When I married into a Hindu Brahmin family, I began to write seriously as a way to penetrate the protocol of another culture. My Bombay Trilogy explores South Indian life, particularly the stage referred to as samsara. The term haunted me for awhile— samsara--the sibilance of a word that can connote drowning. I had been reading Indian writers—Lahiri, Desai, Divakaruni-- and was drawn to the stories of immigrant families thrashing in their domestic seas. The plight of characters who straddle two continents, the lives they make here, and the families they leave behind, raised the question: when one belongs to two cultures, which part of a divided self goes, and what stays? Bombay Trilogy follows the fictional Sambashivan family from the author's previous novels (Shiva's Arms, Rescuing Ranu, and Kalpavriksha) through a sprawling, epic retelling of their history from different points-of-view--a transversal novel. The characters, from the a bandit-killing future matriarch to siblings who rise above the demands of blood; from a daughter who adopts an orphan of questionable origin, to a cousin who marries an 'unsuitable' bride, from an auntie who inherits her sister's life, to newlyweds with separate agendas for their future-- cycle through decades of cultural, personal, and societal change, each generation finding itself stranded at the intersection of freedom and duty.  People often ask me if I am the American character in the story, Alice. I tell them she has my hair and my fashion sense, but her character is influenced by my fictional universe and the demands it makes on her. Even truth is held hostage to memory and interpretation. When fictional truth wins over nostalgia, the story finds its own voice. I am not Alice, but I know her very well.          

I have published four novels and eight collections of poetry. Over four hundred of my poems and stories have been appeared in print and online journals, and I have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net award seven times. I had work chosen by Dorianne Laux for inclusion in a Sundress Best of the Net Anthology. My sister and I won the Lopside Press chapbook contest for Prisoner's Dilemma, a book of art and poetry inspired by game theory. In addition to our traditionally published books, we have an ongoing series of our collaborations called Scattered Light Library, and we manage a blog also called Scattered Light.