Asian American Short Story Writers: An A-to-Z Guide

Alice D'Amore

Susham Bedi was born on July 1, 1945 in Ferozpur, Punjab. She wrote during her undergraduate years at Delhi University in India, participating in literary competitions and publishing in various magazines, and has since proven herself an influential Indian American novelist and short story writer. As she writes of Anisha abandoning the warm days of India for the chilled evenings of Belgium in the short story “Ice-Armor, ” Bedi herself left India for Brussels in 1974, serving as a correspondent for the Times of India until 1979, when she traveled with her family to the United States. That same year she earned her doctorate from Punjab University, completing her dissertation, “Innovation and Experimentation in Contemporary Hindi Drama, ” and publishing the text five years later. She joined Columbia University as a professor of Hindi language and literature in 1985. Throughout her professorship, she has also served as coordinator of Columbia's Hindi-Urdu Language Program because of her multilingual proficiency in English, French, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, and Sanskrit. In addition to her academic endeavors, Bedi also acted as a New York correspondent for “Letters from Abroad, ” a BBC program produced in the early 1990s. Like Dhira in her short story “The Search, ” Bedi has embraced America as a diverse and enriching atmosphere where she can explore the boundaries of her talents, which are many, and allow her children to do the same. An acclaimed actress since her early days on Indian television in the late 1960s and 1970s, she has appeared on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and in Krutin Patel's award-winning film ABCD, as well as various televised commercial advertisements.

Currently, Bedi is developing two novels, a second short story collection,

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