“What keeps me anchored,” saya Anita Rau Badami, “is the writing life. Writing is my passion and my profession. I translate everything I know, think, feel, experience, touch, see, or hear into the written word.”

Anita’s passion for the written word has resulted in three superbly realized and deeply moving books. The Ottawa Citizen described her first, Tamarind Mem, as “jewel–bright… weightless as a silk sari shaken out of its folds.” Her second, The Hero’s Walk, won the Regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and Italy’s Premio Bert, was named a Washington Post Best Book, was longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction, and was a finalist for the Kiriyama Prize. And of Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?, the Globe and Mail said, “Rich in echoes and irony and questions, this is one book in the growing catalogue of books we need to read to understand ourselves.”

Anita’s latest, Tell It To the Trees, is a tense mystery and heart–rending story of family life set in an Indian household in a small town in northern British Columbia. One freezing winter morning a dead body is found in the backyard of the Dharma family’s house. It’s the body of their tenant, Anu Krishnan. Why had she, a stranger to the mountains, been foolish enough to go out into the blizzard? From this gripping opening, Anita threads together a story of love and need, and of chilling secrets never told aloud.

The recipient of the Marian Engel Award for a woman writer in mid–career, Anita is also an accomplished visual artist. She lives in Montreal.

Photo Credit: Richard–Max Tremblay

Website: www.anitaraubadami.ca