Maya Chowdhry (born 1964) is a British playwright, poet and

transmedia Transmedia storytelling (also known as transmedia narrative or multiplatform storytelling) is the technique of telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms and formats using current digital technologies. From a producti ...

interactive art Interactive art is a form of art that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Some interactive art installations achieve this by letting the observer walk through, over or around them; others ask the artist ...

ist.

Life

Maya Chowdhry was born in

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...

in 1964. She began writing as an adolescent: Chowdhry worked for Sheffield Film Co-op in the 1980s, and wrote theatre for young people in the 1990s.Maya Chowdhry
Peepal Tree Press. Like other black women playwrights such as

Jackie Kay Jacqueline Margaret Kay, (born 9 November 1961), is a Scottish poet, playwright, and novelist, known for her works ''Other Lovers'' (1993), ''Trumpet'' (1998) and ''Red Dust Road'' (2011). Kay has won many awards, including the Guardian Fictio ...

and

Jacqueline Rudet Jacqueline Rudet (born 1962) is a British dramatist.Jacque ...

, Chowdhry was helped by the appointment of the black woman producer

Frances-Anne Solomon Frances-Anne Solomon (born 28 June 1966) is an English-Caribbean-Canadian filmmaker, writer, producer, and distributor. She has lived in Britain, Barbados and Toronto, Canada. Biography Born in England of Trinidadian parents, who had gone to Br ...

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of Talk radio, spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history fro ...

. Chowdhry's first play, ''Monsoon'' (1993), was broadcast as part of the BBC Young Playwrights' Festival. ''Monsoon'' portrays the return of sisters Jalaarnava and Kavitaa, two second-generation migrant young women, to their parents' birthplace in India. The play parallels the experience of

menstruation Menstruation (also known as a period, among other colloquial terms) is the regular discharge of blood and mucosal tissue from the inner lining of the uterus through the vagina. The menstrual cycle is characterized by the rise and fall of ...

with waiting for the seasonal

monsoon A monsoon () is traditionally a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation but is now used to describe seasonal changes in atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with annual latitudinal osci ...

. Chowdhry's play ''Kaahini'' (1997) was toured by Red Ladder, as one of a series of plays aimed primarily at Asian-British girls. Influenced by the story of

Shikhandi Shikhandi ( sa, शिखण्डी, translit=Śikhaṇḍī) is a character in the Hindu epic Mahabharata. Born as the daughter of Drupada, the King of Panchala, Shikhandi becomes a biological male after agreeing to a sex exchange with a y ...

in the ''

Mahabharata The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; sa, महाभारतम्, ', ) is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India in Hinduism, the other being the '' Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the K ...

'', the play dramatizes a gender reversal narrative: a British Indian teenage girl, Esha, is brought up by her parents as a boy. After a close friend Farooq falls in love with Esha, she reveals herself to him as a girl and is forced to work through her gender identity. In 2000 Chowdhry moved into digital work, and received an Arts Council Year of the Artist Award for her digital work ''destinyNation''. In 2015 Chowdhry collaborated with poet

Sarah Hymas Sarah (born Sarai) is a biblical matriarch and prophetess, a major figure in Abrahamic religions. While different Abrahamic faiths portray her differently, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all depict her character similarly, as that of a pious ...

on "poetic sculptures" exploring the fragility of life and

anthropogenic climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to ...

. In April 2020 Chowdhry was awarded a

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickl ...

Creative Commission from

Greater Manchester Combined Authority The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) is a combined authority for Greater Manchester, England. It was established on 1 April 2011 and consists of 11 members; 10 indirectly elected members, each a directly elected councillor from on ...

.Nigel Barlow
Sixty artists, musicians and other creatives awarded £500 each to help create Greater Manchester's COVID-19 cultural archive
''About Manchester'', 17 April 2020. Accessed 16 August 2020.

Works

Plays

* (with Jag Rahi Hai) ''Putting in the Pickle Where the Jam Should Be'', Write Back, 1989. * ''Monsoon''. In ''Monsoon: Six Plays By Black & Asian Women'', Aurora Metro Press, 1993. * ''The Crossing Path''. In ''New Plays for Young People'', Faber and Faber, 2003. * ''Kaahini''. Edinburgh: Capercaillie, 2004.

Other writing

* Contributions in ''As Girls Could Boast: New Poetry by Women'', 1994. * "Living Performance". ''Journal of Lesbian Studies''. Volume 2, 1998. * 'Healing Strategies for Women at War', in ''Seven Black Women Poets'', Crocus Press, 1999. * "k/not theory; a self dialogue", ''Journal of Lesbian Studies''. Volume 4, 2000. * (ed. with Mary Sharratt) ''Bitch Lit''. Manchester: Crocus, 2006.
''The seamstress and the global garment''. Manchester : Crocus debuts/Suitcase, 2009.
*''Fossil''. Leeds, England: Peepal Tree, 2016.

References

External links

Poem of the week: Microbial Museum by Maya Chowdhry
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chowdhry, Maya 1964 births Living people British dramatists and playwrights British Asian writers British poets Interactive artists Writers from Edinburgh