Akhil Sharma

Akhil Sharma
Born 22 July 1971
Delhi, India
Occupation Novelist, Professor
Alma mater Princeton University, Stanford
Notable awards PEN/Hemingway Award, Folio Prize


Akhil Sharma (born July 22, 1971) is an award-winning Indian-American author and professor of creative writing.

Early life

Born in Delhi, India, he immigrated to the United States when he was eight, and grew up in Edison, New Jersey. Sharma studied at Princeton University, where he earned his B.A. in public policy at the Woodrow Wilson School. While there, he also studied under a succession of notable writers, including Russell Banks, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Auster, John McPhee, and Tony Kushner. He then won a Stegner Fellowship to the writing program at Stanford, where he won several O. Henry Prizes. He then attempted to become a screenwriter, but, disappointed with his fortunes, left to attend Harvard Law School.

Career

Sharma is an assistant professor in the creative writing MFA program at Rutgers University-Newark.

Sharma has published stories in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Quarterly, Fiction, the Best American Short Stories anthology, and the O. Henry Award Winners anthology. His short story "Cosmopolitan" was anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 1998,[1] and was also made into an acclaimed 2003 film of the same name, which has appeared on the PBS series Independent Lens.

Sharma's first novel is An Obedient Father.

Sharma's second novel, Family Life was published by W. W. Norton & Company in the U.S. and Faber and Faber in the U.K. in April 2014. The New York Times described the mostly autobiographical novel as "deeply unnerving and gorgeously tender at its core.".[2] David Sedaris noted that "[e]very page is alive and surprising, proof of [Sharma’s] huge, unique talent." Sharma wrote about the 13 years it took to write Family Life in an essay on The New Yorker's website.[3]Family Life won the 2015 Folio Prize for fiction.[4]

Bibliography

Awards and honours

References

  1. ↑ The Best American Short Stories 1998
  2. ↑ "The Repercussions" by Sonali Deraniyagala, New York Time Book Review, p. 1, April 6, 2014
  3. ↑ "A Novel Like a Rocket", The New Yorker, April 7, 2014 http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/04/akhil-sharma-on-writing-family-life.html, "
  4. ↑ Mark Brown, Akhil Sharma wins Folio prize for fiction, The Guardian, 23 March 2015.
  5. ↑ "The Ten Best Books of 2014," New York Magazine, December 10, 2014 http://www.vulture.com/2014/12/10-best-books-of-2014-lila-redeployment-family-life.html
  6. ↑ "The Ten Best Books of 2014," The New York Times, December 4, 2014 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/books/review/the-10-best-books-of-2014.html
  7. ↑ Mark Brown (23 March 2015). "Akhil Sharma wins Folio prize for fiction". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 March 2015.

External links