Jerry Pinto
Indian writer and poet (born 1966)
Jerry Pinto (born Jeronimo Pinto, 22 May 1966) is an Indian poet, novelist, short story writer, translator, and journalist based in Mumbai, India. He writes in English. Pinto's works include Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb (2006), which won the Best Book on Cinema Award at the 54th National Film Awards, as well as Surviving Women (2000) and Asylum and Other Poems (2003). His first novel Em and the Big Hoom was published in 2012. Pinto won the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for Fiction in 2016. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2016 for his novel Em and the Big Hoom.
01Early life
Jerry Pinto was born in Goa, India. He is a Roman Catholic. He grew up in Mahim, Bombay. Pinto received a liberal arts degree from Elphinstone College, University of Mumbai, and a law degree from Government Law College, Mumbai.
02Career
Pinto's 2006 book about the Indian actress Helen titled The Life and Times of an H-Bomb, won the National Film Award for Best Book on Cinema in 2007.
His collection of poems, Asylum and Other Poems, was released in 2003. He also co-edited Confronting Love (2005) with Arundhathi Subramaniam, a book of contemporary Indian love poetry in English.
He returned to journalism as a consulting editor at Man's World magazine. Later, he joined Paprika Media to edit their special projects. He is now a freelance journalist, writing articles for the Hindustan Times and Live Mint newspapers, as well as The Man and MW.
In 2009, he co-authored Leela: A Portrait with Leela Naidu, a semi-biographical book of anecdotes and photos from Naidu's life.
His first novel, Em and the Big Hoom, was published in 2012, and won The Hindu Literary Prize that year. It was also shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize in 2013. It won the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize in Fiction in 2016.
He has translated several books from Marathi to English including Cobalt Blue, Baluta, When I Hid My Caste and I, the Salt Doll. He translated the novel Havan (The Fire Sacrifice, 1989) by Susham Bedi from Hindi to English.
03Awards and honours
- 2007 National Film Award for Best Book on Cinema for Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb
- 2012 The Hindu Literary Prize for Em and the Big Hoom
- 2013 Crossword Book Award for Em and the Big Hoom
- 2016 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize in Fiction for Em and The Big Hoom
- 2016 Sahitya Akademi Award for Em and The Big Hoom
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Jerry Pinto”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Jerry Pinto at Amaravati Literature Festival 2025 (cropped).jpg by Pavan santhosh.s, CC BY-SA 4.0
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