Writer’s Postcards

Part travelogue, part memoir, and part commentary, Writer’s Postcards is a collection of essays that examine imagination and culture through the lens of geography. A flaneuse and person of the world, Dipika Mukherjee takes readers through various encounters from her highly mobile life: the lugubrious literature of Brazil; the linguistic diversity in China and Tibet; and meeting the Dalai Lama while travelling as a lone woman through New Delhi. She examines the political unrest in Myanmar after the brief international reach of Burmese books; weighs in on Chicago’s literary landmarks and famous writers; reminisces on the languid feasting of Diwali celebrations at Port Dickson by the Malaysian-Bengali community; and finds new notions of home, identity, and belonging in the Netherlands-among many others.

Thought-provoking and unabashed in its entirety, this is a collection of essays that goes beyond the personal and communal to examine issues of international concern.

About the Author:

Dipika Mukherjee is an internationally touring writer and sociolinguist. She has been mentoring Southeast Asian writing for over two decades; in 2015, she founded the D.K Dutt Award for Literary Excellence in Malaysia. She has edited five anthologies of Southeast Asian fiction: Endings and Beginnings Fruit (2018), Bitter Root Sweet Fruit (2017), Champion Fellas (2016), Silverfish New Writing 6 (2006) and The Merlion and Hibiscus (2002).

Mukherjee’s debut novel, Ode to Broken Things, was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize, and her second novel, Shambala Junction, won the UK Virginia Prize for Fiction. Her short story collection is Rules of Desire and her two poetry collections are The Third Glass of Wine,and The Palimpsest of Exile. Her next collection, The Home and the World, is forthcoming from CavanKerry Press in October 2022. She has received grants and fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council Agency (USA), Ragdale Foundation (USA), Faber Foundation (Catalonia), Sacatar Foundation (Brazil), Rimbun Dahan (Malaysia), Gladstone Library (Wales), and Centrum (USA). She featured in the 2018 Lit50: Who Really Books In Chicago, won the Fay Khoo Award for Food+Drink Writing (Malaysia, 2018), and received the Liakoura Prize for Poetry (USA, 2016). She holds a doctorate in sociolinguistics from Texas A&M University.

She is on the curating team and a featured writer in My America: Immigrant and Refugee Writers Today, a popular exhibit at the American Writers Museum in Chicago. Mukherjee teaches at StoryStudio Chicago and at the Graham School at University of Chicago.