JHUMPA LAHIRI HISTORY

Jhumpa Lahiri Profile







Born: July 1967
Achievement: First Asian to win Pulitzer Prize. She won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her book "Interpreter Of Maladies"

Jhumpa Lahiri is a famous Indian American author of Bengali origin. Her first novel, "The Namesake" was a major national bestseller and was named the New York Magazine Book of the Year. Jhumpa Lahiri became the first Asian to win the Pulitzer Prize when she won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her book "Interpreter Of Maladies".

Jhumpa Lahiri was born in July 1967 in London and was raised in Rhode Island. Jhumpa is an alumnus of Barnard College, where she received a B.A. in English literature, and of Boston University, where she received an M.A. in English, M.A. in Creative Writing and M.A. in Comparative Studies in Literature and the Arts, and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. She took up a fellowship at Provincetown's Fine Arts Work Center for two years. Jhumpa Lahiri also taught creative writing at Boston University and Rhode Island School of Design.
                                               
Much of Jhumpa Lahiri's fiction deals with the lives of Indian-Americans, particularly Bengalis. Her debut collection "Interpreter of Maladies" won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It was a collection of nine distinct short stories addressing the sensitive dilemmas in the lives of Indians or Indian immigrants. "The Namesake", her second book and first novel, came out in 2003. It was named the New York Magazine Book of the Year. Mira Nair is making an eponymous film based on the novel.

Jhumpa Lahiri has won a number of awards. These include: TransAtlantic Award from the Henfield Foundation (1993), O. Henry Award for short story "Interpreter of Maladies" (1999), PEN/Hemingway Award (Best Fiction Debut of the Year) for "Interpreter of Maladies" (1999), Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2000), The New Yorker's Best Debut of the Year for "Interpreter of Maladies" (2000), M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award from the James Beard Foundation (2000), and Guggenheim Fellowship (2002)
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