Salil Tripathi chairs the Writers in Prison Committee of PEN International (2015-2021). From 2009-2013 he was co-chair of the Writers at Risk Committee at English PEN. Salil is an award-winning journalist and writer, born in Bombay, India. He has been a foreign correspondent in Singapore and Hong Kong and now lives in New York. He has been a foreign correspondent in Singapore and Hong Kong with Far Eastern Economic Review, and has written for newspapers around the world, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, Foreign Policy, NYR Daily, New Statesman, Guardian, Independent. He is contributing editor at the Caravan (India) and a columnist at Mint. He is a Journalism Adviser at the Global Reporting Center (University of British Columbia), and a member of the UK executive committee of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (UK).

His awards include the Citibank Pan Asia Economic Journalism Award in 1994, the third prize at Bastiat Prize in 2011, and Red Ink Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2015. His books include Offence: The Hindu Case (Seagull, 2009), The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and its Unquiet Legacy (Aleph, 2014 and Yale University Press, 2016), and Detours: Songs of the Open Road (Tranquebar, 2015). He is writing a book about Gujaratis.

In a parallel life, he is senior adviser, global issues, at the Institute for Human Rights and Business.