Memoir (The Ohio State University Press 2022), and three novels, Noor (Penguin India 2004) Five Queen’s Road (Penguin India 2009), and City of Spies (Little A 2017) which received the Best International Fiction Book Award, Sharjah International Book Fair, 2015.
Swara Bhasker is an award-winning Indian actress in the Hindi Film Industry popularly known as Bollywood.
Dr. Suraj Yengde is one of India's leading scholars and public intellectuals. Author of bestseller Caste Matters and co-editor of award winning anthology The Radical in Ambedkar.
TM Krishna, one of the pre-eminent vocalists in the rigorous Karnatik tradition of India's classical music. As a public intellectual, Krishna speaks and writes about issues affecting the human condition and about matters cultural.
Thenmozhi Soundararajan is a Dalit American transmedia artist, technologist, and futurist. She is the author of Trauma of Caste. Currently, Thenmozhi is the co-founder and Executive Director of Equality Labs. Equality Labs is one the largest Dalit civil rights organization working to empower caste-oppressed people in the US and globally
An award winning author whose latest book is Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty. He has also written the novels Sacred Games and Red Earth and Pouring Rain, and the short story collection Love and Longing in Bombay. He was an executive producer on the Netflix adaptation of Sacred Games, an international hit that was included in The New York Times' list of the 30 best international shows of the decade.
Vina has gained deep knowledge of Gujarati food. Her recipes have been passed down to her over generations. Her cookbook, "From Gujarat, With Love," is a unique expression of Gujarat's culinary identity. In addition, she worked with world-class celebrity photographer Jonathan Lovekin to shoot food photos. Her mission is to teach and share these recipes with the entire world—from her kitchen to yours.
Zuni Chopra is a 21-year old Indian author based in California. She has published three collections of poetry and short stories and one novel, The House That Spoke. She is currently studying Creative Writing and Film as an undergraduate student at Stanford University. She is particularly interested in the genres of fantasy and magical realism. When not at university, she lives in Mumbai with her family and their eleven dogs (and one cat).
Poetry & Prose Reading
Curator of the poetry section at SALA. Shikha Malaviya is an Indian American poet, writer, and publisher. She is co-founder of The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective, a mentorship model press publishing powerful voices from India & the Indian diaspora. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize
Aditi Malhotra is a writer, independent journalist and poetry reciter based in Oakland. Her news writing and narrative nonfiction has appeared in Huffington Post, PBS Newshour, theAtlantic.com, Hechinger Report and Wall Street Journal, among others. She also writes prose fiction and performs spoken word. Her work spans intersections of gender and migration, mental health and education, food and identity, and books!
Poet and Author
The House on East Canal Road, published in 2022, is Raman’s third book. Before she turned to writing, Neerja Raman was a senior executive in Hewlett Packard Labs. Raman was inducted into the Women in Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame and named to Silicon Valley Business Journal’s Fifty Most Influential Women list. In 2006 Raman joined Stanford University as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar for continuing this research in social entrepreneurship.
Poet
Poet
Poet
Poet
Saila Kariat is a filmmaker and entrepreneur with a diverse background. While her real interest and passion has always been writing and filmmaking, she has had a career as an electrical engineer and builder before pursuing her dream. She wrote, directed and co-produced The Valley, the story of an entrepreneur who seeks answers after the suicide of his daughter. The Valley was in twenty film festivals and won best feature film in four festivals,