Suketu Mehta is the New York-based author of ''Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found'', which won the Kiriyama Prize and the Hutch Crossword Award, and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, the Lettre Ulysses Prize, the BBC4 Samuel Johnson Prize, and the Guardian First Book Award. His autobiographical account of his experiences in Mumbai, ''

Maximum City ''Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found'' is a narrative nonfiction book by Suketu Mehta, published in 2004, about the Indian city of Mumbai (also known as Bombay). It was published in hardcover by Random House's Alfred A. Knopf imprint. When rele ...

,'' was published in 2004. The book, based on two and a half years research, explores the underbelly of the city. He has won a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for his fiction. Mehta’s work has been published in ''The New Yorker'', ''The New York Times Magazine'', ''National Geographic, Granta'', ''Harper’s'', ''Time'', ''Newsweek'', '' The New York Review of Books'' and Scroll.in, and has been featured on NPR’s ''Fresh Air,'' and NPR's ''All Things Considered''. Mehta has also written original screenplays for films, including ''New York, I Love You'' (2008) and '' Mission Kashmir'' with novelist Vikram Chandra. His latest book '' This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant's Manifesto,'' was published in June 2019 under a 2007 Guggenheim fellowship.

Personal life

Mehta was born in

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

, to Gujarati parents and raised in

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the secon ...

, where he lived until his family moved to the New York area in 1977. He is a graduate of

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, ...

and the

University of Iowa Writers' Workshop The Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa, is a celebrated graduate-level creative writing program in the United States. The writer Lan Samantha Chang is its director. Graduates earn a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Creative Wri ...

. Mehta is a cancer survivor. Mehta is an Associate Professor of Journalism at

and lives in Manhattan.

Awards

*He won a

Whiting Award The Whiting Award is an American award presented annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and plays. The award is sponsored by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation Mrs. (American English) or Mrs (British English; standard E ...

in 1997. *He won the O. Henry Prize for his short story ''Gare du Nord'' published in Harper's Magazine in 1997. *He won a Fellowship of the New York Foundation for the Arts. *He won a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship. *2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for the book ''Maximum City''. *''Maximum City'' was also chosen as one of the books of the year 2004 by ''

The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Econ ...

''. *''Maximum City'' won the 2005 Kiriyama Prize.

Works

* * *''This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant's Manifesto''. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2019.

Filmography

As Writer

References

External links

Suketu Mehta
official web site.
Profile at The Whiting Foundation
with the ''

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

''
Interview
in ''

The Believer Believer(s) or The Believer(s) may refer to: Religion * Believer, a person who holds a particular belief ** Believer, a person who holds a particular religious belief *** Believers, Christians with a religious faith in the divine Christ *** Beli ...

'' magazine by Karan Mahajan
Interview
with Venkatesan Vembu, '' Daily News & Analysis''
Lettre Ulysses Award Biography
(broken link as of 27 Oct 2012)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mehta, Suketu 1963 births Living people Indian emigrants to the United States Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni New York University alumni New York University faculty Writers from Kolkata American autobiographers American male journalists American writers of Indian descent American short story writers American male short story writers English-language writers from India Gujarati people American people of Gujarati descent