She has judged several prestigious awards, such as the National Book Award and the PEN Faulkner Award. She is also closely involved with Pratham, an organization that helps educate children (especially those living in urban slums) in India. Both these are organizations that help South Asian or South Asian American women who find themselves in abusive or domestic violence situations. She serves on the Advisory board of Maitri in the San Francisco Bay Area and Daya in Houston.

She now lives in Texas, which has found its way into her upcoming book, Before We Visit the Goddess.Ĭhitra currently teaches in the nationally ranked Creative Writing program at the Univ. She briefly lived in Illinois and Ohio, but has spent much of her life in Northern California, which she often writes about. At Berkeley, she lived in the International House and worked in the dining hall. To earn money for her education, she held many odd jobs, including babysitting, selling merchandise in an Indian boutique, slicing bread in a bakery, and washing instruments in a science lab. from the University of California, Berkeley.

She continued her education in the field of English by receiving a Master’s degree from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and a Ph.D. She was born in India and lived there until 1976, at which point she left Calcutta and came to the United States. Her newest novel is Before We Visit the Goddess (about 3 generations of women- grandmother, mother and daughter- who each examine the question 'what does it mean to be a successful woman.') Simon & Schuster. Divakaruni also writes for children and young adults.Her novels One Amazing Thing, Oleander Girl, Sister of My Heart and Palace of Illusions are currently in the process of being made into movies. Her works have been translated into 29 languages, including Dutch, Hebrew, Hindi and Japanese. Her work is widely known, as she has been published in over 50 magazines, including the Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker, and her writing has been included in over 50 anthologies. Her themes include the Indian experience, contemporary America, women, immigration, history, myth, and the joys and challenges of living in a multicultural world. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning author and poet.

The mistress of spices book