Sagaree Sengupta is a writer, translator and scholar who lives in central Maine. She grew up bilingual in Bengali and English, and then learned several other languages. She has written poetry and played with translation from South Asian languages since childhood. While a sometime specialist in Hindi, Urdu and Bengali poets of medieval and colonial India, Sengupta has always been interested in the wider literary and artistic traditions of South Asia. Sengupta has published translations of poems, short stories and novels from Hindi, Urdu and Bengali. She has contributed her original poetry to Ravishing Disunities: Real Ghazals in English (Wesleyan University Press, 2000) edited by Agha Shahid Ali, as well as to various literary journals. She received an NEA grant in 2002 to translate The Diary of a Maidservant by prominent modern Hindi novelist Krishna Baldev Vaid. Sengupta has also published articles on the 19thc. Hindi/Brajbhasha writer Bharatendu Hariscandra, Rabindranath Tagore, and Naiyer Masud. She has published one very short story ("Parshuram") and is now writing more fiction. Sengupta is also an avid textile artist who makes original neo-traditional quilts and garment, often with recycled fabrics. She is thinking about publishing her poetry by embroidering it inside art-to-wear jackets.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Translations from South Asian Literary Works:
*2007The Diary of a Maidservant, Hindi novel by K. B. Vaid translated into English in collaboration with the author.New Delhi:OxfordUniversity Press.
2005The Myna of Peacock Garden, translation from Urdu of story by Naiyer Masud.New Delhi:Katha. [Republished as a separate volume.]
2002The Book of the Hunter, novel by Mahasweta Devi. (from Bengali, with Mandira Sengupta).Calcutta, Seagull Publications.
2001“NightCity,” short story by Shaukat Siddiqi, from Urdu.Persimmon 2.1:68-83.
2000Queen of Jhansi by Mahasweta Devi (from Bengali, with Mandira Sengupta).Calcutta: Seagull Publications.
2000“Kabi-matrbhasa, or Bangabhasa,” sonnet by Michael Madhusudan Datta, from Bengali.International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter (Leiden) 21:13.
1999"The Myna from PeacockGarden," short story by Naiyer Masud, from Urdu in Essence of Camphor(Stories of Naiyer Masud), tr. M. U. Memon et. Al., New York:The New Press, 1999.123-170.[Previously published in Annual of Urdu Studies 12:155-192.]
1998"I'm Breaking All the Rules," "Trees, Night, Ghosts, Questions," and "A Gift," poems by Champa Vaid, from Hindi.Primavera 21:130-132.
1997"Five Songs of Surdas," from Brajbhasha. SulphurRiver Review 13.1:6-16.
1990"Wood Chopped In the Jungle" short story by Surendra Prakash, in The Tale of the Old Fisherman and Other Modern Urdu Short Stories,M. U. Memon, ed.Washington, D. C.:Three Continents Press.159-163.
Fiction
1997"Parshuram" (short story), in Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad 16.1:74-79.
Poetry:
2000"Soup,” in Ravishing Disunities:Real Ghazals in English, edited by Agha Shahid Ali.Hanover:University Press of New England (WesleyanUniversity Press), 2000: 143. [Previously published in The Annual of Urdu Studies (1994), No. 9 and Primavera (1995) 18/19:61.]
1996"Summer Note," "The Calling," and "Soliloquies" in Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad 15.1 (Summer):57-60.
1996"Soliloquies" (revised version)also published in Indian Literature 173:130.
1995"Winter..." in Borderlands:A Texas Poetry Review, 7 (Fall/Winter 1995):57.
1995"No One Here But Me" and "A New Destination" in Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad, 13.2:82, 83.
