Anvar Ali

Anvar Ali (b. 1966, Kerala, India) is a poet, lyricist, literary critic, playwright, documentary filmmaker, screenwriter, and translator. His four collections of poetry in Malayalam established him as a prominent voice in contemporary Indian poetry. His poems have been translated into various Indian and foreign languages, anthologised, and published in reputed literary magazines and journals. He has won two international awards and a state award for the screenplay of Margam, a feature film he co-wrote, and has won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Poetry for Mehboob Express, his third collection of poems. Call from the Other Shore, a biopic on Attoor Ravi Varma, the renowned Malayalam poet, was his first independent documentary film. He is an acclaimed contemporary lyricist who won the Kerala State Film Award in 2020 and the Filmfare Award in 2018 and 2024 for Best Lyricist. He participated in the Writer-in-Residence Program of the Literature Translation Institute, South Korea, in 2007, and was associated with Insurrection, a collaborative group of poets and musicians from India and South Africa, in 2024. He has also been part of various national and international writers' meets and festivals.