Anuradha D. Rajurkar is the award-winning author of American Betiya, a YALSA Best Book of 2022, a SABA 2022 honor book, and is included in Cosmopolitan’s “125 Best YA Novels of All Time.” Born and raised in the Chicago area to South Asian immigrant parents, Anuradha earned two degrees from Northwestern University, and for many years had the joy of being a public school teacher by day, writer by night.
Nowadays, when she’s not writing or reading, you can find Anuradha hiking the shorelines of Lake Michigan, obsessing over her garden, watching old horror flicks, and roguishly knitting sweaters without their patterns. She hopes her stories will inspire teens to embrace their unique identities and inner badass despite societal pressures and expectations. She currently lives in Evanston, Illinois with her family.
Anuradha is hard at work on her next novel, Temporary Bodies (Knopf), which will be published summer of 2024. Follow her on Instagram for thoughts on art, books, family, and plants @anuradhadrajurkar