|
Sheela Chari |
|
Children’s author |
|
♦ short “official” bio I was born in Bangalore, India, at a time I’m told, when the streets were quiet and peaceful, and most people rode around on bicycles and scooters. As a little girl, I would wake up to the sound of koels singing high up in the trees, which were louder than any alarm clock. I wouldn’t be around to see Bangalore transform from a sleepy town into a bustling, hi-tech city, with busy roadways and gigantic billboards. By the time I was three, my parents, brother and I had crossed the Atlantic and landed in Iowa, where we would live for 10 years. In Iowa City I learned to read and write and imagine. This was also the first place I thought to myself, I want to be a writer. I didn’t know Iowa City was the home of one of the country’s oldest writing programs. All I knew was how to take the bus to the library and check out my favorite books there. When I was twelve, my family moved to Pullman, Washington. If Iowa City was where I learned to read, Pullman was where I learned to love music. I played the violin with my friends both in the school and the community orchestra. Sometimes I scribbled little melodies on staff paper. At night I fell asleep listening to The Magic Flute. In college, I began to have some doubts. Writing? Music? What about chemistry, economics, and political science? And oh yeah, anthropology? (You figure out what I finally studied!). After spending a few years Not Knowing What to Do, I came back to writing. I had taken some creative writing classes, and my teachers thought I had promise. But I don’t think it was until I got into a master’s program in creative writing that I realized I could actually make a career out of writing, that it could be...my job. I’ll fast-forward a little here. Imagine several years going by...finishing one writing degree, then another, getting a job, getting married, having two kids, and finally, at last—a book deal. Yes, writing could be a job, but one that needed all those other things to have happened first. I’ll end by saying that I couldn’t have studied the craft of writing without going to grad school. Well, I could have, but it would have taken me much longer on my own. I couldn’t have learned to live on my own without a job. I couldn’t learned what it’s like to live with others without my family. And I couldn’t have learned to come up with stories without all those life experiences in between. |
|
Copyright © 2009–2010 Sheela Chari. All rights reserved. Select artwork by Keerthana. All photos by Shivi Isman except where noted. |
|
Two good reasons why I write. |
|
Find me online: |
