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 adapting a single story or story experience across multiple platforms and formats using current digital technologies. From a product ...

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 is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

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 Somerset Maugham A ...

and Jacqueline Rudet, Chowdhry was helped by the appointment of the black woman producer Frances-Anne Solomon to

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

. 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 Mucous membrane, mucosal tissue from the endometrium, inner lining of the uterus through the vagina. The menstrual cycle is characterized ...

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 Atmosphere of Earth, atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with annu ...

. 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 () is a character in the Hindu epic Mahabharata. Born as the daughter of Drupada, the King of Panchala, Shikhandi becomes male after agreeing to a sex exchange with a yaksha. He is the brother of Draupadi, the female protagonist of th ...

in the ''

Mahabharata The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; , , ) is one of the two major Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epics of ancient India revered as Smriti texts in Hinduism, the other being the ''Ramayana, Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the events and aftermath of the Kuru ...

'', 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 An arts council is a government or private non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the arts; mainly by funding local artists, awarding prizes, and organizing arts events. They often operate at arms-length from the government to prevent pol ...

Year of the Artist Award for her digital work ''destinyNation''. In 2015 Chowdhry collaborated with poet Sarah Hymas on "poetic sculptures" exploring the fragility of life and

anthropogenic climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes ...

. In April 2020 Chowdhry was awarded a

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic. The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fever ...

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 one ...

.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 British women poets