A WRITER IN EDUCATION
Debjani is one of Britain's best-known Asian writers. Born in Delhi, she attended 7 schools (including Convent of Jesus & Mary in New Delhi and King George V in Hong Kong) and 4 universities in Japan, India, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Egypt & Britain. At the American University in Cairo she was a student-reporter for the university newsletter Caravan and worked part-time in the library. She did an MA in English & American Literature at the Uni of Kent at Canterbury in 1972/3. As a PhD student at Lancaster Uni. (1973/7), she was President of the Asian Society & Co-editor of Continuum poetry magazine. At Sheffield Hallam Uni her PGCE subjects were English, Drama & Religious Education. After working in the steel industry, education & community relations, she became a full-time writer & storyteller who enjoys working in libraries, schools, colleges, arts centres and community venues. She has had interesting residencies: she was Storyteller-in-res. at Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum ('98), Writer-in-res. in Bedfordshire schools, the Poetry Society's Poet-in-res. at Sheffield Children's Hospital (2000), Writer/Storyteller at Sheffield's Millennium Galleries (2001), Writer/Storyteller on the Apani Kahani intergenerational project at Leamington Spa (2001) & Writer-in-res. with the Mayura Untold Stories project at Kedleston Hall (2004). Debjani has participated in Sampad's award-winning Adopt-an-Author project (2004) and the Poetry Society's Poetryclass Project since 2001. Her work has appeared in major anthologies and been broadcast on radio and TV. Sheffield Hallam University awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2002.
Her first full collection I WAS THAT WOMAN (Hippopotamus Press, 1989), was followed by mini collections in THE SUN RISES IN THE NORTH (Smith/Doorstop) & A LITTLE BRIDGE (Pennine Pens), & a second full collection ALBINO GECKO (University of Salzburg Press, 1998). She is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at York St John University since 2006, a Patron of Survivors' Poetry, a member of the multilingual performance group Mini Mushaira & Associate Editor of PRATIBHA INDIA and TADEEB INTERNATIONAL magazines. She is a Director of Sahitya Press, which she co-founded with Safuran Ara, and a founder-member of Bengali Women's Support Group for whom she has co-edited several bi-lingual anthologies, including BARBED LINES, which won the Raymond Williams Community Publishing Prize 1990. Other important anthologies are: THE REDBECK ANTHOLOGY OF BRITISH SOUTH ASIAN POETRY, MY BIRTH WAS NOT IN VAIN: Selected Poems by Seven Bengali Women, RAINBOW WORLD: Poems from Many Cultures & MASALA: Poems from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan & Sri Lanka. Twisting Yarn Theatre toured her multilingual play for children THE HONOURED GUEST in 2000 & 2001. Books for children include: THE ELEPHANT-HEADED GOD & OTHER HINDU TALES, selected for Children’s Books of the Year 1990, THE SNAKE PRINCE & OTHER FOLK TALES FROM BENGAL and ANIMAL ANTICS.
Debjani has been Chair of the National Association of Writers in Education, an Arts Council of England Literature Adviser & Chair of its Translations Panel, and a PLR Adviser. Her prose & poetry translations include:
Rabindranath Tagore’s THE PARROT’S TRAINING, Safuran Ara’s SONGS IN EXILE & an oral history book HOME TO HOME. She has also translated work by Kazi Nazrul Islam, Nasir Kazmi, Basir Sultan Kazmi & (with her mother Tara Chatterjee) Uma Prasad Mukherjee.