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Saumya Balsari

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Saumya Balsari is a British Indian author. Balsari has been named one of Britain's leading South Asian women by redhotcurry.com.[1] She is currently researching her third novel as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Cambridge, Centre of Latin American Studies. Her second book was Summer of Blue, a novel for young adults. It was published in 2013 as an ebook (Arcadia Books) and paperback. Her first novel, "The Cambridge Curry Club", is the 2010 winner of the first ever Cambridgeshire Book of the Decade.[2] [4] The book was selected at Cambridge Wordfest 2012 by Oxygen Books, City Picks, for a public reading of Cambridge's finest writing.Cambridge Wordfest 2012 The title was also chosen for The National Year of Reading and by BBC Radio Cambridgeshire for its 2008 A Book a Day project in May. Balsari's writing has been favourably compared by Alexander McCall Smith to that of Booker Prize Winners Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai. Other eminent reviewers of her work include the well-known actress and author Meera Syal and television comedy writer Ronald Wolfe (Writing Comedy).

Biography

Saumya Balsari was born in Mumbai (previously Bombay), India. She received a Double Masters degrees in English and German Literature from St. Xavier's College and the University of Bombay and acquired a First in Italian (Department of Foreign Languages). She was a Phd candidate at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark (1995-1999). Balsari has worked at the Max Mueller Bhavan (Goethe Institute), as a freelance translator for German and French and as a journalist contributing to leading publications such as The Indian Express, Femina, The Indian Post and The Free Press Journal early in her career.

Moving to Denmark in 1987, Balsari had a teaching stint at the United Nations-designated The International College (Denmark) that included sabbaticals in Brazil and Australia. After relocating to the UK in 1996, she worked in London as a lifestyle columnist for the Bombay Times (Times of India) and humour columnist for The Hindustan Times (UK Edition) and Pravasi Today.

Balsari's play The Curry Club had a rehearsed reading by the Kali Theatre Company at the Soho Theatre in 2003. Her novel The Cambridge Curry Club, published in 2004 by Black Amber Publications and reprinted again in 2008 and 2011 by Arcadia, was based on the play. The book launch took place both at the Nehru Centre London and Heffers, Cambridge. The Cambridge Curry Club won the Cambridgeshire Book of the Decade award in 2010 and was longlisted for the Vodafone Crossword Book Award in India. Reviews and features have appeared in various international publications and websites such as India Today, The Telegraph, DNA and Mint.

The novel has been used as a postcolonial resource text at the University of Turku (Finland) and University of Bayreuth (Germany), and as a reference in other academic institutions around the world. It is also available as an Arcadia ebook title.

Balsari's short stories (e.g. The Cutpiece) have appeared in publications by Walden Writers.[3][4] The Taj by Moonlight appears in Marlow Weaver's anthology A Long and Winding Road (USA).

An early version of Summer of Blue received a commendation from the Yeovil Literary Prize Committee, 2009/Betty Bolingbroke-Kent Award.[5] It is an ebook with Arcadia Publishers. The novel has been the subject of academic papers.

Balsari is a member of Cambridge Writers,[6] Walden Writers,[7][8] East Anglian Writers and the Society of Authors. She is also a member of High Table, Newnham College, Cambridge.

Personal History

Saumya Balsari lives in Cambridge but travels widely. She was on the 2013 Asian Power Couples Hot 100 list. She is passionate about languages and has learned twelve with varying degrees of fluency.

Books

File:Book cover of The Cambridge Curry Club by Saumya Balsari.jpg
Book Cover of The Cambridge Curry Club

The Cambridge Curry Club (Arcadia Books, 2008) ISBN 978-1-905147-69-4

File:Book cover of the Summer of Blue by Saumya Balsari.jpg
Book Cover of the Summer of Blue

Summer of Blue ( June 2013) - in e-book format and paperback format.

References

  1. ^ RedHotCurry.com, 8 April 2004, "[1]"
  2. ^ Cambridgeshire City Council, 12 January 2011, "[2]"
  3. ^ Walden Writers site
  4. ^ Walden Writers on facebook
  5. ^ Katie Fforde, 2009, "[3]"
  6. ^ Cambridge Writers website
  7. ^ Walden Writers members
  8. ^ Walden Writers in Essex Book Festival
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