Reetika Vazirani

Reetika Gina Vazirani
Born	August 9, 1962 Patiala, India
Died	July 16, 2003(2003-07-16) (aged 40) Chevy Chase, Maryland, United States
Occupation	Author
Nationality	American
Genre	Poetry
Notable works	White Elephants, World Hotel, Radha Says

Reetika Gina Vazirani (August 9, 1962 – July 16, 2003) was an Indian/American immigrant poet and educator.

Life

She was born in Patiala, India, in 1962, came to the United States with her family in 1968. After graduating from Wellesley College in 1984, she received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to travel to India, Thailand, Japan, and China. She also received an M.F.A. from the University of Virginia as a Hoyns Fellow.

She lived in Trenton, New Jersey, with her son Jehan, near the poet Yusef Komunyakaa, who was her partner and Jehan's father. There she taught creative writing as a visiting faculty member at The College of New Jersey. At the time of her death, Vazirani was Writer-in-Residence at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, with the intent of joining the English department at Emory University.

On July 16, 2003, Vazirani was housesitting in the Chevy Chase, Maryland, home of novelist Howard Norman and his wife, the poet, Jane Shore. There, Vazirani killed her two-year-old son, Jehan, by slashing his wrist, and then committed suicide.

Works

She was the author of two poetry collections, White Elephants, winner of the 1995 Barnard New Women Poets Prize, and World Hotel (Copper Canyon Press, 2002), winner of the 2003 Anisfield-Wolf book award. She was a contributing and advisory editor for Shenandoah, a book review editor for Callaloo, and a senior poetry editor for Catamaran, a journal of South Asian literature. She translated poetry from Urdu and had some of her poems translated into Italian.

Her poem, "Mouth-Organs and Drums," was published in the anthology Poets Against the War (Nation Books, 2003) anthology.

Vazirani's final collection of poetry, Radha Says was published in the fall of 2009 by Drunken Boat Media, edited by Leslie McGrath and Ravi Shankar.

Awards

• 2003, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
• 1996, Barnard Women Poets Prize

She was a recipient of a Discovery/The Nation Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Poets & Writers Exchange Program Award, fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee writers conferences, the Glenna Luschei/Prairie Schooner Award for her essay, "The Art of Breathing," included in the anthology How We Live our Yoga (Beacon 2001). She also had a poem in The Best American Poetry 2000.

External links

• The initial report in the Washington Post about the murder/suicide
• An article in the Washington Post, speculating about the murder/suicide
• "A loss for words: Reetika Vazirani, poet and professor, commits suicide at 40". The Signal. The College of New Jersey. September 9, 2003.
• Born, a poem from her final collection on Drunken Boat.
• A profile on ChickenBones: a Journal, with two poems
• The text of Mouth-Organs and Drums, from "Poets Against War"
• For our Sisterhood, a poem by Uma Parameswaran about Reetika Vazirani