Mary Therese Kurkalang is an arts manager and communications consultant. She started her career in 1995 working with NGOs before moving to the arts and the publishing sector. She is the Founder and Director of Khublei (estd. 2012) where she works across disciplines. For the past few years, and especially through Khublei, Mary has been working to actively promote the cultures of the North-Eastern states of India, and raise awareness on issues related to these states. Till June 2016, she had worked on over 30 projects spread across India and abroad, including the production of an exhibition in Assam for Amar Kanwar, curating a multiple language poetry project for Goethe-Institut in Sikkim, organising a cross-media storytelling project on Stephen Fry, organizing the launch of Bloomsbury in India and most recently of Juggernaut Books. Since 2014, she has been the India Publishing Industry Consultant and Jury Member of the Australia Council for the Arts, Programme for Publishers. Mary is on the Advisory Boards of Salt Arts (Karachi), Nipman Foundation Awards (Delhi), Studio Nilima (Guwahati). In 2014 and 2015, she was an Advisory Committee Member of NESFAS International Terra Madre Festival 2015 (Shillong) and Samanvay – IHC Indian Languages Festival (Delhi). She was also Festival Director for the ‘Cultures of Peace’ Festival of the North East for 3 editions in 2012 -2014.