Anuradha Bhattacharyya


Anuradha Bhattacharyya is an Indian writer of poetry and fiction. She writes in English and has written several books. Her novel One Word has been awarded Best Book of the year 2016 by the Chandigarh Sahitya Akademi. She is Associate Professor of English in Post Graduate Government College, Sector-11, Chandigarh.

Life and career

Anuradha Bhattacharyya was born to Tapan Kumar Bhattacharyya and Chitra Bhattacharyya on 6 December 1975 in Calcutta, India. Asoke Kumar Bhattacharyya, the Padma awardee of 2017, was her maternal grandfather. Soon after, her family moved to the Roorkee University campus. She received her education from St. Anne’s Senior Secondary School, Roorkee and Banasthali Vidyapeeth, Rajasthan. She joined Jadavpur University, Calcutta for a Master of Arts degree in English Literature in 1996. While at Jadavpur University, P. Lal published her first book of poems in 1998 from his publishing house Writers Workshop.
She was Junior Research Fellow in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. She worked in the interdisciplinary research area of psychoanalysis and literature. She received her Doctorate of Philosophy in English Literature in 2005. She joined Post Graduate Government College, Sector-11, Chandigarh as Assistant Professor of English in 2006. She is married and has a daughter.
Her poetry has been published in various literary magazines and anthologies worldwide. Gurdev Chauhan calls her poetry layered. "They open to more than one reading, often to an alternate voice."
The Road Taken is her first novel published in April 2015 by Col Mahip Chadha who was the CEO of Creative Crows Publishers, New Delhi. She has published many short stories over and over again in print- and e-journals.
She has received an award of honour Sahitya Shree from Kafla Intercontinental in October, 2016. The Chandigarh Sahitya Akademi in its Annual Award Ceremony, April 2017, accorded the Award of Best Book of the year 2016 to her novel One Word. She was also honoured at the annual festival of poets, Amaravati Poetic Prism held on 11-12 November 2017 at Vijayawada organized by the Cultural Centre of Vijayawada. The Amaravati Poetic Prism is famous for its record representation of Indian poets and Indian languages. She won the fifth prize for her story "Painting Black and Blue" in the International Short Story contest conducted by PoiesisOnline in 2018. It is called the Poiesis Award for Excellence in Literature.
Bhattacharyya was one of the awardees on the Republic Day ceremony, 2019 where she was conferred the Commendation Award from the Adviser to Chandigarh Administrator for her extensive work in the field of Art & Culture. At Haridwar Literature Festival, December, 2018, she said, "I write about the unique things I have experienced or observed and I publish them for the benefit of the society". She was present as a Distinguished Guest speaker on the occasion.
In the year 2020 she received the Best Book of the Year Award from Chandigarh Sahitya Akademi for her novel Still She Cried. She also received their grant-in-aid for the publication of her book of poems My Dadu and published it. My Dadu is an illustrated book of poems on her maternal grandfather Asoke Kumar Bhattacharyya and contains a short memoir by Chitra Bhattacharyya about her father.
Bhattacharyya was one of the four jury members for the all India young authors' The Lit Digital Awards 2020 organized by The Literary Mirror a digital literary magazine published in India.

Awards and honours

Chandigarh Sahitya Akademi Best Book of the Year Award 2019 in the category of English Novel, 2020
Commendation Award Republic Day of India, Chandigarh Administration, 2019
Poiesis Award for Excellence in Literature PoiesisOnline, 2018
Chandigarh Sahitya Akademi Best Book of the Year Award 2016 in the category of English Novel, 2017
Sahitya Shree from Kafla Intercontinental, 2016

Books

As an academic, Dr. Anuradha Bhattacharyya has published critical essays on Buddhism, Jacques Lacan, August Strindberg, Maxim Gorky, Pirandello, Albert Camus, Bertolt Brecht, Peter Weiss, Salman Rushdie, Milan Kundera, Arundhati Roy, Aravind Adiga, Jhumpa Lahiri and Pablo Neruda which are published in various Indian print journals.