Chitra Divakaruni is an award-winning writer, activist, professor and speaker, and the author of 21 books such as Mistress of Spices, Sister of My Heart, Before We Visit the Goddess, Palace of Illusions, The Forest of Enchantments, and The Last Queen. Her newest novel, Independence, depicts the experiences of three sisters in strife-torn Calcutta as India frees itself from the British yoke and received a 2024 American Book Award. She writes for adults and children.

Her work has been published in over 100 magazines and anthologies, including The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories and the O.Henry Prize Stories, and translated into 30 languages, including Dutch, Hebrew, Bengali, Hungarian, Turkish, Hindi and Japanese. Her work been made into films, plays and dance dramas, and performed as operas. Her awards include an American Book Award, a PEN Josephine Miles award, a Premio Scanno, and a Light of India award. In 2015 The Economic Times included her in their List of 20 Most Influential Global Indian Women. She is the McDavid professor of Creative Writing in the internationally acclaimed Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston and lives in Houston with her husband Murthy.

Divakaruni has been an activist in the fields of education and domestic violence and has been closely associated with the following nonprofits: Pratham, which educates underprivileged children in India, Akshaya Patra, which feeds Indian schoolchildren, and Daya and Maitri, which assist survivors of domestic violence in starting life anew. She also supports the Houston Food Bank.

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Categories & Topics

  • What Mythological Women Can Teach us about Workplace Success
  • What Historical Women Can Teach us about Negotiating Workplace Challenges
  • The Power of Diversity
  • The Power of Storytelling and How to Tell your Story so that People will Listen
  • Communicating across Differences
  • Balancing Career and Home: Challenges and Solutions
  • Equality and Equity
  • Gender Equality: Ongoing Challenges and How to handle them
  • Inspiring Women in Indian History and what they can Teach Us
  • The Importance of Sisterhood: How women can mentor each other in the workplace
  • Powerful Partnerships
  • Being an Activist
  • How to Fight Harmful Stereotypes
  • 5 Spiritual Lessons that are keys to Happiness
  • Stranger in a Strange Land
  • Commencement Addresses