About Us
Antonym Council of Global Art & Literature
A non-profit organization founded in 2023 on a simple but radical belief: that literature and the arts are not static objects of heritage, but living, breathing forces of dialogue — forces that move between languages, cultures, geographies, and generations.
ACGAL is an ecosystem — one that brings together writers, translators, translation initiatives, residencies, publishing programs, and live literary encounters. At its core, the Council works across three interconnected commitments:
- 1
To translate and publish contemporary literary writing into English and other languages.
- 2
To support translation as a creative and collaborative act.
- 3
To create spaces — both physical and intellectual — where literature is experienced as dialogue.
The Antonym Magazine
At the heart of the Council's activities lies The Antonym, our flagship literary magazine, published in both online and print editions. It is committed to contemporary vernacular writing that is bold, diverse, and uncompromising — poetry, fiction, nonfiction, essays, interviews, and visual narratives from voices across the world, especially those writing from multilingual realities. The online edition allows for immediacy and global accessibility; the print edition is intentional and archival — an object to be held, revisited, annotated, and preserved.
Translation Grants
Recognizing that translation requires not just passion but also time and resources, the Council offers translation grants to support literary projects across languages — awarded to translators working on poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and hybrid forms, particularly works that might otherwise struggle to find institutional or commercial support.
River of Words
One of the Council's most recent and resonant initiatives, River of Words brought together writers, poets, translators, and thinkers to explore the metaphor — and reality — of the river: as language, as memory, as migration, as ecology, as time.
The Antonym Collections
Extending the Council's commitment to long-form is The Antonym Collections, its publishing wing — carefully curated books, poetry collections, translated works, anthologies, and critical texts that require time, care, and editorial depth.
A Collective Vision
That literature is a space of ethical listening.
That translation is an act of imagination and responsibility.
That global does not mean homogeneous, but plural and relational.
The Antonym Council does not seek to speak for the world, but to create platforms where the world can speak with itself.
Our Team
Biswadip Chakraborty
Director
Engineer, writer, restaurateur and travel enthusiast with four books of fiction in Bengali to his credit. Founder and director of Antonym Collection and the Antonym Council of Global Arts and Literature.
Dr. Chaiti Mitra
Director
Associate Professor in the Department of English, Ramakrishna Sarada Mission Vivekananda Vidyabhavan College, Kolkata, and Guest Faculty at West Bengal State University. A translator of Shyamol Gangopadhyay and Tilottama Majumdar; her recent translation Chandaneswar Junction: And Other Stories is published by The Antonym Collection. Her Bengali translation of Hamlet is currently being staged by Swapnasandhani.
Kathakali Jana
Director
Head of administration and events at the ITC Sangeet Research Academy in Kolkata. She writes about the arts across mainstream and niche publications, engages with performing-arts practitioners, and is a literary translator.
Biswajit Panda
Director
Associate Professor at Acharya Sukumar Sen Mahavidyalaya, Bardhaman. He earned his Ph.D. from Jadavpur University in 2008, where he was also a Senior Research Fellow in Research and Teaching.