is undoubtedly the Grande Dame of diasporic Indian literature.
Born in Calcutta, India, in 1940, she grew up in a wealthy traditional
family. She studied in a Bengali-medium school for the first few
years, and learnt English when she travelled with her family for
three years in Europe at the age of eight.
She attended the universities of Calcutta
and Baroda, where she earned a master's
degree in English and Ancient Indian Culture. She
came to America in 1961 to attend the Iowa Writers
Workshop and earned her master of fine arts and
Ph.D. in English from the University of Iowa.
She married Canadian author Clark Blaise in 1963,
immigrated to Canada in the mid-1960s and became
a naturalized citizen in 1972. She was teaching English at McGill
University in Montreal when she began writing fiction. After fourteen
years in Canada, she found life as a "dark-skinned, non-European
immigrant to Canada" very hard, so she moved with her husband to
the United States and took US citizenship.
She won the National Book Critics' Circle Award for best fiction for The Middleman and Other Stories. She has taught creative writing at Columbia University, New York University, and and Queens College, and is currently professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley. She has two sons.
She can be reached c/o Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit Associates, 598 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10022. Phone: (212) 421-1700.
