Nishi Chawla

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Nishi Chawla (Born on April 5, 1958, in India) is an Indian-American academician,[1] well-known poet, playwright, novelist, and independent filmmaker.[2] She has eight poetry collections, ten plays, three feature-length movies, two novels, and two screenplays to her credit.[3][4] She is working on her fourth feature film, a docudrama titled The Peace Activists on Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Henry David Thoreau, and a volume of poetry titled Exorbitant Dreamings.

Early Life and Education

Nishi Chawla completed her doctorate in English from George Washington University, Washington D.C. (1997), and her post-doctorate from Johns Hopkins University, USA (2000).[5][3][6]

Nishi Chawla was among the All India High School toppers in the Sciences with a distinction in all subjects. Since she had always wanted to become a writer, she chose to study English Literature in college. She was one of the toppers in her undergraduate Honors studies and Master's in English Literature at the University of Delhi, India. She started teaching at Delhi University at the age of 22.

Career

Nishi Chawla served as a tenured Professor at Delhi University, India, until she migrated to Washington D.C., USA, with her family.[4]

Between 1999 and 2014, Nishi Chawla taught as an Adjunct Professor of English at the University of Maryland,[6] mainly at the global campus. She is now on Thomas Edison State University, New Jersey faculty since 2013.[7]

Literature

Books

By the year 2022, Nishi Chawla had published twelve books. Her book Behind Female Grit And Glory, released in 2016, contains three history plays, Kasturba Versus Gandhi, The Return of B, and Indira; for which she spent five years researching and writing. The plays deal with the inner lives of Kasturba Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, and an unnamed South Asian woman head of state. The plays aim to bring out the predicament and dilemmas of women in leadership positions and roles.

Nishi Chawla is focused on undertaking uneasy subjects from history. She has written and directed several plays based on the life and times of important historical and political figures, including Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto, Draupadi, and Kasturba. Her plays get staged in USA and India.[8] Her play Churchill Among Savages, which examines the role played by the former British Prime Minister in the former British colonies, including Africa and India, was successfully performed in Washington DC on November 2, 2019.[3][6][8][9]

Novels

Nishi Chawla published her first novel, Twist of Truth, in 2001, a mix of political, historical, and philosophical fiction that broadly deals with the political issue of terrorism. The narrative is exhibited through the subjectivity of one who is known as a militant.

Her second novel, A Human Silicon Chip, was nominated for the Commonwealth award. It is about the power of tech money to change the nature of the sibling rivalry between two brothers from India, where the struggling liberal arts. Professor undergoes a moral transformation as he sees his brother make it big in Silicon Valley.

Poetry

In 1998, as fate transplanted Nishi Chawla into the North American continent, the Indian side of her personality had yearned to fathom better her Indian roots and her Indian cultural identity. As a result, she extensively researched Indian Gods and Goddesses and their affinities with Indians. Confluences I: Indian Women, Indian Goddesses was born as a poetry collection due to her peregrinations into her cultural depths. In these fifty-odd poems, she tried to use broad-brush strokes to convey her raw impressions and experiences of Indian women and Indian goddesses. The poems also exhibit connections and parallels between the lives and experiences of Indian women and Indian goddesses. In writing poems on this subject, she had hoped to contribute to rethinking mythologies and poeticizing their present relevance.

Nishi Chawla attempts to offer a poetic outlook on questions and issues arising from the lives and experiences of Indian men and Indian Gods in Confluences II: Indian Men, Indian Gods, a sequel to Indian Women, Indian Goddesses (2007), including fifty poems. The mythological and historical tropes are captured in verse that aims to ponder on, philosophize, and problematize their parallels and connections, if any. As a poet, Nishi Chawla has tried to invest her poetic pen in the ink of social color, to paint in the palette of a social canvas that is large and narrow at the same time.

Her fourth volume of poetry, The Ganga, a 125-page poem on the river Ganges, is divided into several sections, each of which addresses the various roles and functions of the Ganga, its mythologies, and its histories. As a poet, she has tried to establish a developing relationship with the feminine form of the river even as she reflects on the nature of sacrality. The last section of this poem was published in the December 2010 edition of the literary journal by India's Academy of Arts and Letters, Sahitya Academy, Indian Literature.[10]

In 2017, in conversation with Subodh Sarkar at the Kolkata international literary festival, Nishi Chawla launched her fifth volume of poetry, a 125-page long poem titled, A Himalayan Poem (2017),[11][12] which is divided into eight sections. This poem is her personal response to the landscape of the mountains even as the poem explores its physical attributes: its rivers, its peaks and glaciers, its flora and fauna, its cultural traditions, both secular and spiritual, and its people.

Nishi Chawla's sixth volume of poetry, From: Immigrant Diaries, is a diverse collection of poems on the lives, experiences, dilemmas, and existential situations of immigrants across the globe.

Nishi Chawla has co-edited, along with K Satchidanandan, a global anthology of poems, Singing in the Dark, which Penguin Random House published in 2020. The collection features the existential anguish of over a hundred internationally well-known poets worldwide in response to the pandemic.[13][14][15] They are also co-editing a second anthology of poems titled Greening the Earth, to be published by Penguin Random House in the summer of 2023.[1]

Nishi Chawla has been featured at several forums and festivals for poetry readings in India and USA, including the Jaipur Literary Festival, Kerala Literary Festival, Goa and Hyderabad Literary Festivals, Sahitya Akademi in India, the Indo-American Arts Council Literary Festival in New York, and Montana Book Festival, Missoula, the Asia Society and Asian American Forum in Washington D.C., et al. She has appeared at the Literary Forum held in New Delhi in May 2018, at the Who's Who TV Show on the Capital Forum in Washington D.C. in October 2016, and at the KLF International Poetry Festival, in India, which included nine countries and approximately 50 famous poets in January 2020.[16]

On October 1, 2019, Nishi Chawla, with Grace Cavelieri, paid tribute to Mahatma Gandhi in honor of his 150th birth anniversary at the Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland.[17]

Nishi Chawla, with Kathleen Hellen, was the feature writer at the October Wilde Readings, a monthly community open mic supported by HoCoPoLitSo.[18]

Nishi Chawla has also offered poetry readings at the Gandhi Center in Washington D.C. and the Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Her poems get published regularly in major American literary journals.

Films

Nishi Chawla has also written and directed three award-winning feature films on social issues.

Her first feature film, Mixed Up (2020),[19] is based on interracial love. It is streaming on Amazon Prime in the USA, U.K., and Canada. Her second feature film, The Strange Case of Normalcy (2022), is based on normal people's mental issues and inner challenges.[6] Her third feature film, TechNous, is about the power of tech money to change the nature of the sibling rivalry between two East European immigrant brothers, where the struggling liberal arts. Professor undergoes a moral transformation when he sees his brother make it big in Silicon Valley.

Nishi Chawla is now engaged in making a docudrama, her fourth feature film, in which she places Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King within a dramatic plot that would bring out their similarities in the cause of peace and non-violence. Nishi Chawla is passionate about the cause of peace.

Recognition

Nishi Chawla's work has been reviewed in major Indian and American journals and newspapers. Nishi Chawla received a British Council Fellowship in 1989.

She also received a Citation from the state of Maryland, USA, in 2018, recognizing her dedication to the arts and the theatre. Nishi Chawla has been awarded several Arts and Humanities Grants by the Montgomery Government and the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, Maryland, USA.

As an independent filmmaker, she has been awarded the Best Debut Filmmaker at Druk International Film Festival, Sikkim, and Best Debut Film Maker at Tagore International Film Festival for her film Mixed Up. The film has been granted twelve film festival awards and nominations. Her second feature film, The Strange Case of Normalcy, received nine awards, including Best Post-Modern Film at the Mumbai International Film Festival and Best Dialogues at the Jaipur international film festival in India.

Nishi Chawla is a member of the American Association of Poets and Writers and the American Academy of Poets. She is on the board of the Actors' Center in Washington, D.C. She gets invited to Literature Festivals and Poetry Readings in the USA and India every year.

Publications

Books

Fiction

  • Behind Female Grit and Glory - Three Feminist Plays: Kasturba Versus Gandhi, The Return of B and Indira. (Sterling Publishing, 2016)[20]
  • A Human Silicon Chip (Indian Heritage Press, 2003)
  • The Twist of Truth (Indialog Publications Pvt. Ltd., 2001)

Poetry

  • Greening the Earth (Penguin Random House, 2023)[1]
  • From: Immigrant Diaries (Red River Press, 2019)
  • A Himalayan Poem (Sterling Publishing, 2017)[11][12]
  • The Ganga (Indialog Publications Pvt. Ltd., 2015)
  • Confluences II: Indian Men, Indian Gods (Indialog Publications Pvt. Ltd., 2008)[5]
  • Confluences I: Indian Women, Indian Goddesses (Indialog Publications Pvt. Ltd., 2007)[5][6]
  • Iraq War Memorabilia (2006)

Anthology

  • Singing in the Dark: A Global Anthology of Poetry Under Lockdown (Penguin Random House, 2020)[13][14][21]
  • Greening the Earth (Penguin Random House, 2023)[1]

Personal Life

Nishi Chawla has two sons who are married and live in New York. She lives with her husband of forty years in a suburb of Washington, D.C.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "Can ‘ecopoetry’ drive climate action? These poets think so - Times of India" (in en). The Times of India. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/can-ecopoetry-drive-climate-action-these-poets-think-so/articleshow/99754648.cms?fbclid=IwAR3-PCa3Xs1oSj6XW9viBbEUVSG_s4E91BSsprgPmVJtmhX-hTrx_Jc7c-4. 
  2. ↑ "‘This pandemic has been a leveller, and developing countries have reacted better to it than developed ones’". The Times of India. 2020-07-16. ISSN 0971-8257. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/this-pandemic-has-been-a-leveller-and-developing-countries-have-reacted-better-to-it-than-developed-ones/articleshow/76993643.cms. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Nishi Chawla - Penguin .Co". https://penguin.co.in/book_author/nishi-chawla/. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "The Strange Case of Normalcy" (in en). 2021-12-27. https://www.torontofilmmagazine.com/post/the-strange-case-of-normalcy. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 "Enslaved — The New Slavery". https://www.tribuneindia.com/2008/20081102/spectrum/book8.htm. 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 "Nishi Chawla" (in en). 2022-11-07. https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/nishi_chawla. 
  7. ↑ "Singing in the dark By K Satchidanandan & Nishi Chawla". https://www.gyaanadab.org/singing-in-the-dark-review/. 
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Wire, A. B. (2019-11-01). "‘Churchill Among Savages,’ a play on Winston Churchill to be performed in Washington area - The American Bazaar" (in en-US). https://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2019/10/31/churchill-among-savages-a-play-on-winston-churchill-to-be-performed-in-washington-area-439195/,%20https://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2019/10/31/churchill-among-savages-a-play-on-winston-churchill-to-be-performed-in-washington-area-439195/. 
  9. ↑ "Nishi Chawla" (in en). https://events.sulekha.com/nishi-chawla-s-play-churchill-among-savages_event-in_rockville-md_346799. 
  10. ↑ "In Literary Journals". https://nishichawla.com/journals-%2F-anthologies. 
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Nishi Chawla (2017). Himalayan Poem. Sterling Publishers Pvt Ltd (ind). ISBN 978-81-207-9470-2. https://www.biblio.com/book/himalayan-poem-nishi-chawla/d/1330423507. 
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 "Himalayan Poem by Nishi Chawla Book The Fast Free Shipping". https://www.ebay.com/itm/353641830364. 
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Misra, Shubhangi (2020-07-05). "The story of the storytellers: How writers are coping with Covid-19 and the lockdown" (in en-US). https://theprint.in/features/the-story-of-the-storytellers-how-writers-are-coping-with-covid-19-and-the-lockdown/454749/. 
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 George, Pooja (2021-01-13). "A Review: ‘Singing in the Dark: A Global Anthology of Poetry Under Lockdown’ • Reading Room Co." (in en-US). https://readingroomco.com/2021/01/13/a-review-singing-in-the-dark-a-global-anthology-of-poetry-under-lockdown/. 
  15. ↑ "NO LOCKDOWN ON INSPIRATION". https://www.setumag.com/2020/11/no-lockdown-on-inspiration.html. 
  16. ↑ "Nishi Chawla | KLF International Poetry Festival|KLF-2021". https://www.keralaliteraturefestival.com/news_more.aspx?id=MjE4OA==&year=2021. 
  17. ↑ "A Tribute to Mahatma Gandhi with Maryland Poet Laureate Grace Cavelieri and Dr. Nishi Chawla" (in en-US). https://www.writer.org/event/a-tribute-to-gandhi-with-grace-cavelieri-and-nishi-chawla/. 
  18. ↑ Yoo, Laura (2021-10-05). "wilde readings feature authors Nishi Chawla and Kathleen Hellen" (in en). https://hocopolitso.org/2021/10/05/wilde-readings-feature-authors-nishi-chawla-and-kathleen-hellen/. 
  19. ↑ ""Mixed Up" (2020)" (in en). https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-pwvy2f/mixed-up/. 
  20. ↑ "Search results for 9789385913310 Blackwell's". https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/search/isbn/9789385913310. 
  21. ↑ "Singing in the Dark - by K Satchidanandan & Nishi Chawla (Hardcover)" (in en-US). https://www.target.com/p/singing-in-the-dark-by-k-satchidanandan-nishi-chawla-hardcover/-/A-87345661. 
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