Nainital
Literature
Festival

Jerry Pinto is a well known poet, writer, editor and translator. He has an LLB from Government Law College, Mumbai and a degree in the humanities from Elphinstone College. He has written Em and the Big Hoom, a novel that won him The Crossword Prize, the Hindu Lit for Life Award and the Sahitya Akademi Award. In 2016, he was awarded the Windham-Campbell Award for Fiction from Yale, USA. His next novel Murder in Mahim won the Valley of Words Award for Fiction. His third novel The Education of Yuri has been published to near universal acclaim.

He has edited several anthologies including: Bombay Meri Jaan: Writings on Mumbai; Reflected in Water: Writings on Goa; The Greatest Show on Earth: Writing on Bollywood and with Shanta Gokhale, a collection of stories on Bombay-Mumbai, Maya Nagari.

Mr Pinto is also a translator. He has translated Daya Pawar's path-breaking autobiography Baluta, Sachin Kundalkar's debut novel Cobalt Blue, Mallika Amar Sheikh's I Want To Destroy Myself, Ganesh Matkari's Half-Opened Windows, Baburao Bagul's When I Hid My Caste, Eknath Awad's Strike A Blow to Change the World, Vandana Mishra's I The Salt Doll among others. With Neela Bhagwat, he has translated the women poet-saints of the Warkari tradition, collected in a book called The Ant Who Swallowed the Sun. Shanta Gokhale and Pinto have produced a set of parallel translations of the poet Sant Tukaram, Behold! The Word is God. He has also translated the poetry of Narayan Surve: In That Mill I Too Was Forged. His translation from Hindi of Swadesh Deepak's I Have Not Seen Mandu has been acclaimed. He has also translated some of Deepak's plays and edited and introduced A Bouquet of Dead Flowers: The Best of Swadesh Deepak's Short Stories and a book of Deepak's plays. His first Konkani translation was Boy, Unloved by Dnyaanpeeth award winner Damodar Mauzo.

His work in nonfiction is equally illustrious. He has won the National Award for the Best Writing in Cinema for his analysis of Helen, the Life and Times of a Bollywood H-Bomb. He has also written a biography of Chemould Art Gallery, Citizen Gallery: The Gandhys of Chemould and the Birth of Modern Art in Bombay. Most recently he has written a book on palliativr care in India: A Good Life.

He has also written books for children. Anya and Her Baby Brother and My Daddy and the Well were on the Parag Honours List. Mr Pinto has two books of poetry, Asylum and I Want a Poem and Other Poems.

Between 2002 and 2024, Mr Pinto sat on the board of MelJol which works in the sphere of child rights. He is now on the board of the People's Free Reading Room and Library and the women's archive, SPARROW.

He has taught journalism at the postgraduate Social Communications Media course of the Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai for more than thirty years.