Padma Viswanathan
இந்தப் பக்கத்தை தமிழில் வாசிக்க: பத்மா விஸ்வநாதன்
Padma Viswanathan (Birth: 1968) Writer and translator. She translates from Brazilian and Portuguese into English. She has written novels, short stories, social awareness plays, cultural essays, and reviews. Her stories have been published in magazines in both Canada and the United States.
Biography
Padma Viswanathan was born in 1968 in Nelson, British Columbia, Canada.
She earned a bachelor's degree in Sociology from the University of Alberta. She worked as a librarian. She obtained a master's degree in Writing from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA (Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing) from the University of Arkansas.
Personal Life
Padma Viswanathan's husband is Jeffrey Brock. She met him while she was writing on a fellowship at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. Jeffrey Brock is a poet and translator. Padma Viswanathan lives with her family in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Padma is a professor of Creative Writing (Fiction and Translation) at the University of Arkansas.
Literary Career
Padma Viswanathan began her writing career after receiving a fellowship from the Banff Playwrights' Colony.
Her play House of Sacred Cows was included in the 1999 anthology of contemporary plays, Ethnicities: Plays from the New West. Padma Viswanathan is the author of two published plays. Her short stories, essays, and translations have appeared in Granta, Brick, and several other Canadian and American literary magazines.
Novel
Her first novel, The Toss of a Lemon, is a historical novel set in Tamil Nadu. It is woven around the life story of a Tamil Brahmin woman who lived between 1890 and 1960. The novel was published in eight countries.
The Ever After of Ashwin Rao explores the aftermath of the 1985 Air India bombing, examining how the tragedy affected the victims' friendships, families, and communities, and the lasting impact of their loss. The novel was published in 2014.
Like Every Form of Love, a novel that blends friendship and true-crime themes and is written using a stream-of-consciousness technique, was published in 2023.
The Charterhouse of Padma, a multimedia novel comprising three works of fiction and nonfiction, was published in 2024.
Editor
She is the co-editor of The Penguin Book of Brazilian Short Stories, an anthology of Brazilian short fiction published by Penguin Books.
Awards
- Her short story Transitory Cities won first prize in the Boston Review Short Story Competition.
- Her debut novel, The Toss of a Lemon, was shortlisted for the PEN USA Award.
- She received the Porter Prize in recognition of her contributions to literature in Arkansas.
Books List
Short stories
- Transitory Cities (Boston Review, 2012)
- The Barber Lover (AGNI Online, 2023)
- Better Protect America (Granta, 2017)
Novel
- The Toss of a Lemon (Random House, 2008)
- The Ever After of Ashwin Rao (Random House, 2014)
- Like Every Form of Love (Random House, 2023)
Plays
- House of Sacred Cows (1999)
- By Air, By Water, By Wood (2000)
Translations
- Sao Bernardo (Graciliano Ramos) (New York Review Books Classics, 2020)
- The Penguin Book of Brazilian Short Stories
Links
- Padma Viswanathan - website
- Padma Viswanathan Interview - Alamelu Mani - tamilonline-thendral
- Graciliano Ramos & Plague disease - Padma Viswanathan - Solvanam, Tamil Translation Mythreyan ]
- Book Review: Toss of a Lemon by Padma Viswanathan - stargazerpuj
✅Finalised Page
First published on: 10-Jul-2026, 23:57:56 IST
