JHUMPA LAHIRI (INTERPRETER OF MALADIES) - Jhumpa Lahiri Vourvoulias (born Nilanjana Sudeshna in 1967) is a contemporary Indian American (Bengali) author based in New York City. She was born in London, England in July 1967, and brought up in South Kingstown, Rhode Island where she would go on to graduate from South Kingstown High School. Her parents, a teacher and a librarian, taught her about her Bengali heritage from an early age. Lahiri received her B.A. in English literature from Barnard College in 1989. She then received multiple degrees from Boston University: an M.A. in English, an M.A. in Creative Writing, an M.A. in Comparative Literature and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. She took up a fellowship at Provincetown's Fine Arts Work Center, which lasted for the next two years (1997-1998).
In 2001, she married Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, a journalist who was then Deputy Editor of Time Latin America. Lahiri currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children. She has been a Vice President of the PEN American Center since 2005.
Lahiri taught creative writing at Boston University and Rhode Island School of Design. Much of her short fiction concerns the lives of Indian-Americans, particularly Bengalis.
As a collection of nine distinct short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, Lahiri's debut, addresses sensitive dilemmas in the lives of Indians or Indian immigrants. The stories' themes include marital difficulties, miscarriages, and the disconnection between first and second generation immigrants in the United States. The stories are set in the northeastern United States, and in India, particularly Calcutta.