99-050 (Arundhati Roy)
Distributed November 10, 1999
For Immediate Release
News Service Contact: Glenn Hare



Indian novelist to speak at South Asian Student Association conference

Arundhati Roy, an award-winning Indian novelist, will speak as part of a South Asian Student Association conference at 7 p.m. Friday Nov. 19 at the First Baptist Church in America. She is the author of the best selling book, The God of Small Things.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Award-winning Indian novelist, screenwriter and activist Arundhati Roy will present a Brown University President’s Lecture at 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 19, 1999, in the Meeting House of the First Baptist Church in America. Her speech is presented in conjunction with Generation 2000: Maximizing Our Power, Presence and Potential, a conference sponsored by the South Asian Students Association and is free and open to the public.

Published in 1997, Roy’s debut novel, The God of Small Things, was an instant sensation and sold more than 350,000 copies within the first five months of release. It would eventually appear in 30 countries and 24 languages. Winner of the 1997 Booker McConnell Award, Britain’s premier book prize, Roy is the first non-expatriate Indian author and the first Indian woman to win the award. The book follows the lives of fraternal twins Estha and Rahal, and explores jealousies, social prejudices and forbidden love.

Born in Bengal, India, Roy was trained as an architect at the Delhi School of Architecture, but is better known for her complex and scathing film scripts. She wrote and stared in In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, and wrote the script for Pradip Kishen’s Electric Moon.

In keeping with her longtime interest in social issues, Roy has immersed herself in causes such as the anti-nuclear movement and the Narmada Bachao Andolan, a grass-roots movement protesting the construction of dams in central India, from which she wrote two major essays and her most recent book, The Cost of Living.

Generation 2000: Maximizing Our Power, Presence and Potential takes place Nov. 19-21 and will feature symposiums exploring politics, international relations, dating, marriage, immigration issues, medicine, the media, and religion among other topics. For additional information and to register, go to conference Web site at www.netspace.org/sasag2k.

The First Baptist Church in America is located at 75 North Main Street.

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