Ashok Banker: The Official Bio
Aug 31st, 2007 by Ashok
Ashok Kumar Banker has been called “a pioneer among Indian writers” by the Indian media. He lives in Mumbai, India, and does not possess a passport.
His prolific career has spanned a number of writing experiences and successes, which include:
In his late teens and early twenties, he worked in advertising and direct marketing, winning awards and acclaim for his creative work on assignments for several major agencies such as JWT, Lintas, Rediffusion, Chaitra Leo Burnett and Trikaya Grey, among others.
A recent photograph of Ashok Banker, age 44 (Picture by author, CC license)
In his late twenties and early thirties, he became one of the best-known bylines in Indian feature writing and journalism, with over 2,000 published bylines ranging from news-breaking front-page stories in Times of India and Outlook, to articles, reviews and editorials in virtually every major publication in India.
In his mid thirties, he became a highly sought-after scriptwriter, with over 400 produced scripts, including award-winning documentaries, corporate films, television shows and serials, and feature films, to his credit. He was the creator and writer of the first Indian television series in English and a screenplay and dialogue writer for the first Malaysian television series in English.
Starting in his early teens, and continuing throughout his career, he worked steadily on stories using Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, as well as Mystery and Crime genre tropes. Several dozen found publication in journals and magazines around the world, making him the best-known Indian author of SFFH. His SFFH stories have appeared in publications such as Interzone, Wierd Tales, Altair, Artemis, Gothic Net, Best New Fantasy, won the Utopiales Nantes award, been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, the Carl Brandon Parallax Award, and have been translated into German, Swedish, Bulgarian, Hebrew, Italian, French, Japanese, as well as several Indian languages.
He is regarded as a pioneering literary novelist, and is one of the few living Indian writers included in The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature and The Vintage Anthology of Indian Literature. His work is often referred to in literary courses in universities worldwide, as well as used in management and business workshops and seminars for its inspirational values and iconic status as representative of Indian culture. It is also the subject of doctoral dissertations at universities in Hyderabad and Chennai, among others, and used as teaching aids in schools in New Mexico, USA and Singapore. (These are only a few recent examples.)
Ashok’s work has been nominated for numerous literary awards. He has also been credited by the Indian media as being the author of the first Indian crime novels in English, the first Indian internet novel and the first internet serial novels. He is currently best known as the internationally acclaimed and bestselling author of the Ramayana series, an imaginative reinterpretation of the ancient Sanskrit epic poem. He has authored over 20 books and is regarded as one of India’s most successful novelists. His online arts and culture magazine, Epic India, provides a platform for writers, artists and readers interested in Indian culture. Epic India is poised to make its debut as a publishing imprint in 2009 to provide a platform to non-fiction books about Indian myths, religion, history and culture.
He is an amateur photographer, filmmaker and editor, with a lifelong keen interest in filmmaking technology, animation and digital editing and post-production. An avid film and television buff as well as a voracious reader, he is known for his interest in world cinema and has authored numerous essays and editorials on related subjects over the years, including a short introductory book on Bollywood. His love for the medium of television sees him keep pace with several major currently running shows on US television, watching episodes within a day of their US telecast. Some of his favourite shows are: Dexter, Weeds, Day Break, Medium, Entourage, Masters of Horror, and among old classics, he still loves to revisit Dark Shadows, The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Night Gallery, Outer Limits, and numerous others. He has a personal collection of over 2,000 TV episodes and constantly adds more. Of course, this is dwarfed by his book collection which runs over 10,000, and includes some 1500 of his favourite comics and graphic novel collections. He has been a lifelong fan of comics, long before they became fashionable literally as graphic novels and has never stopped reading old favourites as well as embraced the newer more literary books which he now prefers.
This lifelong interest in comicbooks and graphic novels brought him to the attention of the DC/Vertigo Comics group, who commissioned him in 2005 to create and develop a graphic novel series set entirely in India, for US readers. The series, tentatively titled ‘Becoming Kali’ debuts in 2009. Media rights have been pre-emptively optioned by Warner Bros. He is also adapting his own Ramayana series to a series of graphic novels to be published by his own Epic India imprint in late 2008.
However, all the above notwithstanding, Ashok is currently best known for his ambitious ‘Epic India’ plan to retell all the major myths, legends and itihasa of the Indian sub-continent in one massive overreaching story arc. The ‘Epic India’ library began with the Ramayana series, thus far published in six books, with two more in the series forthcoming. That will be followed by his Krishnavatara series, as well as his Mba series, retelling the tales of Krishna and the world’s largest epic, the Mahabharata, simultaneously. They shall be followed by a historical fiction series retelling all the major events of Indian history from the Buddha to the present day. At the same time, Ashok is also exploring various post-mythological and Science Fictional aspects of the Indian mythos through series such as his Vortal Codex, The Ganesa Palindrome, Vetaal: The First Vampire, The Raj saga, The Indus, and various stand-alone novels. The complete Epic India saga, in four wheels, will comprise around 52 books.
Recently, his Ramayana series was the subject of numerous film rights offers from several major Hollywood and Indian production houses, including Warner Bros, Sir Ben Kingsley Pictures, the makers of 300, and others. The rights are under option at present and under development as a major international film franchise with at least three films budgeted at $180 million each planned.
Ashok is now exclusively creating, developing and co-producing properties for film, television, gaming, internet, and other media under the corporate umbrella of Epic India Intellectual Properties Pvt. Ltd. He does not give media interviews, photo-ops, or publicity or PR in any form, including book launches, readings and signings. Instead, he is contactable 24/7 by readers of his work through his website www.ashokbanker.com. He does not do commissioned assignments, regardless of the fee, and only develops original intellectual properties. He handles all work and business himself, without agents, managers, associates or assistants.
The above Official Bio, as well as the entire contents of this blog, are issued under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution license and may be freely copied, forwarded, distributed and quoted.
