Gauri Trivedi has been associated with us since December 2011 and her very first submission made us sit up and say ‘wow’! Gauri’s stories and essays have the ability to establish an instant connect with the reader. Her writings for Spark have dealt with themes like women, children, motherhood, the art of writing, personal experiences and life. What we love about her is her ability to write sensitively about a chosen subject and her proactive nature in working with us on bettering a piece.
An interview with Gauri Trivedi.
Maheswaran Sathiamoorthy began his journey with Spark from the very first issue of the magazine. Easily and deservingly, the most published photography contributor through these five years, Mahesh’s photographs have that rare quality of capturing your imagination effortlessly. Time and again, his photographs have had their own stories to tell, gently nudging our soul and kindling our imagination to come up with delightful captions. His portraits and nature shots are our favourites for the sheer creative joy they pour into our hearts.
An interview with Maheswaran Sathiamoorthy.
She writes, sketches, doodles, takes amazing photographs and makes movies – in short, she’s a creative powerhouse. Meet Sandhya Ramachandran, one of Spark’s first contributors. Sandhya has charmed us with her beautiful verse and splendid artwork that interpret our monthly themes in very different light, very artistically. She also designed the absolutely stunning coverpage art for our very special 50th issue. We must say we are a big fan of her art – her doodles and her experiments with mixed media brim with the sort of creativity that we love to feature in Spark.
An interview with Sandhya Ramachandran.
M. Mohankumar has never failed to capture our imagination with his poetry. He has been associated with Spark since September 2013 and in every issue since then, we have published at least one or more of his poems. What we love about his poems are the perspectives they present on a month’s theme – something different and more importantly, interesting. The simplicity of the words is striking and Mohankumar is someone who can convey so much in so little. He is a poet who presents profound truths about life and interesting human traits through simple words and beautifully structured poems that occasionally also have subtle humour underlying them.
An interview with M. Mohankumar.
Shreya Ramachandran is one of the youngest writers we have on board. She has been associated with Spark since December 2010. She is a versatile writer who has dabbled with fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Her work for Spark has spanned themes like love, relationships and women. What we like about Shreya’s work, particularly her stories, is her attention to detail and her ability to turn the reader’s attention to mundane and taken-for-granted things through her words. She succeeds in making you see these things in a new light because of her descriptions.
An interview with Shreya Ramachandran.
P.R. Viswanathan is one of our senior writers and has been a part of Spark since March 2010. He is one writer who makes up for his occasional breaks from writing with one striking piece. We love his language that’s classy and smooth, the characters that he creates which are so likeable and familiar and the love, passion and concern he pours out for his country in his writings on India. His articles for our editions celebrating India and his stories set in Bombay are our favourites.
An interview with P.R. Viswanathan.
One of Spark’s core defining factors has been the columns and interviews we have published in all our issues over the last three years. This exercise has been an immensely rewarding and a spectacular learning experience for us in many ways, including but definitely not limited to gaining a deeper understanding of how people approach their areas of expertise, realising that it is their passion, intelligence, persistence and a certain humility that has taken them to where they are today, and of course, receiving our biggest reward—that of Wisdom – that’s something we have received in copious amounts during our interactions. We felt nothing would be a more befitting tribute to all the wonderful people who agreed to share their thoughts with us than bringing out a compilation of the best of our conversations. Not to mention, a small gift to all our dear readers who have read and supported us through the last three years. Ladies and gentlemen, presenting joyfully —the best of what they said.
Some of the featured personalities of 2012 share their thoughts on Spark and convey their good wishes on the third anniversary.
It’s a celebration of fiction at Spark this month. For, isn’t fiction a wonderful way, apart from poetry of course, to explore human emotions? When the editorial team decided that the theme for the September 2012 issue would be ‘Navarasas’ or the nine human emotions, one of the first ideas that we had in mind was to invite some well-known flash fiction writers to interpret the different rasas through their stories. We have been lucky indeed, with providence being on our side. Spark is proud to feature Abha Iyengar, Anuradha Kumar, Dr. Dipika Mukherjee, Fehmida Zakeer and Hema Raman – writers whose works have been published in literary journals all over the world, writers whose works have won great recognition in the form of awards and writers who have achieved many other milestones in their writing career.