Padma Viswanathan

Padma Viswanathan is the author of two novels: The Toss of a Lemon, published in eight countries and shortlisted for the Pen Center USA Fiction Prize among others, and The Ever After of Ashwin Rao, also published internationally and a finalist for Canada’s Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her short fiction, personal essays, critical writing, and short translations have been published in Granta, The Boston Review, and elsewhere. Her translation of the novel São Bernardo, by the Brazilian novelist Graciliano Ramos, was published in May 2020 by the New York Review Books.

Padma has been teaching Creative Writing (Fiction) at the University of Arkansas since 2011 and has additionally served as fiction faculty at the Banff Center, the Vermont Studio Center, Kundiman Asian-American Writers Retreat, Breadloaf Sicily, and others. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Canada Council for the Arts and was awarded the 2017 Porter Prize, given annually to an Arkansas writer.