The Great Nicobar Journeyby Tansy Troy, published by Talking Cub is a deeply empathetic story about friendship, resistance, and the fight to protect our one beautiful planet we know as home. In this adventure novel, a group of animals from the Andaman and Nicobar islands travel across mainland India to meet the decision makers in Delhi in a bid to save their home. Along the way they meet endangered animals, members from the tribal communities and allies.
In this conversation, Tansy Troy, author of the book, discusses the making of the book, conditioned ideas of power, and how youth have the capacity to change the protocol and what she wants the young readers to take away from the story.
Tansy Troy is an India-based educationalist, poet, performer, playwright and maker of bird and animal masks. During term time, Tansy works as Director of Performing Arts at Shrewsbury International School India (Bhopal), where she tours eco dramas with her dramatic troupes of young performers around theatres and festivals of India. In 2021, she conceived The Apple Press, a young people’s eco journal which includes poetry, stories, articles and artwork by both students as young as eight years old and household names in literature.
In 2023, Tansy published her first collection of poetry, Ratnakosha, with Red River Press and since then, has had poetry, articles, reviews and illustrations in The Hindustan Times, The Hindu, The Scroll, Punch Magazine, Art Amour, Open Magazine, The Chakkar, Muse India, Plato’s Cave, Usawa, Sanctuary Asia and Frontline Her verse has been anthologised in The Yearbooks of Indian Poetry in English 2023, 2024 and 2025 (published Pippa Rann, London) and The Tagore Anthology.
In 2025, Red River published Tansy’s second book of poetry, With Earth as My Witness while The Writers Workshop published a third collection, Singing to the Eumenides. This summer of 2026 sees the release of a novel for the young and passionate at heart, The Great Nicobar Journey, published by Talking Cub, an imprint of Speaking Tiger. When school is out, Tansy nests with her family of beautiful animals (and a few humans) in the majestic Himalayas.
Shruti Sharma is the founder of The Earth Book Club and Books on the Delhi Metro, two community-driven initiatives born from a simple belief that books have the power to become both a personal refuge and a tool for collective change.
Through The Earth Book Club, an Instagram-based environmental literature community she started in 2021, Shruti curates green literature for readers of all ages, championing the idea that informed, engaged readers are essential to building a better future. With Books on the Delhi Metro, she brings that same love of reading into the city’s daily commute, turning ordinary journeys into moments of discovery and connection.
By day, Shruti works as a marketing professional at an IT company. But books and stories have always been her true passion. She has spoken on this journey as a TEDx speaker, bringing back the joy of reading in public spaces.
Voices for the Land
When climate conversations are largely data-driven, what is the weight of poetry in conveying ecological grief? How can verse convey our deep connection to the land and call for change? What is the power of ecopoetry?
In this conversation, renowned poets Vinita Agarwal and Ramesh Karthik Nayak discuss their respective collections Eartha and Chakmak. The conversation also touched upon the role of poetry- should it be a call for environmental activism or invite readers to reflect deeper on their relationship with the natural world?
Vinita Agrawal lives in Indore, India. She has authored six books of poetry and edited two anthologies on climate change. She is the recipient of the Jayanta Mahapatra National Award for Literature 2024, the Proverse Prize Hongkong 2021, the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize 2018 and the Gayatri GaMarsh Memorial Award for Literary Excellence, USA, 2015. She co-edits the Yearbook series of Indian Poetry in English. She was former Poetry Editor with Usawa Literary Review. She has also authored a children’s fiction book Jade and the Harmony Flyers. She has been published in Global South, Pratik, Mascara Review, Indian Literature, Asian Cha, Voice and Verse, The Bombay Literary Magazine and the Canary, Parcham among others. She is on the Advisory Board of the Tagore Literary Prize.
Ramesh Karthik Nayak is the winner of the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar in Telugu for the year 2024 for his short story collection, “Dhaavlo”. He is the first tribal and youngest Telugu author to receive this honour at the age of twenty-six. He is a bilingual poet, short-story writer, editor and translator from Telangana. He has seven books to his credit, six in Telugu, and a poetry collection in English, Chakmak, which was awarded the 2024 Muse India Young Writer Award in the Poetry category. He is one of the first writers in Telugu to depict the voice, identity and lifestyle of the Banjaras.
