My new novel, And Laughter Fell from the Sky, will be out in June 2012! According to the back cover copy, it is “a stirring contemporary love story about two young Indian-Americans trying to find love and their place in the world, while dealing with the confines and pressures of their culture and their families.”
I am also the author of three books for children — two middle-grade novels, Aruna’s Journeys and The Moon Over Crete; and a biography, Ela Bhatt: Uniting Women in India. I have written two reference books for high school and college students: Utopias in American History, and Poverty and the Government in America.
My short stories (for grown-ups) have appeared in a number of literary magazines, including American Literary Review and Tampa Review.
My short stories are included in the following anthologies: Confessions: Fact or Fiction? edited by Herta Feely and Marian O’Shea Wernicke; Mamas and Papas: On the Sublime and Heartbreaking Art of Parenting, edited by Alys Masek and Kelly Mayhew; and Living in America: Poetry and Fiction by South Asian American Writers, edited by Roshni Rustomji Kerns.
My story “Perfect Sunday” appeared in the January 2012 issue of India Currents magazine.
One of my short stories (a very short, somewhat strange story) was published online in Barrelhouse magazine: Once There Was a Woman in a Car.
Here is an interview with me from The Hindu, a newspaper in Chennai, India.
I have an MA in English literature from the University of Michigan. During the 1990s I worked for the Feminist Majority, a nonprofit organization just outside of Washington, DC. I currently live in Moscow, Idaho, USA, and work at the University of Idaho.
If you are an author or small publisher with a book that you think would be appropriate for this web site, please send an e-mail to: jyotsna64 [at] aol.com. The book must help kids break out of gender stereotypes, and must be published by a small or independent press.
