Episode 11: Finding your voice with Thrity Umrigar
Is there a book idea burning inside of you? Have you always wanted to write the Great American Novel?
Author and English professor Thrity Umrigar offers tips on how to create the time to write, find your authentic voice and release all those characters in your imagination onto the pages of a book.
Thrity is a novelist and professor of English at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. She’s the author of 11 books, including Bombay Time, The Space Between Us, If Today Be Sweet, The Weight of Heaven, The World We Found and The Story Hour, a memoir and a handful of childrens’ books.
Thrity was born to an affluent upper middle class family in Bombay but the poverty outside her door shaped her voice and left an imprint on her heart that never faded.
Books were the magic carpet that carried her to America when she was 21. She ended up in Ohio, where I met her at the Lorain Journal. We both left for the Beacon Journal in Akron, where Thrity wrote endless feature stories then crafted a memoir.
She spent 17 years working as a journalist, then won a Nieman fellowship in 2000.
She has two children's picture books coming out this fall: Binny's Diwali (by Scholastic) in September and Sugar in Milk (by Running Press) in October. You can find out more about her at www.umrigar.com
OFFICIAL BIO:
Thrity Umrigar is the best-selling author of the novels Bombay Time, The Space Between Us, If Today Be Sweet, The Weight of Heaven, The World We Found and The Story Hour. She is also the author of the memoir, First Darling of the Morning. Her books have been translated into several languages and published in over fifteen countries. She is a Distinguished University Professor of English at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
The Space Between Us was a finalist for the PEN/Beyond Margins award, while her memoir was a finalist for the Society of Midland Authors award. If Today Be Sweet was a Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle selection, while her other books have been Community Reads selections. Thrity is the winner of the Cleveland Arts Prize, a Lambda Literary award and the Seth Rosenberg prize. She is also the recipient of the Nieman Fellowship to Harvard.
As a Parsi child attending a Catholic school in a predominantly Hindu country, she had the kind of schizophrenic and cosmopolitan childhood that has served her well in her life as a writer. Accused by teachers and parents alike of being a daydreaming, head-in-the-clouds child, she grew up lost in the fictional worlds created by Steinbeck, Hemingway, Woolf and Faulkner.
She would emerge long enough from these books to create her own fictional and poetic worlds. Encouraged by her practical-minded parents to get an undergraduate degree in business, Thrity survived business school by creating a drama club and writing, directing and acting in plays. Her first short stories, essays and poems were published in national magazines and newspapers in India at age fifteen.
After earning a M.A. in journalism in the U.S., Thrity worked for several years as an award-winning reporter, columnist and magazine writer. She also earned a Ph.D. in English. In 1999, Thrity won a one-year Nieman Fellowship to Harvard University, which is given to mid-career journalists.
While at Harvard, Thrity wrote her first novel, Bombay Time. In 2002 she accepted a teaching position at Case Western Reserve University, where she is now the Armington Professor of English. She also does occasional freelance pieces for national publications and has written for the Washington Post and the Boston Globe's book pages.
Thrity is active on the national lecture circuit and has spoken at book festivals such as the L.A. Festival of Books, the Tuscon Book Festival and the Miami Book Fair International; at universities such as MIT, Harvard University, and Spelman College; and at literary societies, civic and business organizations and public libraries all across the country.