March 20, 2008
Media contact: Patty Wellborn
604-795-2891
or 604-504-7441, local 2819
patty.wellborn@ucfv.ca
UCFV hosts popular author Anita Rau Badami
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Anita Rau Badami |
Celebrated writer Anita Rau Badami will visit UCFV for a reading on Monday, March 31.
Badami was born in the town of Rourkela in the eastern state of Orisson in India. Her father worked as a mechanical engineer on the railroads and the family moved every two to three years. Badami earned a bachelor's degree in English at the University of Madras and then studied journalism. She worked as a copywriter for advertising agencies in Bombay, Bangalore, and Madras, and wrote for newspapers and magazines.
In 1991, she moved with her husband and family to Calgary and began work on her first book,
Tamarind Mem. The book received international acclaim when it was first published in 1996. It’s the tale of two generations of women: Kamini and her mother Saroja, who nicknamed her daughter Tamarind Mem due to her sour tongue. While Kamini is in Canada beginning her graduate studies, she receives a postcard from her mother saying she has sold their home and is travelling through India. Both women are forced into the past to confront their dreams and losses and to explore the love that binds mothers and daughters everywhere.
Badami has followed up with equally successful books:
Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? and
The Hero’s Walk, the latter of which won the 2001 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (Canada & Caribbean) and is the winner of the 2000 Marian Engel Award. The book was also nominated for the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize and the BC Book Prize's Ethel Wilson Award for Fiction.
UCFV is sponsoring two events with Badami on March 31. At 2:30 p.m. she will host a reading in University House. At 7 p.m. that day, the Centre for Indo-Canadian Studies will host a reading, open discussion, book-signing, and a special reception for Badami. The Centre for Indo-Canadian Studies is located in University House on UCFV’s Abbotsford campus.
Both of these events are free and open to the public.
Badami’s visit is sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts, the UCFV Dean of Arts, along with the English and Continuing Studies departments, and the Centre for Indo-Canadian Studies at UCFV.
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