In different voices

Shauna Singh Baldwin's first novel, What the Body Remembers, received the Commonwealth Prize for Best Book (Canada-Caribbean) in 2000. Shashi Tharoor described her second novel, The Tiger Claw (2004), as “a deeply felt, richly evocative novel” calling Shauna “a major literary voice.” English Lessons and Other Stories (1996) received the Friends of American Writers prize. She co-authored A Foreign Visitor's Survival Guide to America (1992). Her latest story collection We Are Not in Pakistan has just been released in India. She is currently working on her third novel. Excerpts from an interview

Tell us about yourself.
I was born in Montreal, Canada. My family returned to India in 1972 when I was 10 and I grew up in Delhi. I came to the U.S. for my MBA, returned to Canada for a few years, and then moved back to the U.S. when I got married. I now live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

When did the writing bug bite you?
I don't remember having a desire to “become a writer”; reading and writing is just what I liked to do. When I was a child, Europeans, Americans and Euro-Canadians could be writers because they seemed to own English. An Indo-Canadian girl living in India was somehow not authorised to write in English. And writing about how Indians and diasporic Indians see the world was very un-cool.

Full interview here Hindu