Educated at Kolkata and Oxford, Sayoni Basu started working in publishing at OUP, Oxford. Subsequently, she worked in OUP Delhi and Penguin India, before moving to children’s publishing with Puffin in 2001. Sayoni loved reading international children’s books and books in Bengali, her mother tongue, and was always curious why English language children’s publishing in India was not that exciting. She was later the publishing director at Scholastic India (2005-11) and at Amar Chitra Katha (2011-12). In 2012, together with internationally award winning author Anushka Ravishankar she started Duckbill, a small independent publisher of books for children and young adults. Sayoni thinks this is a very exciting time to be working in children’s publishing in India—both in terms of exciting new writers and books emerging, and also in terms of the technological changes which are transforming the ways in which stories reach children.
Established in 2012, Duckbill is an exciting brand in children’s publishing in India. Our books are for children who are starting to read independently to young adult readers. They have won or been shortlisted for all the awards available for Indian children’s books, won minor international ones, and feature regularly on bestseller lists and recommended reading lists for schools. Our aim is to create books for Indian children, which help them understand the complex contemporary world. Our books, we believe, are compelling reading—with strong plots, humour and characters that the readers can identify with, and they are imbued with the values that are important for our times: the equality of all races, religions and classes, tolerance, justice and kindness. Themes like homosexuality, single-parenting, war, living with disability and class differences are rare in Indian children’s books.
Visit www.duckbill.in for more information
