Talk - Speaking in Many Voices : A Writer's Autobiogrpahy through Readings July 18, 2009

Talk - Speaking in Many Voices: A Writer's Autobiogrpahy through Readings by Githa Hariharan. A writer is best judged by her work and there is no shortage of either fiction or non-fiction to Githa Hariharan's credit. But sometimes that is not enough, and this evening is one such occasion when Githa will discuss her approach to literature, women's issues, secularism, and the social, political and cultural issues that exercise us today. She will talk about her life, and through a series of readings from her different works, trace her development as a writer, and explore the hopes and dreams she nurtures as an author in India today. Githa Hariharan was born in Coimbatore and grew up in Bombay and Manila. She was educated in these two cities and in the US. She worked as a staff writer in WNET-Channel 13 in New York, and then in Bombay, Madras and New Delhi as an editor. In 1995, Hariharan challenged the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act as discriminatory against women. The case, Githa Hariharan and Another vs. Reserve Bank of India and Another, led to a Supreme Court judgment in 1999 on guardianship. Githa Hariharan's published work includes novels, short stories, essays, newspaper articles and columns. Her first novel, The Thousand Faces of Night (1992) won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1993. Her other novels include The Ghosts of Vasu Master (1994), When Dreams Travel (1999), In Times of Siege (2003), and the new Fugitive Histories (2009). Her highly acclaimed short stories include The Art of Dying and The Winning Team. She has also edited a volume of stories in English translation from four major South Indian languages, A Southern Harvest and co-edited a collection of stories for children, Sorry, Best Friend!. Hariharan's fiction has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, German, Dutch, Greek, Urdu and Vietnamese; her essays and fiction have also been included in anthologies such as Salman Rushdie's Mirrorwork: 50 Years of Indian Writing 1947-1997. Hariharan writes a regular column for The Telegraph. Githa Hariharan has been Visiting Professor or Writer-in-Residence in several universities, including Dartmouth College and George Washington University in the United States, the University of Canterbury at Kent in the UK, and Jamia Millia Islamia in India.

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