2026 Storytelling Festival

Usha Venkatraman is an award-winning Storyteller, TEDx Speaker, educationist, author, classical vocalist, puppeteer, and radio show host, who inspires and transforms through stories. Recently donned the role of a Social Impact Creator at the UN Women 2024 & 2025, for the 68th &69th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women from India.

Usha’s stories are an intersection of Indian Myths, folklore, Feminism and Music.
She loves to bring different voices together, weaving threads of untold stories of women heroes, stitching together forgotten folklore, fragments of myth, songs, and music.
Usha has directed and performed in storytelling ensemble shows.
Usha has been storytelling at national and international festivals, events, and conferences in India and abroad.
Usha is the founder of Mumbai Storytellers Society and festival director of  Mumbai International Storytelling Festival. 

More about Usha https://www.ushavenkatraman.com/

Shalini Bajaj Surve is a passionate storyteller, media professional, and former entrepreneur who once helmed a book-based subscription box. Forever in search of creative sparks, she delights in wandering through the worlds of stories and books. Over the past four years, she has honed her craft in both storytelling and writing, weaving tales with the same joy and wonder with which she embraces dance, music, and bird photography. For Shalini, storytelling is nothing less than sprinkling a little magical pixie dust into the everyday.

An erstwhile core member of the Mumbai Storytellers Society (MSS), Shalini played an instrumental role in conceptualising, executing, and promoting its sessions and events. She has performed widely—both with MSS and independently—across schools, museums, and public events. She represented India at the Kanoon International Storytelling Festival in Iran (2022), performed at Gaatha – Mumbai International Storytelling Festival (2023), and took the stage at the Kukdukoo Children’s Fest (2025). She was also an integral part of the festival team for Gaatha in both 2023 and 2024.

Shalini now brings her experience of managing and promoting storytelling events to MIST 2026. 

Hema Subramanian calls herself an expressionist. She loves to express herself through poetry, art, music and stories.

She has been in the field of education for more than  20 years. She  loves to curate training workshops on pedagogy, Instructional design, assessment strategies and teaching of the English Language. Her  8 level after school creative writing curriculum called’ Pentalk – The Orange Wedges Inc’  for children from 7 -14 years was a hit with parents and children and has been her pet project for the last 15 years. Apart from the classes she has been conducting individual workshops on poetry writing , script writing and theatre workshop as well as language through art workshops. She has been  on the International panel of ESOL examiners for Trinity College London. She offers her services as a freelance educational consultant  to different organizations, many of them being NGO’s. Her Stanford certification in Design thinking has helped her create modules and solutions for many of these organizations.

Her love for writing stories and narrating them led her to be a passionate storyteller. Her blog “ Poesy “ is well appreciated and she is penning some stories that she would like to publish soon. In the meanwhile she has published here first book of poems called “ Reflections “
Her passion for storytelling led her to Co founded the Mumbai Storytellers Society , where she volunteered her services as a Treasurer  and also with the day to day running of the society. She has been a core member in the Festival committee for  Mumbai Storytellers Society’s International Storytelling festivals – MIST @ Panchgani, Igniting hope  and  Gaatha International Storytelling festival 2023 and 2024.

Her love for Indian Classical Music inspired her to Co founded – Arghya Indian Classical Music and Fine Art Foundation , an organisation  that strives to uphold the tradition of pure Indian Classical music and fine arts through their quality of presentation .  She has been a part of organizing events for the same for the past 2 years.

Avantika graduated from the London Film School and her maiden directorial venture, Land Gold Women, won the Indian National Award for Best Film in English and scooped up 11 international awards for its “Engaging Story line which reaches out to an International Audience”. Since then she has developed shows for Netflix India and Jio Studios.