was born
in 1955 in Gokarn, an idyllic beach town of
coastal Karnataka, India. His father, Gourish
Kaikini, a school teacher, was an eminent
Kannnada litterateur and mother Shanta, a social
worker.
After a Masters in
Biochemistry from Karnataka University, Dharwad,
he moved to Bombay in 1976 and worked there as a
production chemist with companies like Procter &
Gamble and Hoechst. He worked and wrote in
Bombay for 23 years, before shifting to
Bangalore in 2000, as an adviser to a television
channel. He then edited a literary monthly,
Bhavana for 2 years. Currently, he is also
into film-writing and hosting television talk
shows.
He is a passionate poet, a
deft storyteller, and now an acknowledged script
writer for films. He has so far published six
anthologies of short stories, four anthologies
of poetry, three plays and a collection of
essays.
Jayant Kaikini received the
Karnatak Sahitya Academy award for his first
poetry collection at the age of nineteen in
1974. He received the same award again in 1982,
1989 and 1996 for his short story collections.
He has been awarded the Dinakar Desai award for
poetry, B. H. Sridhar award for fiction, Katha
National award and Rujuwathu trust fellowship
for his writings. At present, he is working on
his next collection of stories and a couple of
film scripts.
He lives in Bangalore with
wife Smita, daughter Srajana and son Ritwik.
Vishvanath Hulikal did
his B.Sc. from Mysore University, B.E. from the
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and
M.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology,
Kharagpur. He is a software engineer by
profession.
He is the Founder and
President of Sahitya Goshti. He has been
instrumental in arranging two Kannada literary
lectures every month in the Silicon Valley since
November 2001. His publications include
Sourabha, a short story collection,
Manthana, a collection of essays translated
into Kannada from English, and Hridya, a
short story collection. He brought out a
literary magazine called Vishu in 2000.
He co-wrote the story for the award-winning
film, America, America. He has also
translated two of the stories in this
collection.
He has been felicitated by
The Karnataka Cultural Association of Southern
California and the Kannada Koota of Northern
California for his literary works and for
promoting Kannada literature in U.S.A.
He lives in Cupertino, U.S.A. with his wife
Annapoorna and children Meghana and Manisha.
