Padma Viswanathan at 2015 Neustadt Festival Opening Night

Padma Viswanathan (born 1968

Nelson, British Columbia Nelson is a city located in the Selkirk Mountains on the West Arm of Kootenay Lake in the British Columbia Interior, Southern Interior of British Columbia, Canada. The city is known for its collection of restored heritage buildings that date ba ...

) is a Canadian

playwright A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes play (theatre), plays, which are a form of drama that primarily consists of dialogue between Character (arts), characters and is intended for Theatre, theatrical performance rather than just Readin ...

and fiction writer.

Life

She graduated from

University of Alberta The University of Alberta (also known as U of A or UAlberta, ) is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta, and Henry Marshall Tory, t ...

, and received an MA from the Writing Seminars at

Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...

in 2004 and an MFA from the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it ...

in 2006. Her short stories have appeared in ''

Subtropics The subtropical zones or subtropics are geographical and climate zones immediately to the north and south of the tropics. Geographically part of the temperate zones of both hemispheres, they cover the middle latitudes from to approximately ...

'', ''

New Letters ''New Letters'', the name it has been published under since 1970, is one of the oldest literary magazines in the United States and continues to publish award-winning poems and fiction. The magazine is based in Kansas City, Missouri. History and ...

'', ''

PRISM international ''Prism International'' (styled ''PRISM international'') is a magazine published quarterly in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Established in 1959, it is Western Canada's senior literary magazine. The magazine was started with name ''Prism'' ...

'', ''

Boston Review ''Boston Review'' is an American quarterly political and literary magazine. It publishes political, social, and historical analysis, literary and cultural criticism, book reviews, fiction, and poetry, both online and in print. Its signature form ...

'', and '' Malahat Review''. She lives in

Fayetteville, Arkansas Fayetteville ( ) is the List of cities and towns in Arkansas, second-most populous city in the U.S. state of Arkansas, the county seat of Washington County, Arkansas, Washington County, and the most populous city in Northwest Arkansas. The city ...

, with her husband, the poet/translator

Geoffrey Brock Geoffrey Brock (born October 19, 1964) is an American poet and translator. Since 2006 he has taught creative writing and literary translation at the University of Arkansas, where he is Distinguished Professor of English. Biography Brock is the s ...

, and their two children.

Awards

Her story "Transitory Cities" won the 14th annual ''

'' Short-Story Contest in 2007, judged by

George Saunders George Saunders (born December 2, 1958) is an American writer of short stories, essays, novellas, children's books, and novels. His writing has appeared in ''The New Yorker'', ''Harper's'', ''McSweeney's'', and '' GQ''. He also contributed a we ...

. Her novel ''The Ever After of Ashwin Rao'' was shortlisted for the

Scotiabank Giller Prize The Giller Prize (known as the Scotiabank Giller Prize from 2005-2023) is a literary award given to a Canadian author of a novel or short story collection published in English (including translation) the previous year, after an annual juried c ...

. In 2017 she won Arkansas's Porter Prize.

Works

Short stories

* * *

Novels

* , takes place in South India in the first half of the twentieth century. * , explores the aftermath of the 1985 bombing of an Air India flight. *, a memoir of friendship and true crime.

Plays

* "House of Sacred Cows," originally produced by Northern Light Theatre in Edmonton and later published in the volume ''Ethnicities: Plays from the New West'' (1999) * "By Air, By Water, By Wood", Frog and Nightgown Productions 2000, published ''South Asian Review'', 2008

Radio plays

* "Disco Does Not Suck", CBC Radio, 1999

Anthologies

Translations

* ' by

Graciliano Ramos Graciliano Ramos de Oliveira (; October 27, 1892 – March 20, 1953) was a Brazilian modernist writer, politician and journalist. He is known worldwide for his portrayal of the precarious situation of the poor inhabitants of the Brazilian '' ser ...

New York Review Books New York Review Books (NYRB) is the publishing division of ''The New York Review of Books''. Its imprints are New York Review Books Classics, New York Review Books Collections, The New York Review Children's Collection, New York Review Comics, ...

Classics, 2020

Review

In the introduction to her stunning first novel, Padma Viswanathan describes her grandmother’s faltering attempts to recount their family history. “This time, she started farther back,” she writes of one occasion, “with a story I’d never heard: of her own grandmother, married as a child and widowed before she was out of her teens; of that grandmother’s son, childless and embittered; and her daughter, my grandmother’s mother, victimized by her marriage.” After trips to India, enormous amounts of research, and not a little invention, the result is The Toss of a Lemon.

References

External links

Official siteAuthor's blog
* ttp://www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsV/viswanathan-padma.html "PADMA VISWANATHAN (1968 - )", ''doollee'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Viswanathan, Padma 1968 births Living people Canadian women novelists Canadian women dramatists and playwrights University of Alberta alumni Johns Hopkins University alumni University of Arizona alumni Canadian writers of Asian descent Canadian people of Indian descent 21st-century Canadian dramatists and playwrights 21st-century Canadian women writers People from Nelson, British Columbia