Arupa Kalita Patangia

Arupa Patangia Kalita, born in 1956, is a leading Assamese novelist and short story writer. She studied at Golaghat Mission Girls High School and Debraj Roy College, took a doctorate from Gauhati University on the women characters of Pearl S. Buck, and taught English at Tangla College in Darrang until her retirement.

Her fiction deals with Assamese history and culture, the lives of ordinary families, and especially women, violence and insurgency. Her story collection Mariam Austin Othoba Hira Barua won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2014, and she has also received the Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad award, the Katha Prize and the Prabina Saikia Award. Her books have been translated into English, Hindi and Bengali. She once declined an Asam Sahitya Sabha award because it was restricted to women writers.

Her link to cinema is Kothanodi (2015), the acclaimed Assamese feature for which she wrote the dialogues.