Chitra Divakaruni
Professor
- Phone: (713) 743-3013
- Email: cdivakaruni@uh.edu
- Office: 205 Roy Cullen Building
- www.chitradivakaruni.com
- CV
Dr. Chitra Divakaruni is an award-winning writer and teacher and the author of 23 books such as Mistress of Spices, Sister of My Heart, Palace of Illusions, The Forest of Enchantments, The Last Queen, and Independence, which won an American Book Award in 2024. Her newest book is a biography, An Uncommon Love: The Early Life of Sudha and Narayan Murthy.
Her work has been translated into 30 languages, including Dutch, Hebrew, Bengali, Hungarian, Turkish, Hindi and Japanese. They have made into films, plays and dance dramas, and performed as operas.
Her awards include two American Book Awards, a PEN Josephine Miles award, a Premio Scanno award from Italy, a Light of India award, and a Times of India Best Author award. The Economic Times has included her in their list of 20 Most Influential Global Indian Women. She has been an activist in the fields of education and domestic violence for many years. She is on the Advisory Boards of Daya (Houston) and Maitri (San Francisco Area), both organizations that help survivors of domestic violence. She serves on the Advisory Board of Akshaya Patra, which provides meals to Indian schoolchildren.
She is the McDavid professor of Creative Writing in the internationally acclaimed Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston.
Education
- Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley