Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni was born Calcutta and spent the first nineteen years of her life in India. She moved to the United States to continue her studies, getting a Master's degree from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, both in English. For several years she has been interested in issues involving women, and has worked with Afghani women refugees and women from dysfunctional families, as well as in shelters for battered women. Since 1991 she has been president of MAITRI, a South Asian women's service which she helped found in the San Francisco area. She has written several books of poetry, and her work has been included in over 30 anthologies. Her book of short stories, Arranged Marriage, which has won critical acclaim and the 1996 American Book Award, the Bay Area Book Reviewers and PEN Oakland awards for fiction. She has two published novels: The Mistress of Spices and Sister of my Heart.

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