About Sulagna Mukhopadhyay

While pursuing her studies in Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University, Sulagna Mukhopadhyay developed a keen interest in Gender Studies and Creative Writing. Since 1986 she started freelancing for various newspapers and magazines in English and Bengali. After completing a ten-year course in the South Indian classical dance form Bharatanatyam under the guidance of Ms. Thankamani Kutty she performed in India and Germany and simultaneously began her freelancing career as a dance critic for two leading English-language dailies, The Telegraph and The Statesman. She learnt German at the Goethe-Institut, Max Mueller Bhavan Kolkata and successfully completed the C1 level examination. She now teaches German as a Guest Lecturer at Jadavpur University. Since the last twenty-six years she also teaches at South Point School, a reputed English medium private school in South Kolkata. In addition to her studies and dance, she was involved as a stage actress in a Bengali theatre group Sangbarta, and was a part of their collage productions based on the lives and writings of German writers and poets such as Heinrich von Kleist, Friedrich Hӧlderlin, Rainer Maria Rilke. She contributed to various Bengali and English magazines on the reunification of Germany and its impact on contemporary German literary texts by authors such as Christa Wolf. In 2019, Sulagna received a grant from the Berlin Literary Colloquium for participating in a translation workshop on lyrical poems. Her debut as a translator of literary books began with Kathrin Schmidt's poetry collection Fluβbild mit Engel (নদী ও দেবদূত/ Nadi o Debdut), published by Jadavpur University Press during the Kolkata International Book Fair 2020. Isabel Fargo Cole's first novel Die Grűne Grenze (সবুজ সীমানা/ Sabuj Simana) was translated into Bengali by her with funding from the Goethe-Institut, Munich, published and launched by Rritobak/ঋতবাক during the Kolkata International Book Fair 2022. Swiss-German writer Markus Kirchhofer’s collection of short stories Der Stachel (কাঁটা /Kanta) was translated by her with financial support from Pro Helvetia, Delhi and published in August 2022 by Rritobak. She is currently working on the translation of Christa Wolf's Der geteilte Himmel, with funding from the Goethe-Institut, Munich, with Jadavpur University Press as the publisher. A short story on dementia, Mama, ich bin da, written in German by her has been published by Experimenta in their September 2022 issue.