Bapsi Sidhwa

Born in Karachi and raised in Lahore, Pakistan, Bapsi Sidhwa has been widely celebrated as the finest novelist produced by her country. Sidhwa is the author of five novels: The Pakistani Bride, Crow Eaters, An American Brat, Cracking India (which was made into the award-winning film Earth by Indian director Deepa Mehta in 1999, and was named by Modern Library one of the best books in English published since 1950), and, most recently, Water (which was based on Deepa Mehta’s screenplay for the film of the same name). Her work has been published in ten countries and has been translated into several languages. Among her many honors, Sidhwa has received the Bunting Fellowship at Radcliffe/Harvard, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, Pakistan’s highest honor in the arts. She also served, at Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s request, on an Advisory Committee on Women’s Development in Pakistan. Sidhwa now resides in Houston.