Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is the author of fifteen books, including two prize-winning story collections, Arranged Marriage and The Unknown Errors of Our Lives, four volumes of poetry, and the bestselling novels The Mistress of Spices, Sister of My Heart, The Vine of Desire, Queen of Dreams, and The Palace of Illusions. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker and the Atlantic Monthly, among others. Two of her books, The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart, have been made into movies by filmmakers Gurinder Chadha (and Paul Berges (an English film) and Suhasini Mani Ratnam (a Tamil TV serial), respectively. Professor Divakaruni earned her MA from Wright State and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Her writing has won the American Book Award, two Pushcart Prizes, two PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards, the C.Y. Lee Creative Writing Award, and the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize, and she has been chosen for the Woman of Achievement Award, the Woman of Vision Award, and two National Excellence in Teaching Awards. Ms. Divakaruni teaches creative writing at the University of Houston.
(Spring 2005, Fall 2013)