Nabaneeta Dev Sen
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Nabaneeta Dev Sen (Bengali: Nôbonita Deb Shen) is a Bengali writer from India.
Sen was born in Kolkata to the poet-couple Narendra Dev and Radharani Devi. She graduated from Presidency College and took her M.A. from Jadavpur University, Calcutta, A.M. with Distinction from Harvard University and Ph.D. from Indiana University. She did post-doctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley, USA, at Newnham College, Cambridge University, UK, and was UGC Senior Fellow at Delhi University. She retired as Professor of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University, Calcutta.
Nabaneeta Dev Sen has published more than 80 books in Bengali: poetry, novels, short stories, plays, literary criticism, personal essays, travelogues, humour writing, translations and children’s literature. Her first collection of poems “Pratham Pratyay” was published in 1959. Nabaneeta deals with a wide variety of social, political, psychological problems like the role of the intellectuals in the Naxalite movement, (Ami Anupam, 1976), identity crisis of the Indian writing in English (1977), that of the second generation NRIs (1985), breakdown of the joint family, life in old age homes (1988), homosexuality (1995), facing AIDS (1999,2002), child abuse, and obsession, uprootedness, immigration and exile in her novels, often using women as her central characters. Her short stories and travelogues are a rare combination of fine humour, deep human concern, and high intellect, which has made her a unique figure in the Bangla literary scene. Her first short story collection was “Monsieur Hulor Holiday” (1980). Travelogues like “Karuna tomar kon path diye” and “Truckbaahane Myakmahane” have become classics in Bengali literature.
She is a well-known children’s authors in Bengali for her fairy tales and adventure stories, where girls are the heroes. She also has written prize-winning one-act plays.
[edit] Recognition
She was a writer in residence at prestigious international Artists’ Colonies like Yaddo and MacDowell, in the USA, Bellaggio in Italy, the Mishkenot in Jerusalem.
She has been a visiting professor, and a visiting creative writer at different times at several universities of USA (Harvard, Cornell, Rutgers, Columbia, Smith College, Chicago, etc), the UK, Canada (Toronto, York, British Columbia), Mexico, [[Germany], France, and Japan. She delivered the Radhakrishnan Memorial Lecture series (1996-97) at Oxford University on epic poetry. She held the Maytag Chair of Creative Writing and Comparative Literature at Colorado College 1988-89, represented herself and her country in many international conferences, both academic and literary, including the Festival of India USA 1986, the Frankfurt Book Fair 1993 and the Munich Book Week 2002.
Nabaneeta lives in Kolkata, in her parental house Bhalo-Basa, where she was born, now declared a Heritage Building. She has two daughters, Antara and Nandana, with former husband, economist Amartya Sen, and one adopted daughter, Srabasti.
