Author Jhumpa Lahiri to
speak at the Athenaeum

Pulitzer Prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri will be featured at the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum Oct. 11, reading from her works.
Lahiri was born in London to Bengali immigrant parents, and later moved to Rhode Island. She has written two collections of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, for which she won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the PEN/Hemingway Award and The New Yorker Debut of the Year; and Unaccustomed Earth, which received the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Her novel, The Namesake, was named a New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist and was adapted into a film in 2007. Lahiri was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002 and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 2006.
Her writing has centered on Indian-American immigrants and their children, and the challenges they face in living between two worlds and cultures. In reviewing Unaccustomed Earth, The New York Times commends Lahiri's "emotional wisdom and consummate artistry as a writer."
Lahiri earned a bachelor's degree in English from Barnard College, and later studied at Boston University, where she received three M.A. degrees in English, creative writing, and comparative studies in literature and the arts; and a Ph.D. in Renaissance studies.
Visit the Athenaeum home page for more information.