Uma Krishnaswami is an author of picture books and novels for children, and a writing teacher. She is “recognized as a major voice in the expanding of international and multicultural young adult fiction and children’s literature.”
Uma Krishnaswami was born in 1956 in New Delhi, India. She received a degree in political science, and a Masters degree in social work from University of Delhi in India. In 1979, she and her husband moved to the United States where she received an additional graduate degree. They have one son. She lives in Aztec, New Mexico.
Her first published story appeared in Children’s World, a magazine published in India, when she was thirteen. Her stories and poems have been published in Cricket, Highlights and Cicada. Her books, which include picture books, collections of stories of India, non-fiction books, and novels, are published in English, Spanish, Hindi, Tamil and six other languages.
Chachaji's Cup, one of Krishnaswami's picture books, was adapted into a musical and performed during 2010 in several theaters in both New York City and California.
Krishnaswami was a founding co-director of the Bisti Writing Project, a site of the National Writing Project in New Mexico. She is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators and a nonresident member of The Children's Book Guild of Washington DC. She has taught writing to adults and children for years, and for over ten years she was the writer in residence at the Aztec Ruins National Monument. During that time she also taught writing classes online through Writers on the Net. She currently teaches in the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
