American poet
Minal Hajratwala
(born 1971) is a writer, performer, poet, and
queer
activist
of
Indian
descent. She was born in 1971 in
San Francisco
,
California
,
US
, and was raised in
New Zealand
and suburban
Michigan
. She is a graduate of
Stanford University
.
[1]
Career
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She is the author of
Leaving India: My Family's Journey From Five Villages to Five Continents
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), which
Alice Walker
has called "incomparable,"
[2]
and
The Washington Post
has characterized as "searingly honest."
[3]
She researched and wrote the book during a seven-year period, traveling the world to interview more than 75 members of her extended family.
Hajratwala's creative work has appeared in journals, anthologies, and theater spaces and has received recognition and support from the
Sundance Institute
, the
Jon Sims Center for the Arts
, the SerpentSource Foundation, and the
Hedgebrook
writing retreat for women, where she serves on the Alumnae Leadership Council. For
World AIDS Day
in 1999, the
Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
commissioned her one-woman show, "Avatars: Gods for a New Millennium."
She previously worked as a journalist at the
San Jose Mercury News
for eight years, was a board member of the
National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association
, and was a National Arts Journalism Program fellow at
Columbia University
's Graduate School of Journalism in 2000-01.
In June 2011 Hajratwala and Tom MacMaster, creator of
Amina Abdallah Arraf al Omari
, engaged in an online dispute over the posting of MacMaster's manuscript.
[4]
Hajratwala is the founder of Unicorn Club, "a magical sanctuary where authors of color (and allies who really mean it!) finish our gorgeous, urgently needed books."
[5]
Works
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References
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External links
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