University of Kentucky, October 11th: Bharati Mukherjee

(Courtesy of Melissa Purdue)

NOVELIST BHARATI MUKHERJEE CAMPUS VISIT

Bharati Mukherjee, one of the nation's leading writers of fiction, will present a public reading at 7:30 p.m., October 11in the Recital Hall of the University of Kentucky's Singletary Center For The Arts.

Born in Calcutta, India, Mukherjee migrated to Canada in the early 1960s. She studied creative writing at the University of Iowa and later became a citizen of the United States.

She is the author of six novels including JASMINE and DESIRABLE DAUGHTERS, published in 2002, and two books of short stories, DARKNESS and THE MIDDLEMAN AND OTHER STORIES. She and her husband, Canadian writer Clark Blaise, have co-authored several books of non-fiction.

One of Mukherjee's primary subjects is the experience of immigrants to the United States and their struggle for personal and ethnic identity. Reviewing DESIRABLE DAUGHTERS for the International Herald Tribune, Mickhio Kakutani said: "Throughout her career, Bharati Mukherjee has depicted characters who are exiles, immigrants or outsiders...caught on the margins between two cultures, between India and the United States, between tradition and modernity, East and West."

Bharati Mukherjee's visit to the UK campus is sponsored by the Department of English as part of its "Crossing Cultures" conference October 11-13.