About Anuradha D. Rajurkar
Anuradha D. Rajurkar is the award-winning author of American Betiya (Knopf), named by the American Library Association as a YALSA Best Book, Bank Street Best Book, and is included as one of Cosmopolitan's 125 Best YA Books of All Time. Born and raised in the Chicago area to Indian 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 working in academia at her alma mater, you can find Anuradha exploring the shores of Lake Michigan, reading by the fire, or roguishly knitting sweaters without their patterns. She hopes her stories will inspire teens to embrace their unique identities and inner badass. Anuradha is hard at work on her second novel, a gothic thriller entitled Temporary Bodies (Knopf, 2025), and a short story included in Home Has No Borders (HarperTeen, 2025), an upcoming anthology edited by Samira Ahmed and Sona Charaipotra. She currently lives in the Chicago area with her family, including its newest member: a sweet, highly opinionated rescue pup named Cleo.
Nowadays, when she’s not writing or working in academia at her alma mater, you can find Anuradha exploring the shores of Lake Michigan, reading by the fire, or roguishly knitting sweaters without their patterns. She hopes her stories will inspire teens to embrace their unique identities and inner badass. Anuradha is hard at work on her second novel, a gothic thriller entitled Temporary Bodies (Knopf, 2025), and a short story included in Home Has No Borders (HarperTeen, 2025), an upcoming anthology edited by Samira Ahmed and Sona Charaipotra. She currently lives in the Chicago area with her family, including its newest member: a sweet, highly opinionated rescue pup named Cleo.