Finding a
voice Prof. Srividya Natarajan has a secret vice – writing novels
For most people, writing a novel over a holiday weekend seems more like torture than fun. But King’s professor Srividya Natarajan was intrigued when she came across the International 3-Day Novel Contest on the Internet. “I just love writing,” she says. Her novel, Skunks I Have Loved, won the second prize of $500.
The King’s Herald | page 14
A teacher, illustrator, editor, publisher, classical dancer, and lover of animals, Natarajan is like a character out of a novel herself. As a girl growing up in Chennai, India, she mastered Bharata Natyam, a form of classical dance that had been banned by the government in the late 40s and later revived. She studied the traditions of the dance form from a feminist perspective as part of her PhD in English at The University of Hyderabad. She later produced a documentary, based on first-hand accounts, that explored the
dance’s impact on women and India’s anti-colonial movement. After a stint of teaching, Natarajan began a career as an editor and illustrator of children’s books. Four years ago she and her husband Nigel Joseph decided to move with their sixyear old son, Richard, to Canada. Natarajan has been a professor of English at King’s for three years, and her husband has just completed his second PhD at the University of Western Ontario.