The Wise Owl
Select Interviews
Interview
Arundhathi Subramaniam
Poet-Author
The Wise Owl interviews Arundhathi Subramaniam, a celebrated and world-renowned poet, prose writer, arts critic and anthologist. She has been honoured with innumerable awards like the Sahitya Akademi Award, the inaugural Khushwant Singh Prize, the Raza Award for Poetry, the Zee Women’s Award for Literature, the International Piero Bigongiari Prize and many others. Her volume of poetry, When God is a Traveller (2014) was the Season Choice of the Poetry Book Society and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. She has also authored the bestselling biography of a mystic, Sadhguru: More Than a Life
Interview
Tabish Khair
Renowned Author
The Wise Owl interviews Tabish Khair, an eminent poet, writer and critic, who was born in Ranchi, grew up in Gaya and is currently working as an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. Tabish Khair has authored several books of poetry, fiction and studies which have been critically acclaimed. His writings include poetry collections, My World (1991) Where Parallel Lines Meet (2000), Man of Glass (2010), and the studies, Babu Fictions: Alienation in Indian English Novels (2001), The Gothic Postcolonialism and Otherness (2010) and The New Xenophobia (2016). His novels include The Bus Stopped (2004), which was short listed for the Encore award (UK), The Thing About Thugs (2010), which was short listed for a number of prizes including the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and the Man Asian Literary Prize. Some of his other novels are How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position (2014), Just Another Jihadi Jane (2016) and Night of Happiness (2018). He has a new novel, The Body By the Shore, coming out in 2022.
Interview
Tejbir Singh
Painter-Architect
The Wise Owl interviews Tejbir Singh, a contemporary painter (mixed media), who currently lives and works in Bahrain. Tejbir Singh is an architect by profession. Art has always been an integral part of his body and soul. He was inspired to draw and paint at a very young age. The body of works that echo his inspiration rightly and prominently are 'Urban Landscapes'. These landscapes are inspired a lot by his travels. He occasionally dabbles in Abstracts, Landscapes and Portraits too. He uses mixed media with prominent use of markers and sketch pens which help him in detailing the elements along with soft pastels, water colours & oils.
Esther van Hulsen
Naturalist & Wildlife & Paleo Artist
The Wise Owl interviews modern day naturalist and professional wild-life and paleo artist, Esther van Hulsen. Based in a cabin close to the fjords and forests of Norway, Ms van Hulsen creates beautifully detailed, photo-realistic portraits of wildlife, be it the magnificent falcons or the handsome wolves (to name a few) mostly using watercolours, copic Markers and/ or coloured pencil. Born in The Netherlands in 1981, Esther Van Hulsen completed her Bachelor in communicative design and scientific illustration at the Art Academy Minerva. Since then, she has been working as a professional wildlife artist. In 2010, Esther also included paleo art – the reconstructing of extinct animals – in her work. In 2016, Esther had the opportunity to draw an extinct 95-million-year-old octopus with the ink from the fossil itself. The last time this had ever been done, was in the 1800’s by famous palaeontologist, Mary Anning. This detailed painting is displayed in The Natural History Museum in Oslo, alongside the exhibit of the Octopus