Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning and bestselling fiction writer, poet, activist and teacher of writing. Her work has been published in over 50 magazines, including the Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker, and her writing has been included in over 50 anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories, the O.Henry Prize Stories and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. Her books have been translated into 29 languages. Several of her works have been made into films and plays. She is the Betty and Gene McDavid Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Houston in Texas.