Mary Anne Mohanraj
| Mary Anne Amirthi Mohanraj | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
July 26, 1971 Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Writer, editor, academic |
Mary Anne Amirthi Mohanraj (born July 26, 1971) is an American writer, editor, and academic of Sri Lankan birth.
Mohanraj was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka but moved to the United States at the age of two and grew up in New Britain, Connecticut.
Her parents, who had originally intended to return to Sri Lanka after a few years and were still considering the possibility for the future, planned in 1983 to send 12-year-old Mary Anne to live with her grandparents for a summer "to reconnect" with her homeland. Just before she was to go, her father received a telegram. "Don't send her. There's trouble coming." He cancelled the trip. As she later wrote,
It's called Black July in Sri Lanka. Riots erupted in Colombo, the capital city, killing thousands of Tamils, the ethnic minority group, the group to which I belong. Brutal chaos ensued – friends of mine who were there tell horrifying stories. They saw tires put around men's necks, saw them lit on fire. They saw women and children dragged from their homes, pulled from cars to be raped and killed in the street.
Instead, Mohanraj attended Miss Porter's School and the University of Chicago and graduated with a degree in English Literature in 1993. She holds an MFA from Mills College (1998) and a PhD in English Literature from the University of Utah (2005). She also attended the Clarion West Writing Workshop in 1997.
Mohanraj has taught at Salt Lake Community College, the University of Utah, and Vermont College. From September 2005 to June 2007, she was a Visiting Professor in the MFA Program at Roosevelt University. From 2007 to 2008, she was a Visiting Professor at Northwestern University, in the Center for the Writing Arts. She taught at the Clarion Workshop in July 2008. Since 2008, she has worked as a Clinical Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). She was Associate Coordinator of Asian and Asian American Studies at UIC from 2009 to 2014.
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