Novelist Appointed to Tenure-Track Faculty Position

Photo Submitted

Padma Viswanathan, University of Arkansas. Photo courtesy of Joy von Tiedemann

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Novelist Padma Viswanathan, a visiting assistant professor of creative writing in the Department of English in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, has been appointed to a tenure-track faculty position in the department.

Viswanathan was a visiting assistant professor at the U of A for the past three years.

“Professor Viswanathan has been a great addition to Fulbright College,” said Dean Todd Shields. “She is an excellent teacher and an accomplished scholar.  She was recently awarded a prestigious ‘Enduring Questions’ grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities.”

The Enduring Questions program supports faculty members in the teaching and development of new courses that foster intellectual community through the study of an enduring question that is a fundamental concern of human life addressed by the humanities. Viswanathan's course proposal, “Can Good Books Make Us Better People? Our search, in stories, for how to be,” explores the relationship between literature and morality, with students writing fiction in response to literature covering a wide scope of time, culture and genre.

“Padma’s background as a journalist, playwright and author give her a unique perspective in both her writing and teaching,” said Dorothy Stephens, professor of English and chair of the department. “We are so happy to have professor Viswanathan as a more permanent member of our department.”

In addition to her latest award, Viswanathan has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Canada Council for the Arts, as well as residencies at MacDowell, Sacatar and the Banff Center for the Arts. She won the 2007 Boston Review Short Story Prize and her stories and articles have been published in journals and magazines across Canada and the United States.

“I’m honored to have the opportunity to continue writing and teaching at the University of Arkansas,” said Viswanathan. "The Enduring Questions grant will allow me to expand on my conviction that creative writing is an underused tool for teaching critical thought. Additionally, of course, I’m very excited to discuss the central idea in my proposal —whether great literature is or can be morally improving — with some of the strongest undergraduates at our university.”

Viswanathan received critical acclaim for her first novel, The Toss of a Lemon, published by Harcourt in 2008. Her second book, The Ever After of Ashwin Rao (Random House of Canada, 2014) has been called “a complex and moving novel” in the Toronto Star and “convincing and compelling” in the Parry Sound North Star.

Viswanathan earned a Bachelor of Arts in sociology from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, a Master of Arts in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University and a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Arizona.