Jhumpa Lahiri, a prominent American writer of Bengali descent, was born in London in 1967. She grew up in the United States, where she earned a master's degree in comparative literature and a doctorate in Renaissance art. She is known for her short stories, novels, and essays in English, and has recently begun writing in Italian. For her first work, The Interpreter of Disease, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature and the PEN/Hemingway Award. She repeated her success with her first novel, The Namesake, which was made into a film of the same name. Her notable works include a collection of short stories, A New World, and the novel The Plain. Lahiri currently lives between Rome and Princeton.

© Liana Miuccio