Meena Alexander was born in Allahabad, India, and grew up in India and Sudan. She moved to England to study at age 18, and is currently Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She has written three volumes of poetry, including Illiterate Heart, which won the PEN Open Book Award. She was also the editor of Indian Love Poems. Her autobiography, Fault Lines, was chosen as one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 1993. She has also published two novels and two academic studies and won accolades from the Guggenheim Foundation, Fulbright Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Arts Council of England, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, National Council for Research on Women, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation. Alexander has studied, received grants, and done research at the University of Khartoum in Sudan, Nottingham University, the Sorbonne, Brown University, Columbia University, Kerala University, and the National University of Singapore.