Ambai, a historian and a creative writer, writes about love, relationships, quests and journeys in the Tamil region and elsewhere. Her real name is C.S. Lakshmi. An independent researcher in Women's Studies for the last thirty-five years, she has a Ph.D. from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
A well-known writer in Tamil, her stories have been translated in two volumes entitled A Purple Sea and, In a Forest, A Deer. The latter recently shared the Hutch-Crossword award for translated fiction. The third book Fish in a Dwindling Lake was published this year by Penguin. She received the Pudumaipiththan memorial lifetime achievement award for her contribution to literature from the U.S. Tamil cultural organisation Vilakku in 2005. She was awarded the Lifetime Literary Achievement Award of Tamil Literary Garden, University of Toronto, Canada, for the year 2008 as well as the Kalaignar Mu. Karunanidhi Porkizhi award for fiction awarded by the Booksellers and Publishers' Association of South India in the Chennai Book Fair, January 2011. The University of Madras awarded her for excellence in literature in the centenary celebrations of the International Women's Day in March 2011.
She is currently the Director of SPARROW (Sound & Picture Archives for Research on Women).
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