Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an Indian-American writer, poet, and writing professor at the University of Texas at Houston. Her masterpieces include “The Palace of Illusions” (2008), “The Mistress of Spice” (1997), “A Wonderful Thing” (2009) and “My Heart’s Sister” (1999). Her work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, and the O. Henry Award-winning novel. Her books have been translated into thirty languages, including Dutch, Hebrew, Bengali, Hungarian, Turkish, Hindi and Japanese.
Wiki/Biography
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni was born on Sunday, July 29, 1956, in Kolkata, India (age 67; as of 2023). Her zodiac sign is Leo. He received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Calcutta in 1976 and went to Wright State University in the United States to pursue a master’s degree in the same year. In 1985, she received her Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is professor of writing at the University of Houston in Texas and has taught at Diablo College and Foothills College in California. She is a founding member and president of Maitri, which helps South Asian women in the Bay Area.
family
Parents and siblings
Her father’s name is Rajendra Kumar Banerjee and her mother’s name is Tatini Banerjee.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s mother
husband and children
Her husband is Shell petroleum engineer S. Murthy Divakaruni. They have two sons, Anand and Abhay. She used her son’s name in children’s novels.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni with husband Murthy and son
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni with her husband and adult son
sign
Profession
Divakaruni began her writing career as a poet. His poetry collections include “Black Candle”, “Leaving Yuba City”, etc. She is the author of “The Mistress of Spice” (1997), “Sister of My Heart” (1999), “Before Visiting the Goddess” (2016), “The Palace of Fantasy” (2008), “The Enchanted Forest” (2019) 21 books including “The Enchanted Forest” (2019) and “The Enchanted Forest” (2019). The Last Queen(2021). She is a well-known and prolific author who has published novels in a variety of genres including historical fiction, magical realism, mythology, realistic fiction, and fantasy.
novel
- Arranged Marriage: The Story (1995)
- The Spice Mistress(1997)
- My Heart’s Sister(1999)
- The Unknown Error in Our Lives (2001)
- Vine of Desire(2002)
- Stranger Lives(2007)
- Fantasy Palace: A Novel (2008)
- A Wonderful Thing(2010)
- Before Visiting the Goddess (2016)
- Enchanted Forest(2019)
teenagers and children
- Nila: Song of Victory (2002)
- Grandma and the Big Gourd (2013) (children’s picture book)
Conch Brotherhood Series
- Fire and Mirror of Dreams(2005)
poetry
- Nasturtium Reasons, Berkeley (Berkeley Poets Seminar) (1990)
- Black candle. Poems about Women in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, Corvallis (Calyx Books) (1991)
- Leaving St. Louis Yuba City (Turtleback Books) (1997)
anthology
- The Many: Cross-Cultural Readings of Writers (1993)
- We Also Sing America (1997)
- Uncovering California: Stories for the 21st Century (2004)
Awards, Honors, Achievements
- In 1996, she won the American Book Award, the PEN Josephine Miles Literary Award, and the Bay Area Book Critics Circle Award for her first collection of stories, Arranged Marriage.
- In 1997, she won the Pushcart Prize for Leaving Yuba City: New and Selected Poems.
- In 2003, she won the Pushcart Award for “Stranger Lives.”
- In 2007, she was awarded the Outstanding Writer Award by the South Asian Literary Association.
- In 2022, “The Last Queen” won the Times of India Best Novel Award and the International Association of Professional Women’s Best Book Award.
She received the Alumni of the Year Award at the UC Berkeley International Academy banquet.
Facts/Trivia
- Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni chose Christopher Marlowe as the subject of her doctoral thesis under the supervision of Stephen Greenblatt at the University of California, Berkeley , entitled “Dangers in Language: A Study of Language in Marlowe’s Plays.”
- Her works have been made into films, plays, dance dramas, and performed in opera form. Her short story “The Word Love” was made into the award-winning short film “Amaar Ma”. Another of her books, Arranged Marriage, has been adapted into a play and performed in the United States and Canada. “Phantom Palace” has been performed on stages in the United States and India. “The Spice Lady” is being adapted into an opera.
- In 2015, the Economic Times included her name in the list of the 20 most influential Indian women in the world.
- She supports organizations such as Pratham, which provides education to underprivileged children in India, Akshaya Patra, which provides food to Indian schoolchildren, Daya & Maitri, which provides assistance to survivors of domestic violence, and the Houston Food Bank.
- She wrote the libretto for the opera River of Light, which was performed by the Houston Grand Opera and the San Francisco Festival Opera.
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education