Novelist and short-story writer
Susham Bedi has been writing and publishing since 1984. Born in
Ferozepur, Punjab, she is an
academic whose research work is in the area of Indian theater.
As a teenager she became a
leading actress in Hindi dramas on All India Radio and later on
television.
She began writing at school and won many awards for poetry and short
stories
as an undergraduate but her writing career began in earnest in 1978
when her
first story was published in the literary magazine Kahani.
She holds a B.A. (1964) and M.A (1966) from Delhi University, and a Ph.D. (1979) from Punjab University. Her doctoral dissertation was on Experimentation and Innovation in Hindi drama. She is fluent in English, French, Hindi (including Braj and Awadhi), Urdu, Punjabi and Sanskrit.
Susham Bedi's first novel, Havan (Fire Sacrifice -- translated into English by David Rubin) was serialised in the magazine Ganga and published as a novel in 1989. It was published in Urdu in 1992. Since then she has published two more novels Lautna (The Returning) in 1992 and Itar (The Other) in 1992. All three deal with the cultural dilemmas of Indians living in the West. She taught in Delhi and Punjab Universities until 1975 when she followed her husband to Brussels where she became a correspondent for the Times of India.
She has lived in the United States since 1979 and has been teaching in Hindi Language and Literature at Columbia University in New York since 1985. She is currently the coordinator for the Hindu/Urdu language program at Columbia.