About Jhumpa Lahiri

Born in London to Bengali parents and raised in the United States, Jhumpa Lahiri explores themes of identity, love, and belonging in her work. She began writing fiction while completing her graduate studies at Boston University, where she earned multiple advanced degrees in literature and creative writing. Her debut collection, Interpreter of Maladies (1999), received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She is also the author of the novel The Namesake (2003), adapted into a film, as well as the short story collection Unaccustomed Earth (2008), and The Lowland (2013), which was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Man Booker Prize. Lahiri has also written and translated works in Italian, including In Other Words (2015), the novel Whereabouts (2018), and her translations of three novels by Domenico Starnone. She is the editor of The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories, and her essays and stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Paris Review. She has received the PEN/Hemingway Award, a National Humanities Medal, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation. She is currently the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Barnard College, Columbia University.