Tanuja Desai Hidier

Last updated
Tanuja Desai Hidier
Tanijja desai hidier 2817.JPG
Hidier at the 2014 National Book Festival
Born Wilbraham, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupation
  • Author
  • singer
  • song-writer
NationalityAmerican
CitizenshipAmerican
Alma mater Brown University
GenreYoung adult fiction, realistic fiction
Notable worksBorn Confused
Notable awards1995 James Jones Literary Prize 2003 2003 Best Books for Young Adults
Website
www.thisistanuja.com

Tanuja Desai Hidier is an Indian-American author and singer/songwriter. She is best known for her 2002 young adult novel Born Confused , and its 2014 sequel Bombay Blues.

Contents

Life

Hidier was born in Wilbraham, Massachusetts. Her parents met in when they were both attending medical school in Parel (South Mumbai). Their marriage was intercaste and scandalous for her father's family, though her mother's family accepted the marriage. This marriage was a basis for the parents' marriage in Born Confused. [1]

She graduated from Brown University. [2]

She collaborates with Atom Fellows, in the group T&A.

She lives in London.

Writing career

Her first novel, Born Confused, was released in 2002. The story is a coming-of-age story about an Indian-American teenager named Dimple Lala, and is drawn "largely from autobiography." [3] [2] It is considered to be the first of its kind, a South Asian American novel with an Indian-American protagonist.

Musical career

Hidier wrote and released two "booktracks" to accompany her books; When We Were Twins for Born Confused was released in 2004, and Bombay Spleen followed Bombay Blues in 2014. [4]

Works

Films

Awards

Hidier is a recipient of the 1995 James Jones Literary Prize for her un-released novelTale of a Two-Hearted Tiger, and received an award for the YALSA 2003 Best Books for Young Adults for her 2002 novel Born Confused . [6] She received the 2015 South Asia Book Award for Bombay Blues. [7]

Related Research Articles

Anita Desai FRSL, born Anita Mazumdar, is an Indian novelist and the Emerita John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a writer she has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times. She received a Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978 for her novel Fire on the Mountain, from the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters. She won the British Guardian Prize for The Village by the Sea (1983). Her other works include The Peacock, Voices in the City, Fire on the Mountain and an anthology of short stories, Games at Twilight. She is on the advisory board of the Lalit Kala Akademi and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laurie Halse Anderson</span> American writer

Laurie Halse Anderson is an American writer, known for children's and young adult novels. She received the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 2010 for her contribution to young adult literature and 2023 she received the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.

Nancy Garden was an American writer of fiction for children and young adults, best known for the lesbian novel Annie on My Mind. She received the 2003 Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association recognizing her lifetime contribution in writing for teens, citing Annie alone.

"American-Born Confused Desi" ("ABCD") is an informal term used to refer to South Asian Americans particularly of Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin, born or raised in the United States, in contrast to those who were born overseas and later settled in the US.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raina Telgemeier</span> American cartoonist, illustrator, and writer

Raina Telgemeier is an American cartoonist. Her works include the autobiographical webcomic Smile, which was published as a full-color middle grade graphic novel in February 2010, and the follow-up Sisters and the fiction graphic novel Drama, all of which have been on The New York Times Best Seller lists. She has also written and illustrated the graphic novels Ghosts and Guts as well as four graphic novels adapted from The Baby-Sitters Club stories by Ann M. Martin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Todd Strasser</span> American novelist

Todd Strasser is an American writer of more than 140 young-adult and middle grade novels and many short stories and works of non-fiction, some written under the pen names Morton Rhue and T.S. Rue.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julia Whelan</span> American actress and author

Julia May Whelan is an American actress and author. She is best known for her role as Grace Manning on the television family drama series Once and Again (1999–2002), and her co-starring role in the 2002 Lifetime movie The Secret Life of Zoey. A noted child actor, Whelan first appeared on screen at the age of 11, and continued to take television roles until her matriculation into Middlebury College in 2004; Whelan graduated magna cum laude from Middlebury in 2008 after spending the 2006–2007 academic year as a visiting student at Lincoln College, Oxford. Whelan returned to film acting in November 2008 with a role in the fantasy thriller Fading of the Cries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lauren Myracle</span> American young adult novelist

Lauren Myracle is an American writer of young adult fiction. She has written many novels, including the three best-selling "IM" books, ttyl, ttfn and l8r, g8r. Her book Thirteen Plus One was released May 4, 2010.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Donnelly</span> American writer of young adult fiction

Jennifer Donnelly is an American writer best known for the young adult historical novel A Northern Light.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sharon M. Draper</span> American childrens writer and educator

Sharon Mills Draper is an American children's writer, professional educator, and the 1997 National Teacher of the Year. She is a five-time winner of the Coretta Scott King Award for books about the young and adolescent African-American experience. She is known for her Hazelwood and Jericho series, Copper Sun,Double Dutch, Out of My Mind and Romiette and Julio.

Norah McClintock was a Canadian writer of young adult fiction who published more than 60 books. She won five Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence.

<i>Born Confused</i>

Born Confused is a 2002 young adult novel by Tanuja Desai Hidier about an Indian-American girl growing up in New Jersey. First published in the United Kingdom on October 1, 2002, it was later released in the United States on July 1, 2003.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maggie Stiefvater</span> American author

Margaret Stiefvater is an American writer of young adult fiction, known mainly for her series of fantasy novels The Wolves of Mercy Falls and The Raven Cycle. She currently lives in Virginia.

Amanda McRaney Jenkins is an American writer of young adult fiction. Her novels have received considerable recognition, including the Delacorte Prize for Breaking Boxes, and a Printz Honor for Repossessed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kishwar Desai</span> Indian author and columnist

Kishwar Desai is an Indian author and columnist. Her first novel, Witness the Night, won the Costa Book Award in 2010 for Best First Novel and has been translated into over 25 languages. It was also shortlisted for the Author's Club First Novel Award and longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. Her novel Origins of Love, published in June 2012, was critically acclaimed. The Sea of Innocence, published in 2014 in India as well as in the UK and Australia, was widely discussed as it dealt with the issue of gang rape. Desai also has a biography, Darlingji: The True Love Story of Nargis and Sunil Dutt, to her credit. She wrote her latest book in 2020, released on 28 December, titled, The Longest Kiss.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isabel Quintero</span> American writer

Isabel Quintero is an American writer of young adult literature, poetry and fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Acevedo</span> Dominican-American poet and author

Elizabeth Acevedo is a Dominican-American poet and author. In September 2022, the Poetry Foundation named her the year's Young People's Poet Laureate.

Bahni Turpin is an American audiobook narrator and stage and screen actor based out of Los Angeles. Her audiobook career includes some of the most popular and critically-acclaimed books in recent years, including The Help and The Hate U Give. She has won 9 Audie Awards, including Audiobook of the Year for Children of Blood and Bone; 14 Earphone Awards; and 2 Odyssey Awards. Turpin has also earned a place on AudioFile magazine's list of Golden Voice Narrators, and in 2016, she was named Audible's Narrator of the Year. In 2018, Audible inducted her into the Narrator Hall of Fame.

<i>You Should See Me in a Crown</i> (novel) 2020 young adult novel

You Should See Me in a Crown is a debut young adult novel by Leah Johnson, published by Scholastic in June 2020. The book was given a Stonewall Book honor, and TIME magazine named it one of the best 100 young adult books of all time.

Jennifer Lynn Barnes is an American writer of young adult novels.

References

  1. Parbhoo, Sheryl (September 5, 2016). "Part Two: Interview with Tanuja Desai Hidier".
  2. 1 2 "Tanuja Desai Hidier Books, Author Biography, and Reading Level | Scholastic". www.scholastic.com. Retrieved Apr 25, 2019.
  3. "Tanuja Desai Hidier on Born Confused & Opal Mehta". 2006-09-04. Archived from the original on 2006-09-04. Retrieved 2019-04-06.
  4. "Tanuja Desai Hidier". FilmFreeway. Retrieved 2019-04-06.
  5. Comerford, Lynda Brill (Dec 23, 2002). "Fall 2002 Flying Starts: Tanuja Desai Hidier". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 27 February 2014. On another level, Born Confused encapsulates the universal insecurities and identity crises experienced by young adults. "It was refreshing to write from a teen's perspective," says the author. "It was fun to go back and experience the shock and surprise of new discoveries. Teens aren't as jaded as adults."
  6. admin (2007-07-30). "YALSA - For Members Only 2003 Best Books for Young Adults Annotated List". Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). Retrieved 2019-04-06.
  7. "Past Awards – South Asia Book Award". southasiabookaward.wisc.edu. Retrieved 2019-04-06.