Welcome

A native of India, Lalita Noronha came to the US on a Fulbright travel grant and earned her Ph.D. in microbiology. She is a widely published scientist, poet and fiction writer. Where Monsoons Cry is her debut collection of short stories. Lalita won the Maryland Literary Short Story Award (1997) and a Maryland Individual Artist Award (2002). Currently working on a novel, she is a fiction editor for the Baltimore Review, and a science teacher at St. Paul’s School for Girls.

What People Are Saying

“A beautiful, Heartbreaking Collection of Stories from a gifted new writer. Bravo to Lalita Noronha.”

               —Sujata Massey, author of The Samurai’s Daughter

“Where Monsoons Cry sails the stormy sea of expectations and relations like a Bombay version of John Updike.”

               –Richard Peabody, Gargoyle Magazine

“Where Monsoons Cry can be read as a novel. With tough intelligence and lyric grace, Noronha explores the hurts of history, migrant moments of dislocation....A writer of haunting presence and subtle surprises.”

              --J. BirjePatil, author of Chinnery's Hotel

“Noronha serves up elaborate dances between the protagonists with an economy of words that shimmy off the page. These stories offer a refreshing tribute to the most powerful human emotions that course through our lives.” 

               -- Rohit K. Shukla,CEO, LARTA Institute

“To describe Lalita Noronha as an advocate for India is to describe Dwight Eisenhower as a former university president. Noronha has a Ph.D. in microbiology and teaches science. She is also one of Maryland's top fiction writers.”

               -- James H. Bready, The Baltimore Sun

“Noronha captures the disconnect and longing of the immigrant, and given we live in a land of immigrants, this book has a resonance for all who made the hard bargain between staying and leaving.”

               --Susan McCallum-Smith, Urbanite

 “Lalita Noronha, who has a Ph.D. in microbiology, can be said to have a “talent” for science. With her first collection of short stories Where Monsoons Cry, she can be said to have a talent for fiction too. Amazingly, in addition to being a scientist, she is also a writer — a rather good one, too.”
               --Michelle Reale, India Currents

Read Excerpts from Where Monsoons Cry :

" This Is America "
" The Sari "

Listen to stories and interviews on radio---

WYPR Reading ---The Signal, March 2, 2007;

Urbanite website link-----Audio Interview for The Urbanite Project, 2007

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