Seagull Books
Encyclopedia
Seagull Books is a publishing venture begun in Kolkata
in 1982 by Samik Bandopadhyay
and Naveen Kishore, a theater practitioner who was working under Bandopadhyay at the time. It began primarily as a response to the growing need for an Indian publishing house for theater and the other arts and since then it has expanded its operations to include translations from the French and the German as well as twentieth century critical theory and non-fiction. At present, the company has registered divisions in London
and New York
alongside its initial establishment in Kolkata.
The function of English in India as a link language made it possible for plays composed in the regional languages to be brought onto the same platform and thereby widening the scope of national theater.The series attempted to enhance important play scripts with additional material to provide the interested student, scholar, theater person and reader with more complete access to the script. Theater, the cinema, theoretical writings on the cinema and art made up the initial catalogue of Seagull Books and since its inception, its focus has always laid in the direction of what might be termed as serious fiction.
holds the distribution rights for Seagull Books. Essentially functioning as a press, it has a wide distributing network as well which facilitates the distribution of books by their own press as well as other publishing houses. This is not co-publication for Seagull does not sell rights; the books are published in Kolkata and shipped to the Press who then send them out to booksellers over the world.
, Hindi
, Marathi, Gujarati
, Malayalam, Kannada and Manipuri
.It has also initiated a Theater for Change project with funding from the UK-based Network for Social Change and collaborates with two Calcutta NGOs that work with women victims of violence and with children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Though PeaceWorks is a not for profit charitable trust under the Seagull Foundation for the Arts and has no immediate or direct link with Seagull Books, being an independent organization in itself, there is a great deal of crossover between the two establishments. Being a relatively small organization, staff members from Seagull Books often collaborate on PeaceWorks’s projects and help in organizing its events.
Kolkata
Kolkata , formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it was the commercial capital of East India...
in 1982 by Samik Bandopadhyay
Samik Bandyopadhyay
Samik Bandyopadhyay is a Kolkata-based critic of Indian art, theatre and film. He has been elected as vice-chairman of National School of Drama in New Delhi...
and Naveen Kishore, a theater practitioner who was working under Bandopadhyay at the time. It began primarily as a response to the growing need for an Indian publishing house for theater and the other arts and since then it has expanded its operations to include translations from the French and the German as well as twentieth century critical theory and non-fiction. At present, the company has registered divisions in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
alongside its initial establishment in Kolkata.
Origin
Beginning with the series New Indian Playwrights which translated the work of regional Indian playwrights into English, the project grew to accommodate film scripts, especially post-production film scripts.The function of English in India as a link language made it possible for plays composed in the regional languages to be brought onto the same platform and thereby widening the scope of national theater.The series attempted to enhance important play scripts with additional material to provide the interested student, scholar, theater person and reader with more complete access to the script. Theater, the cinema, theoretical writings on the cinema and art made up the initial catalogue of Seagull Books and since its inception, its focus has always laid in the direction of what might be termed as serious fiction.
Distribution
One of the ways Seagull circumvented the problem of being reduced to the status of an Indian publishing house catering to a niche market was by setting up an international distributing system that would source its books to a global audience. At present, the University of Chicago PressUniversity of Chicago Press
The University of Chicago Press is the largest university press in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including The Chicago Manual of Style, dozens of academic journals, including Critical Inquiry, and a wide array of...
holds the distribution rights for Seagull Books. Essentially functioning as a press, it has a wide distributing network as well which facilitates the distribution of books by their own press as well as other publishing houses. This is not co-publication for Seagull does not sell rights; the books are published in Kolkata and shipped to the Press who then send them out to booksellers over the world.
Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre
In 1987, Naveen Kishore founded the Seagull Foundation for the Arts which was to function as a not for profit charitable trust. Under that trust, various activities are carried out, one of which has been the Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre. The Resource Centre possesses a vast Arts library where for a nominal sum, one can become a member. Along with the Arts library, there are film and music libraries. Various activities related to performance in the arts are organized and carried out by the Resource Centre; ranging from dance recitals, play readings, photography exhibitions, book reviews to theater workshops. His background in showcasing in the arts helped Naveen Kishore channelise his energy into the Resource Centre. The selling and showcasing of art acts as fundraisers for the revenue earned on the books is not always enough since most of the books published by Seagull are slow sellers and selling the art helps the company to raise money for its non profit enterprises as well as some of the profit activities.Seagull Foundation for the Arts
The Foundation creates and presents arts exhibitions, major retrospectives by senior artists, focuses on non-saleable aspects or areas of an artist's work that commercial galleries are reluctant to exhibit and conducts research and documents the life and work of respected artists such as the late Nirode Mazumdar.It carries out video-biography projects using the mainstream medium of television to share the lives and professional histories of important artists and translates contemporary plays by playwrights in BengaliBengali
Bengali may refer to something of, from, or related to Bengal, the region roughly divided between West Bengal, Tripura and Bangladesh.* Bengali people, a major linguistic group in South Asia* Bengali Hindu people, the ethnic group native to eastern India....
, Hindi
Hindi
Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
, Marathi, Gujarati
Gujarati language
Gujarati is an Indo-Aryan language, and part of the greater Indo-European language family. It is derived from a language called Old Gujarati which is the ancestor language of the modern Gujarati and Rajasthani languages...
, Malayalam, Kannada and Manipuri
Manipuri
Manipuri is the synonym of Meetei or Meitei. Meetei is an endonym and Manipuri is an exonym.It may refer to:* Manipur, a state in northeastern India* Manipuri language, a Tibeto-Burman language also known as the Meeteilon...
.It has also initiated a Theater for Change project with funding from the UK-based Network for Social Change and collaborates with two Calcutta NGOs that work with women victims of violence and with children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
PeaceWorks
Within the Seagull Foundation for the Arts, PeaceWorks , which is a separate organization, was initially begun as a direct response to the Godhra riots of 2002, during which time it was felt that the religious polarization between the Hindu and the Muslim communities needed to be addressed and examined. PeaceWorks thus began with discussing the Hindu-Muslim divide with young children, making them watch films, encouraging them to participate in theater and talk about this difference. Instead of restricting PeaceWorks to just the religious issue, it now talks about living with difference. This could be any kind of difference: physical, sexual or related to gender. It tackles and exposes children to the idea of difference through the arts.Though PeaceWorks is a not for profit charitable trust under the Seagull Foundation for the Arts and has no immediate or direct link with Seagull Books, being an independent organization in itself, there is a great deal of crossover between the two establishments. Being a relatively small organization, staff members from Seagull Books often collaborate on PeaceWorks’s projects and help in organizing its events.
Publications
At present, each book published is classified under one of the several series heads.- Seagull World Literature
- Swiss List
- German List
- French List
- Enactments
- In Performance
- Offence Series
- Censorship Series
- Conversation Series
- What Was CommunismCommunismCommunism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
? - Selected Works of Mahasweta DeviMahasweta DeviMahasweta Devi is an Indian social activist and writer.- Biography :Mahasweta Devi was born in 1926 in Dhaka, to literary parents in a Hindu Brahmin family. Her father Manish Ghatak was a well known poet and novelist of the Kallol era, who used the pseudonym Jubanashwa...
- Selected Works of Utpal DuttUtpal DuttUtpal Dutt was an Indian actor, director, and writer-playwright. He was primarily an actor in Bengali Theatre, where he became a pioneering figure in Modern Indian theatre, when he founded the 'Little Theater Group' in 1947, which enacted many English, Shakespearean and Brecht plays, in a period...
- Selected Works of Badal Sircar
- Culture Studies
- New Indian Playwrights
- Performance Theory
- Seagull Filmscripts
- Film Theory
- Art