Growing up in New York City has its privileges, which certainly helped shape Pia’s life. Her future in writing was cemented early, at age 12 when she won the Barnard College Young Women’s Writing Award – long before she was eligible to enter (at age 18).

Pia derives much literary inspiration from the world around her – witnessing interactions while running in Central Park, overhearing delicious snippets of gossip in waiting rooms, as well as those ever-engaging exchanges on the subway. All these combined with her fascination with her parents’ past lives in India before they settled in New York were the impetus behind Where Earth Meets Water.

During her years in London, Pia wrote for Star News and the London desk of the Associated Press, covering many high-profile stories including the protests against the Iraq War. She wrote press kits and position papers for a Member of Parliament representing Birmingham. Pia and her husband Rohit maintain a reading and eating blog, Two Admirable Pleasures, which combines their two loves: the written word and the recipes that are inspired by them.

Pia is a graduate of Stuyvesant High School and the London School of Economics. She entered the professional writing world as a copywriter in pharmaceutical advertising. Pia was a finalist for Seventeen Magazine’s fiction writing award and more recently a winner of the Women on Writing Flash Fiction Contest.