'''Maya Chowdhry''' (born 1964) is a British playwright, poet and transmedia interactive artist.
==Life== Maya Chowdhry was born in Edinburgh in 1964.<ref name="Osborne2016">{{cite book|author=Deirdre Osborne|editor=Deirdre Osborne|title=The Cambridge Companion to British Black and Asian Literature (1945–2010)|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iqgODQAAQBAJ&pg=PA7|year=2016|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-107-13924-4|page=7|chapter=Introduction}}</ref> She began writing as an adolescent: {{blockquote|I began writing to stay above water; I wrote to survive teenage years: crushes, exams, obsessional cooking – my poetry was a life-line. When my poetry was published I was asked to read at the launch – to perform my life. It slipped easily off the tongue: I had had years of performing answers to society's questions about my identities; I had written about the questions, searching for my true identity. Readings became performances, multi-media shows, commissions. Suddenly my identity was captured, fractured, sliced and served to audiences and I was a 'live' challenge to myself.<ref name="Hall2003">Quoted in {{cite book|editor=Lynda Hall|title=Telling Moments: Autobiographical Lesbian Short Stories|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UVY0i2iwFHwC&pg=PR17|year=2003|publisher=Terrace Books|isbn=978-0-299-19113-9|page=xvii}}</ref>}}
Chowdhry worked for Sheffield Film Co-op in the 1980s, and wrote theatre for young people in the 1990s.<ref name=PeepalTreePress>[https://www.peepaltreepress.com/authors/maya-chowdhry Maya Chowdhry], Peepal Tree Press.</ref> Like other black women playwrights such as Jackie Kay and Jacqueline Rudet, Chowdhry was helped by the appointment of the black woman producer Frances-Anne Solomon to BBC Radio 4.
Chowdhry's first play, ''Monsoon'' (1993), was broadcast as part of the BBC Young Playwrights' Festival.<ref name="Donnell2002">{{cite book|author=Elaine Aston|editor-link=Alison Donnell|editor=Alison Donnell|title=Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture|chapter=Chowdhry, Maya|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VfdpdZ9DwH0C&pg=PA77|year=2002|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-134-70025-7|page=77}}</ref> ''Monsoon'' portrays the return of sisters Jalaarnava and Kavitaa, two second-generation migrant young women, to their parents' birthplace in India.<ref name="Griffin2003-77">{{cite book|author=Gabriele Griffin|title=Contemporary Black and Asian Women Playwrights in Britain|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1UjLcYuJBqoC&pg=PA77|year=2003|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-139-44184-1|pages=94–102}}</ref> The play parallels the experience of menstruation with waiting for the seasonal monsoon.<ref name="Donnell2002"/> Chowdhry's play ''Kaahini'' (1997) was toured by Red Ladder, as one of a series of plays aimed primarily at Asian-British girls. Influenced by the story of Shikhandi in the ''Mahabharata'', the play dramatizes a gender reversal narrative:<ref name="Donnell2002"/> a British Indian teenage girl, Esha, is brought up by her parents as a boy. After a close friend Farooq falls in love with Esha, she reveals herself to him as a girl and is forced to work through her gender identity.<ref name="Griffin2003-132">{{cite book|author=Gabriele Griffin|title=Contemporary Black and Asian Women Playwrights in Britain|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1UjLcYuJBqoC&pg=PA132|year=2003|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-139-44184-1|pages=132–137}}</ref>
In 2000 Chowdhry moved into digital work, and received an Arts Council Year of the Artist Award for her digital work ''destinyNation''.<ref name=PeepalTreePress/>
In 2015 Chowdhry collaborated with poet Sarah Hymas on "poetic sculptures" exploring the fragility of life and anthropogenic climate change.<ref>Joe Williams, [https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/11/10/art-exhibition-highlights-difficulties-facing-lgbt-south-asians-on-the-eve-of-diwali/ Art exhibition highlights difficulties facing LGBT South Asians on the eve of Diwali], ''Pink News'', 10 November 2015. Accessed 16 August 2020.</ref>
In April 2020 Chowdhry was awarded a COVID-19 Creative Commission from Greater Manchester Combined Authority.<ref>Nigel Barlow, [https://aboutmanchester.co.uk/sixty-artists-musicians-and-other-creatives-awarded-500-each-to-help-create-greater-manchesters-covid-19-cultural-archive/ Sixty artists, musicians and other creatives awarded £500 each to help create Greater Manchester's COVID-19 cultural archive], ''About Manchester'', 17 April 2020. Accessed 16 August 2020.</ref>
==Works==
===Plays=== * (with Jag Rahi Hai) ''Putting in the Pickle Where the Jam Should Be'', Write Back, 1989. * ''Monsoon''. In ''Monsoon: Six Plays By Black & Asian Women'', Aurora Metro Press, 1993. * ''The Crossing Path''. In ''New Plays for Young People'', Faber and Faber, 2003. * ''Kaahini''. Edinburgh: Capercaillie, 2004.
===Other writing=== * Contributions in ''As Girls Could Boast: New Poetry by Women'', 1994. * "Living Performance". ''Journal of Lesbian Studies''. Volume 2, 1998. {{doi |10.1300/J155v02n02_02}} * 'Healing Strategies for Women at War', in ''Seven Black Women Poets'', Crocus Press, 1999. * "k/not theory; a self dialogue", ''Journal of Lesbian Studies''. Volume 4, 2000. {{doi |10.1300/J155v04n04_05}} * (ed. with Mary Sharratt) ''Bitch Lit''. Manchester: Crocus, 2006. * [http://interactiveartist.org/the-seamstress-and-the-global-garment/ ''The seamstress and the global garment''. Manchester : Crocus debuts/Suitcase, 2009.] *''Fossil''. Leeds, England: Peepal Tree, 2016.
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== * [https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/projects/writersgallery/content/Maya_Chowdhry.html Writers Gallery: Maya Chowdhry] * [https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/dec/11/poem-of-the-week-microbial-museum-by-maya-chowdhry Poem of the week: Microbial Museum by Maya Chowdhry]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Chowdhry, Maya}} Category:1964 births Category:Living people Category:British dramatists and playwrights Category:British Asian writers Category:British poets Category:Interactive artists Category:Writers from Edinburgh Category:British women poets