Jhumpa Lahiri is an author and Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton University. She received the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies, her debut story collection that explores issues of love and identity among immigrants and cultural transplants. Her other works include The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth which received the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and was a finalist for the Story Prize, and The Lowland which won the DSC award for south Asian fiction, and was a finalist for both the Man Booker prize and the National Book Award in fiction.

Lahiri is a member of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, appointed by President Barack Obama.