Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Biography

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an Indian-American writer, novelist and poet. She serves as the Betty and Gene McDavid Professor of Writing at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. Her short story collection Arranged Marriage won an American Book Award in 1995. Mistress of Spices short-listed for the Orange Prize was later made to a feature film with Aishwarya Rai and Dylan McDermott in the main lead. Her novel, Sister of My Heart was also adapted to a feature film. Divakaruni's works are largely set in India and US and often features the experiences of South Asian immigrants. She writes fantasy works for kids as well as realistic fiction and historical fiction.

Born as Chitralekha Banerjee in 1956 in Kolkata, her school and college education was completed at Kolkata. She graduated from University of Calcutta in 1976 and attended Wright State University, US where she received a master's degree. She received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1985. Later she took many odd jobs like - babysitter, a store clerk, a bread slicer in a bakery, a laboratory assistant and even a dining hall attendant. Later she taught at several colleges in US. She now lives in Texas, where she teaches at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. She is a co-founder and former president of Maitri, a helpline founded in 1991 for South Asian women dealing with domestic abuse.

A few of her noted novels are Queen of dreams, Arranged Marriage: Stories, The Conch Bearer, Grandma and the Great Gourd, One Amazing Thing and The Palace of Illusions: A Novel. Her poetry collections are The Reason for Nasturtiums, Black Candle and Leaving Yuba City. Multitude:Cross Cultural Readings for Writers, We Too Sing America and California Uncovered: Stories for the 21st Century are her anthologies.

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Updated: March 20, 2014