Biography

Padma Venkatraman is an oceanographer and the award-winning author of numerous books for young people, including The Bridge Home, Born Behind Bars, A Time to Dance, Island’s End and Climbing the Stairs. Her books have sold over a quarter of a million copies, received more than twenty starred reviews, and have won numerous major awards and honors including the WNDB Walter Award, a SCBWI Golden Kite Award, and three South Asia Book Awards. A new MG novel in verse, Safe Harbor, about a girl who finds a stranded seal, is forthcoming in January 2025.

Before becoming an American author, Dr. Venkatraman spent time under the ocean and in rain-forests, served as chief scientist on oceanographic research vessels — where she was the only BIPOC female — and worked as a teacher and diversity director.

Dr. Venkatraman was born in India but left on her own at the age of nineteen to study at an international school in England. She immigrated by herself a year later to the United States. She obtained a doctorate at the College of William and Mary and then conducted post-doctoral research at Johns Hopkins’s Environmental Engineering department before switching careers and becoming an American citizen.

Dr. Venkatraman is the founder of www.diverseverse.com and www.authorstakeaction.com. She now divides her time between Rhode Island and New Hampshire.