Deborah Baker is an American biographer and essayist.

Deborah Baker
BornCharlottesville
Alma materUniversity of Virginia,
Cambridge University
Notable awardsGuggenheim Fellowship,
Whiting Award
SpouseAmitav Ghosh

She is the author of A Blue Hand: The Beats in India, a biography of Allen Ginsberg that focuses on his time in India[1] and of In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography in 1994.[2] She also writes for the Los Angeles Times.[failed verification][3] Her book The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism (2011) is a biography of Maryam Jameelah (born Margaret Marcus), a Jewish woman from New York who converted to Islam.[4] In 2012, she wrote a critical review for The Wall Street Journal of Defender of the Realm, the Manchester-Reid biography of Winston Churchill.[5]

Family

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She is married to the writer Amitav Ghosh and lives in Brooklyn, Calcutta, and Goa.[6]

Awards

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Baker was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014.[7]

In 2016, she was awarded a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant to complete her book, The Last Englishmen: Love, War and the End of Empire.[8]

Works

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  • Making a Farm: The Life of Robert Bly; Charlottesville, Va., 1981. OCLC 909398434
  • In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding; New York : Grove Weidenfeld, 1992. ISBN 9780802113641, OCLC 213341906
  • A Blue Hand: The Beats in India; New York : Penguin Press, 2008. ISBN 9781594201585, OCLC 239110990
  • The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism. Saint Paul, Minn. : Graywolf, 2013. ISBN 9781555976279, OCLC 822959870
  • The Last Englishmen, Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota : Graywolf Press, 2018. ISBN 9781555978044, OCLC 1002562236

References

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  1. ^ Celia McGee (2008-04-13). "Om Sweet Om". The New York Times. India. Retrieved 2012-11-16.
  2. ^ Richard Ellmann. "The Pulitzer Prizes; Biography or Autobiography". Pulitzer.org. Retrieved 2012-11-16.
  3. ^ "Featured Articles From the Los Angeles Times". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on July 14, 2009.
  4. ^ Adams, Lorraine (2011-05-20). "Book Review - The Convert - By Deborah Baker". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-11-16.
  5. ^ wsj.com: "The Last Stand of Winston Churchill" (Baker) 9 Nov 2012
  6. ^ "BOOKS: Deborah Baker's "A Blue Hand: The Beats in India"". SAJAforum. 2008-03-21. Retrieved 2012-11-16.
  7. ^ "Search Results - John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation". Archived from the original on 2015-04-02. Retrieved 2015-01-16.
  8. ^ "2016 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grantee: Deborah Baker". Whiting.org. Archived from the original on 2018-01-25. Retrieved 24 January 2018.
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