Bidisha

Bidisha SK Mamata, (born Bidisha Bandyopadhyay,) known professionally as Bidisha, is a British broadcaster, film-maker, and journalist specialising in international affairs, social justice issues, arts and culture, and international human rights activist. She also does outreach work in UK detention centres and prisons, in affiliation with literary and human rights organisation English PEN.

Bidisha began writing for arts magazines i-D, Oyster, Volume, Dazed and Confused, and the NME at 15, after launching a style fanzine at 14 as part of the riot grrrl movement. In 1995, at the age of 16, Bidisha signed a £15,000 book deal with HarperCollins. Her first novel, Seahorses, was published two years later, during her first year at university. During this time she also had regular opinion columns in The Big Issue magazine, The Daily Telegraph and the Thursday edition of The Independent newspaper. She was a contributing editor of the women's literary magazine Sibyl and the style magazine 2nd Generation, and has written for The Guardian, the Financial Times, Mslexia, The Observer, New Statesman, and arts magazine The List.

In parallel with her writing, Bidisha has developed a career as a radio and TV arts critic and presenter. In 2017, she became a film-maker, directing her first film, An Impossible Poison, which was commissioned by the arts organisation Speaking Volumes for their Breaking Ground: A New British Con_Text showcase of British creative talent. Her next film project was a series of films called the Aurora series, of which the first is Aurora: All is Well(October 2020). [Wikipedia]