Jhumpa Lahiri is a contemporary American writer of Bengali descent. She attended Barnard College, graduating in 1989 with a major in English Literature. She was awarded the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for her debut collection of nine short stories, Interpreter of Maladies. Many of her short fiction concerns the lives of Indian-Americans and the nuances of their lives. Her second book and first novel, The Namesake, was published in 2003. Currently, she lives with her Guatemalan-American husband and son Octavio and writes in Brooklyn, New York.

Her given name is Nilanjana Sudeshna. An anectode published in USA Today mentions that her teacher in school found it long and just stuck to her nick name Jhumpa. She has adapted this incident in her book The Namesake.

External links

• April 11, 2000 Barnard Campus News (http://www.barnard.edu/newnews/news41100a.htm)
• April 12, 2000 PBS NewsHour (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/gergen/jan-june00/lahiri_4-12.html) Interview with Elizabeth Farnsworth
• South Asian Women's NETwork Bookshelf (http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/users/sawweb/sawnet/books/jhumpa_lahiri.html), University of Maryland
• Voices from the Gaps (http://voices.cla.umn.edu/newsite/authors/LAHIRIjhumpa.htm), University of Minnesota