Authors discuss their books about their parents and how it influences their writing and their very being.
Shobha Tharoor Srinivasan
Shobha Tharoor Srinivasan is an award-winning voice-over artist, poet, editor, and author of a dozen works of fiction and nonfiction. She is also a former non-profit development professional who spent two decades as an advocate and fundraiser for persons with disabilities. Shobha won the 68th National Film Awards for Best Narration Voice Over for the film Rhapsody of Rains- Monsoons of Kerala in 2022. Shobha has published children’s books in India and the United States, and has been recognized with awards for many of them. Shobha is a regular speaker on panels and a frequent guest at Literary festivals. She has been featured on radio and TV, profiled in well-known magazines and one of her stories was dramatically performed by Silicon Valley Shakespeare, California in 2021. Her books have been included in school curricula in India. Shobha’s love of words and stories began in childhood with storytelling sessions and word-play with her siblings. When she is not traveling in search of stories, Shobha lives in Campbell, California, with her husband.
Kalpana Mohan
KALPANA MOHAN’s writing has appeared in several regional and national magazines in the United States. An award-winning columnist for India Currents Magazine, she is a regular contributor to Bay City News Foundation which serves the San Francisco Bay Area. In fall 2019, her book, Daddykins: A Memoir of My Father and I, was part of the curriculum in a creative writing course at San Francisco State University. Her second book, An English Made in India, was published in 2019, and it looks at how a foreign tongue became not just India’s lingua franca but also an Indian language with its own unique tang.
Raji Pillai
Dr. Raji Pillai is a literature and theater critic for San Francisco Bay Area South Asian news outlets, including India Currents and Indica News. Her writings are at www.rajiwrites.com. In her parallel life as a scientist, she advises medical device and diagnostics companies in clinical, scientific and regulatory affairs.