Padma Venkatraman

about the author

Padma Venkatraman

Bestselling Author of Climbing the Stairs

Padma Venkatraman worked for many years in education and oceanographic research before becoming a full-time novelist. Climbing the Stairs, her debut novel, won the Boston Authors Club’s Julia Ward Howe Young Readers Award and the ASTAL Rhode Island Book of the Year Award. It was released to starred reviews in Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and VOYA, and was chosen as a Book Sense Notable, an ALA/YALSA Best Book for Young Adults, a New York Public Library Book of the Year, a Booklist Editors’ Choice Best Book of the Year, a Bank Street College of Education Best Book, a Capitol Choices Noteworthy Book, a Community College of Baltimore County choice, an NCSS/CBC Notable, an Amelia Bloomer book, and a Publishers Weekly Flying Start selection. It was also shortlisted for Reading Across Rhode Island and for state awards in Maine, Utah, and South Carolina.

Her second novel, Island’s End, is scheduled for release in August 2011.

Born in Chennai, India, Padma Venkatraman has lived on three continents and in five countries. She is now an American citizen and lives with her family in Rhode Island, but she still speaks a wee bit of French and is fluent in Tamil and German, in addition to English.

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Featured Book

Climbing the Stairs Buy Now

Climbing the Stairs

"This is a poignant look at a young woman's vigilance to break from expectations and create her own destiny amid a country's struggle for independence."

—School Library Journal

Speaking Topics

  • Climbing the Stairs (for adult audiences)
  • Climbing the Stairs (for younger audiences)
  • Island’s End (for children and adults)

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Speaking Topics — Padma Venkatraman

 

Climbing the Stairs (for adult audiences):

  • Teaching nonviolence through literature
  • The changing status of women in India
  • A personal perspective on Indian literature
  • Hindu philosophy and spirituality through the ages
  • Introducing multicultural literature to young people
  • World War II from an Indian perspective
  • Writing novels and memoirs
  • The importance of point of view in writing
  • Writing historical fiction
  • Background, themes, discussion points, and the true-life stories that inspired the novel

Climbing the Stairs (for younger audiences):

  • The personal story behind the fictional story
    In a lively and interactive lecture, Padma Venkatraman reads excerpts from Climbing the Stairs and shares a PowerPoint presentation that reveals the deeply personal experiences that have shaped her writing. Padma Venkatraman discusses her family history, what inspired her to write, and why she chose India as the setting for her debut novel.
  • Violence and nonviolence
    Padma Venkatraman speaks in depth about nonviolence and encourages her audience members to open up about the violence, both physical and spiritual, that they experience in their daily lives. Through a dynamic vocabulary exercise, Padma Venkatraman shows how forming cliques, name-calling, and bullying are violent activities. She also reads excerpts from her book and draws parallels between Mahatma Gandhi and American leaders dedicated to the ideals of nonviolence, such as Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jane Addams.
  • Forgotten heroes
    Padma Venkatraman reads an excerpt from her book and engages younger audiences with a PowerPoint presentation and activity highlighting the contributions of people from India and other British colonies to the World War II effort.
  • Indian Culture

Island’s End (for children and adults):

  • Courage
  • Culture clash: Can ancient traditions be reinvented or revolutionized in the face of modernization?
  • Shamanism
  • Women and leadership
  • Alternative healing and traditional medicine
  • Tsunamis
  • Rainforests
  • Preserving the world’s ecological and cultural diversity in the face of global change
  • Ancient cultures of the world
  • What is reality: Cultural paradigms
  • Storytelling: Oral history and heritage
  • Reading and studying Island’s End: A cyber lesson plan for teachers and book groups

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