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Anita Rau Badami
Anita Rau Badami was born in 1961, in the town of Rourkela in ,Orissa, India. Her father, a mechanical engineer who designed trains, was transferred every two or three years, so that she had a mobile childhood. She grew up in a household where English was the primary language spoken and attended Catholic schools in India, because, as she explains, until around twenty years ago, these were the good schools in India .
At age 18, Anita Rau Badami borrowed money from her father to buy novels at a book fair in Chennai, India. To pay him back she took her first writing assignment, an article in a local newspaper, and earned 75 rupees. She holds degrees in Communication Media, English Literature, and Journalism from universities in Bombay and Madras. Badami began her career as a freelance writer in India with regular features in The Hindu, The Deccan Herald, and Indian Express.
She worked as a copywriter for advertising agencies in Bombay, Bangalore and Madras, and wrote stories for children's magazines. She married in 1984, had a son in 1987, and moved to Calgary in 1991. In 1995, she graduated from the University of Calgary where she received an M.A. degree in English. She submitted her first work to Penguin Books. Penguin published her work, and soon Badami was touring North America, reading from her best-selling debut novel Tamarind Mem.
Several of her short stories appeared in Canadian literary journals such as The Malahat Review, Event, Toronto Review of Contemporary Fiction among others. The Hero’s Walk was the winner of the Marian Engel Award for excellence in fiction for a body of work; a Finalist in the 2000 Kiriyama Pacific Rim Prize for fiction; and on the longlist for the 2002 Orange Prize for Fiction.
Works
The Hero's Walk: A Novel
Tamarind Woman
Tamarind Mem
Aldama, Frederick Luis "Tamarind Woman." World Literature Today 77.2 (2003): 91-92.
Badami, Anita Rau "Tamarind mem." Maclean's 9 Sep. 1996: 53.
Badami, Anita Rau "The usual things. " Saturday Night 1 May 1999: 36-39.
Badami, Anita Rau and others "... Lost Careers" Brick 2003 Summer; 71:160-65.
Budhos, Marina "The Hero's Walk." Ms 1 Aug. 2001: 80-81.
Gerein, James "The Hero's Walk." World Literature Today 76.1 (2002): 134.
Harting, Heike "Diasporic Cross Currents in Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost and Anita Rau Badami's The Hero's Walk" Studies in Canadian Literature 2003; 28(1),43-70.
Hower, Edward "An Indian Girlhood." The World & I 18.10 (2003): 245-249.
Miner, Valerie "Dislocation, dislocation, dislocation." The Women's Review of Books 1 Jul 2001: 38-39.
Moher, Frank "Anita Rau Badami keeps a toe in this place, a foot in that." Saturday Night 20 May 2000: 57.
O' Brien, Susie "Articulating a World of Difference: Ecocriticism, Postcolonialism and Globalization" Canadian Literature 2001 Autumn Winter; 170,171:140-58.
Rahman, Shazia "Marketing the Mem: The Packaging and Selling of a First Novel" Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad 1999 Fall; 18(1),86-99.
Susie O'Brien "Articulating a world of difference: Ecocriticism, postcolonialism and globalization." Canadian Literature 170/171 (2001): 140-158.
Thomas, Christine "The Hero's Walk." TLS, the Times Literary Supplement 20 Jul 2001: 24.