Padma Viswanathan

November 15, 2017

Q&A: 4 PM, Willis Library, 250H

Reading: 8 PM, Sage Hall, 116

Padma Viswanathan's debut novel, The Toss of a Lemon, was published in eight countries, a bestseller in three, and a finalist for the Commonwealth (Regional) First Book Prize, the Amazon.ca First Novel Prize and the Pen Center USA Fiction Prize. Her second novel, The Ever After of Ashwin Rao, has been published in Canada, the USA, India and Australia. In Canada, it was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was a national bestseller.

Viswanathan's short fiction appears in various journals; her story "Transitory Cities" won the 2006 Boston Review Short Story Contest. Her plays include House of Sacred Cows and Disco Does Not Suck. She has published cultural journalism and reviews in such venues as Elle Canada, The National Post, The Rumpus and Guernica. Her handwritten Letter-in-the-Mail for The Rumpus can be found in Best American Non-Required Reading 2012. She has also published several short translations of Brazilian fiction.

Viswanathan teaches fiction-writing and literature in the Programs in Creative Writing and Translation at the University of Arkansas, in Fayetteville. She has served on juries for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Neustadt Prize, and others.

Visiting Writers Series webpage: http://english.unt.edu/creative-writing/visiting-writers-series