Kalki

Kalki Subramaniam is a Transgender Rights activist, writer, visual artist, climate activist, actor and poet. She is the founder of the pioneer transgender rights organization in India, the Sahodari Foundation. She is a bilingual poet from the transgender community and has authored two brilliant books, 'We Are Not The Others' in English and 'Kuri Aruthen' (Phallus I cut) in Tamil. Some of her essays and poems have been included in many academic curricula of universities in India. Kalki is a gender rights champion who worked with the former Supreme Court judiciary for the legal recognition and recommendations of the transgender community. She was instrumental in the SCI verdict legally recognizing the transgender community in the year 2014. For her activism for the LGBTQI community, she has been invited to several countries to speak on human rights. For her brilliant speech on transgender rights at Harvard University she received a standing ovation. She has also spoken at Yale, Cornell, UPenn and Rutgers University in the USA. For her social work, she has received more than 75 awards and is the recipient of the prestigious Radhika Sen Memorial Silver Wings Award. In 2010, she became the first transgender actor in India to play a lead role in a major feature film called Narthaki. For her literary contributions, she was invited by Schwulus Museum in Berlin and was honoured. Ms Kalki has also been invited by Sahitya Akademy New Delhi and to Netherlands and USA to read her monologues, poetry and other writings. She has won several awards for her social work, and artistic and literary contributions. Currently, Kalki works on her next books in English and Tamil.