Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (1956 - ) is an Indian-American author, poet, and professor of English at The University of Houston Creative Writing Program.

Background

Divakaruni was born in Kolkata, India. She received her B.A. from the University of Calcutta in 1976. In 1976 she also went to the United States where she attended Wright State University and received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1985 (Christopher Marlowe was the subject of her doctoral dissertation).

Career

She has taught at Foothill College in Los Altos, California. She has also worked as a babysitter, a store clerk, a bread slicer, a dining hall attendant, and in laboratories. She now lives in Texas, where she teaches at The University of Houston Creative Writing Program.

Divakaruni is also a co-founder and former president of a helpline for South Asian women who are dealing with various forms of abuse from others. The organization, Maitri, was founded in 1991.

Fiction

Divakaruni's work has been published in over 50 magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's and The New Yorker and her writing has been included in over 30 anthologies.

Her next work will be a re-telling of the Indian epic, The Mahabharata told from the female characters' perspective.[1]

Film and television

Her novel, The Mistress of Spices, was released as the film The Mistress of Spices in 2005. It is directed by Paul Mayeda Berges, with a script by Berges and his wife, Gurinder Chadha. The film stars Aishwarya Rai.

In addition, her novel Sister of my Heart was made into a television series in Tamil and aired in India, as Anbulla Snegithiye (Loving Friend) [2]

Works

Fiction
- Queen of Dreams (2004)
- The Conch Bearer (2003)
- Neela: Victory Song (2002)
- The Vine of Desire (2002)
- The Unknown Errors of our Lives (2001)
- Sister of My Heart (1999)
- Leaving Yuba City (1997)
- The Mistress of Spices (1997)
- Arranged Marriage (1995)
- Black Candle (1991)
- The Reason for Nasturiums (1990)
- Dark Like the River (1987)

Poetry
- Leaving Yuba City (1997)
- Black Candle (1991)
- The Reason for Nasturtiums (1990)

Anthologies
- California Uncovered: Stories for the 21st Century (2004)

Quote

"Badly and tentatively I began writing early poems. You think I'm being modest but I'm not. I destroyed those sentimental and bad poems recently so no archivist could find them." - Chitra Divakaruni ^{[citation needed]}.

Awards

1997: The Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize and the Pushcart Prize for Leaving Yuba City: New and Selected Poems.
1997: Los Angeles Times Best Book for Mistress of Spices.
1995: The American Book Award for Arranged Marriage: Stories.
PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Prize for Fiction for Arranged Marriage: Stories.
Bay Area Book Reviewers Award for Fiction for Arranged Marriage: Stories.
PEN Oakland Award.
2000 National Book Award judge.

References

Abcarian, Richard and Marvin Klotz. " Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni." In Literature: The Human Experience, 9th edition. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2006: 1544.

External links

Biographies:

Misc.:

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