Iksaka Banu

Studied graphic design at the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) and worked in advertising in Jakarta until 2006 before becoming a freelance graphic artist and writer. As a young boy, his stories were published in the children’s columns of Harian Angkatan Bersenjata (Army Journal), Kompas daily newspaper and Kawanku magazine. He then moved on to drawing comics. In his high school years, his comics “Samba the Mighty Rabbit” was published in Ananda magazine throughout 1978. In his adult life, the day-to-day life as a father and art-director took his attention away from writing. In the year 2000, during a long sabbatical, he tried to write a short story that was eventually published in the magazine Matra. It gave him the encouragement to continue writing. Since then he has been published in Femina magazine, Horison literary journal and the daily newspaper Koran Tempo. His two short-stories “Rose at the Tiger Canal” and “All for Indies” were voted among the top twenty best short-stories of Indonesia by the Pena Kencana literary award in 2008 and 2009 respectively. He won the 2014 Khatulistiwa Literary Prize for prose.