2026/27 Portland Arts & Lectures: Kiran Desai

Kiran Desai was born in New Delhi, India, educated in India, England, and the United States, and now lives in New York. She is the author of Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, which was published to unanimous acclaim in over 22 countries, and The Inheritance of Loss, which won the Booker Prize in 2006, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. Her third novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker. In 2015, The Economic Times listed her as one of the 20 most influential global Indian women.