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Sandhya is a freelance writer and author of Moments
with a Master: Meetings with Dada J. P. Vaswani , a memoir
that has been called "inspiring, honest, relevant,
and refreshing." Her nonfiction essays, feature
articles, and poetry have been published widely in print
and online publications, including Ms., Little
India,
MSNBC.com, Times of India , the Weekly
Reader, and Kahani.
Read her regular ramblings at her blog Literary
Safari. |
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Sandhya has taught ESL, composition and creative writing
to adults, as well as college, middle, and high school students.
Places of instruction include: The College of New Rochelle,
Asian American Writers Workshop, City Year, Free Arts NYC, Silver
Penny Farm (Petaluma, Calif.), and the annual Young Authors
Conference in Westchester, NY.
Sample Writing Workshops:
Flash Memoir: Write Your Life--One Story at a Time
Revise This
What Do You Believe? How Do You See the World? (including testimonials from past attendees)
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Sandhya is currently a supervising editor at Scholastic Inc. There, she is working on a new Expert Reader transitional reading program that will be published by Scholastic Education in the summer of 2008. From 2004 to 2007, she served as editor and senior editor at Weekly Reader Publishing, where she edited Writing , an award-winning middle and high
school classroom magazine and helped develop a literary blog WORD.
At Weekly Reader, Sandhya also served as editorial director of What's Your Story? a teaching resource for elementary, middle, and high school teachers, and developed two electronic issues of Writing:
Lending a Hand with Revision: a PDF magazine all about the revision process, featuring interviews with Judy Blume and Lee Bennett Hopkins Student Writing Showcase, a multimedia website featuring student writers and authors, including An Na, Patricia McCormick, Jane Yolen, Walter Dean Myers, and Donna Jo Napoli.
In 2007, Writing was named as one of the top four magazines in educational publishing by the Association of Educational Publishers (AEP). It was also nominated for a “Young Adult Periodical of the Year” distinguished
achievement award by the AEP
in both 2006 and 2007. (Click here for a full list of issues that Sandhya worked on which have received AEP award and/or nominations.)
Sandhya has edited two published anthologies and regularly
provides editorial consultations and coaching services to educational and trade publishers and individual writers. Her multidisciplinary anthology,
Breaking the Silence: Domestic Violence in the South
Asian-American Community has been called “a welcome addition to
the literature on domestic violence” and an “invaluable
resource for the South-Asian American community.” She
is currently editing a biography of a contemporary African
political figure.
Contact her for more information or references
regarding her editorial services. |
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Sandhya was born in Ghana and
lived there and in India before arriving in the U.S. at age
12.
She wrote and edited her first publication—a wordy 16-page tabloid about her middle school—back in the sixth grade. Since then (she's proud to say) her work has gotten a bit more serious, and she has learned a few neat tricks about how to make a page come to life! A few of her favorites: (1) Never use a long word where a short one will do. (2) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. (3) Show, don't tell.
Sandhya holds a B.A. and Masters of International Affairs
from Columbia University, where she focused on South Asian
History and International Media and Communications. She has studied writing with Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones and is a firm believer in the "Morning Pages" practice advocated by Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way.
She was recently awarded a Holt, Rinehart, and Winston Literature
Research Fellowship by the Asian American Writers Workshop. This opportunity gave her ample opportunities to appreciate and rediscover the joy and thrill of reading and writing for children and young adults. However, her favorite writing topic remains her family. When she's not busy visiting them or trying to make sense of their complicated stories and histories, she writes about them in a series of short essays titled "Family Ruminations" at her blog, Literary Safari .
Sandhya mostly lives in New York City with (a) her husband
(b) an antique typewriter, and (c) an old cedar trunk brimful
of diaries and travel journals that date back to her pre-adolescent
years. When she is not at her day job, she likes to pound the pavements of New York City, people watch, and do 10-minute freewriting exercises. Her favorite quote on writing comes from Rudyard Kipling, the author of Jungle Book, who once said, "Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind."
"What difference does it make if you
live in a picturesque little outhouse surrounded by 300 feeble
minded goats and your faithful
dog...? The question is: Can you write?"
- ERNEST HEMINGWAY
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