Manu Dash is a bilingual poet, editor, translator, publisher and director of the Odisha Art & Literature Festival. An author of almost thirty books, Dash joined the Anam Writers Movement—an anti-establishment movement in Odia literature—shortly before the imposition of Emergency in India in 1975. He is the founder of Dhauli Books, which won the prestigious Publishing Next Industry Award for the Best Printed Book of the Year (Indian Languages) in 2018.