Prof. Jatindra Kumar Nayak is an Indian translator, literary critic, columnist, editor, and academic from Odisha. An alumnus of Oxford University, UK, Prof. Nayak has been instrumental in bringing Odia literature to a global audience through his exemplary translations.
His notable translations include Yantrarudha by Chandrasekhar Rath, rendered into English as Astride the Wheel, for which he received the 2004 Hutch Crossword Book Award for Indian Language Fiction Translation. He also won the Katha Translation Award for his English rendering of Tarun Kanti Mishra’s short story Abaroha.
Prof. Nayak is the Editor-in-Chief of MargAsia, a journal dedicated to exploring the literatures and cultures of Asia and Southeast Asia. He has served as a member of the English Advisory Board of Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, and has been a visiting professor at Ravenshaw University, IIT Bhubaneswar, and Ashoka University. Currently, he is Professor Emeritus at KISS University, Bhubaneswar, and a language expert for Odia at the New India Foundation, Bangalore.