in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but the offer of a
fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Prov-
incetown, Massachusetts, in 1997 proved to be
a turning point in Lahiri’s burgeoning literary
career. In a short period of time, she secured an
agent, sold her first book, and had her first story
published in The New Yorker.
As Lahiri’s confidence grew, so did her body
of work. In 1999 her first collection of short sto-
ries, INTERPRETER OF MALADIES, was published. Set
mainly in America, her stories portray Indian-
American characters who encounter the same
challenges in navigating multiple cultures as Lahiri.
Her collection immediately attracted the attention
of critics and readers alike. The New Yorker named
Lahiri among the “20 Best American Fiction Writ-
ers Under 40,” and she began receiving copious
awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award
and the O. Henry Award for her title story, “Inter-
preter of Maladies.” On April 10, 2000, at the age
of 32, Lahiri became the youngest recipient of the
prestigious Pulitzer Prize. Winning the Pulitzer for
her first work overwhelmed Lahiri, who thought
of the prize as “something people won when they
were deep into their careers” (Solan 36). In the
wake of her success with Interpreter of Maladies,
Lahiri published her first novel, The NAMESAKE, in
2003 to yet more praise. The novel expands on fa-
miliar Lahirian themes of exile, displacement, loss,
and cultural adaptation. It follows the growth of
Gogol Ganguli, the son of Bengali immigrant par-
ents, from infancy to his early 30s as he comes to
terms with the intersection of his Bengali heritage
and American identity.
Lahiri’s fiction has appeared in numerous jour-
nals and magazines including the New Yorker, Agni,
Epoch, The Louisville Review, Harvard Review, and
Story Quarterly. In 2000 she wrote the foreword to
an acclaimed collection of photographs and essays
on everyday life in India titled India Holy Song by
Xavier Zimbardo. She has taught creative writing
at Boston University and the Rhode Island School
of Design. An intensely private person with mixed
feelings about the celebrity status of authors, La-
hiri currently lives a quiet life in New York City
with her husband, journalist Alberto Vourvoulias-
Bush, a Guatemalan of Greek ancestry, and their
two-year-old son, Octavio. She is at work on a new
collection of short stories.Bibliography
Jawaid, Rifat. “A Home-Coming for Jhumpa La-
hiri.” Rediff India Abroad. Available online. URL:
http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/jan/11jhum.
htm. Downloaded on November 15, 2004.
Shankar, R.S. “New Yorker Chooses Lahiri As One of
20 Writers for 21st Century.” Rediff India Abroad.
Available online. URL: http://www.rediff.com/
news/1999/jun/19us3.htm. Downloaded Novem-
ber 15, 2004.
Solan, Matthew. “Catching Up With Pulitzer Prize
Winner Jhumpa Lahiri.” Poets & Writers 31, no. 5
(September/October 2003): 36–38.
Dana HansenLam, Andrew Quang (1963– )
A journalist, essayist, and fiction writer, Andrew
Lam was born in Saigon, Vietnam, to South Viet-
namese Army general Lâm Quang Thi and his
wife Bich Thi. When he was 11 years old, his fam-
ily fled South Vietnam on the last refugee cargo
flight before a Communist attack closed the Sai-
gon Airport. Airlifted first to Clark Air Force Base
in the Philippines, Lam’s family was transferred
between refugee camps established on Guam and
Camp Pendleton in Southern California until they
resettled permanently in the San Francisco Bay
area. Lam earned a B.S. in biochemistry from the
University of California, Berkeley, in 1986. Lam
initially worked with a cancer research laboratory
after graduation, but after taking creative writ-
ing classes through the UC Berkeley extension
program, he abandoned the sciences to become
a writer. He returned to school and obtained an
M.F.A. in creative writing from San Francisco State
University in 1992.
His switch to writing and journalism proved
immediately successful when he won the Society of
Professional Journalists’ Outstanding Young Jour-
nalist Award in 1993. In 1995 he began to report158 Lam, Andrew Quang