Neela Vaswani '96 adds Grammy to list of recognitions

Given her Skidmore degree in English, MFA in fiction-writing from Vermont College, and PhD in American cultural studies from the University of Maryland, it is perhaps not surprising that Neela Vaswani ’96 has become an author and a teacher. On Sunday, she also became a Grammy Award winner.

Vaswani is author of a memoir, You Have Given Me a Country, winner of a 2011 American Book Award; the short story collection Where the Long Grass Bends; and many other works, including the short story “The Pelvis Series,” which won the 2006 O. Henry Award. She has been a professor in MFA in Writing programs at Manhattanville College and Spalding University, held writer-in-residence positions at dozens of colleges and universities, and taught adult literacy and English as a second language at the New York Public Library, where she founded the Storylines Project.

Last year she recorded the narration for the young reader’s edition of the audio book, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban. On Feb. 8, the work won the 2015 Grammy for Best Children’s Album.

What is perhaps surprising is the delightful range of vocations and avocations she has explored along the way.

As her bio explains: “Vaswani has held a number of waitressing jobs, from chicken shacks to comedy clubs, and she paid off her school loans by cocktail waitressing at a fondue bar in NYC. Her first job was at a one-hour photo booth on Long Island. She has also dressed Armani models, delivered telephone books, worked cattle round-ups and barbed wire fencing, ripped tickets at a movie theatre, been a maid, a stage manager, a secretary, a prop girl for two independent movies, and driven an ice cream truck.”

She soaked up all the experience, noticing and storing up details for her writing, but she is also quick to assert the intrinsic value of each job. Says Vaswani, “I’ve always taken pride in all of my work, including my less glamorous jobs, like waitressing, which I consider to be a noble profession. I’m a good waitress and I’m proud of that.”        

An appreciation for varied experiences marked her Skidmore years as well. Vaswani credits the College with a “diverse approach to living and learning that has served me well.” As a student, she recalls, “I was able to take an epidemiology course, a poetry workshop, play Bach on an actual harpsichord, wander the North Woods, make lifelong friends, stage manage a play, do my own laundry, thread films through projectors and push AV carts across campus, and study abroad in India—all in the same year.”

That enthusiastic pursuit of many diverse interests persists for the author, who also plays the fiddle and knits and is fascinated by paleontology, the Indian railway system, female detectives on television, goats, bats, bad-tempered camels, and online Boggle.

And she is an undergraduate student again. Inspired by what she saw as the “stellar care” her husband received while in treatment for leukemia, she is going back to school to be a physician’s assistant.

“It’s never too late to challenge and surprise yourself,” says Vaswani, “—to let your experiences change who you are and how you feed your art.”