Bharti Kirchner (formerly Bharati Nandi) was born in Kalimpong, northern West Bengal, and studied mathematics at Presidency College, Kolkata. She moved to the US for post-graduate studies and was among the first systems engineers of her generation. She first worked for a railroad company, and later with Bank of America and IBM. Her work took her everywhere, from San Francisco – where she met her husband, Tom – to Iran (from where she escaped just before the revolution of 1979), the Netherlands, France, and then back to the US.
Kirchner always had an interest in cooking, a combination of her Bengali heritage, stories heard in childhood, and her travels across varied lands. In 1990, she won the first of her many awards – The Campbell Soup Souped-up-Soup Recipe Contest – for a recipe she contributed and this led to her first books on cookery, The Healthy Cuisine of India: Recipes from the Bengal Region (1992). Since then books have followed with regularity, as have awards. For instance, in 2020, she received the SALA award for literary excellence and was awarded the Seattle Arts Commission Grant twice, in 1996 and 1998.
The Healthy Cuisine of India was followed a year later with Indian Inspired: A New Cuisine…
Source: ‘More about psychological and social challenges now’: Author Bharti Kirchner on diaspora writing
