Mitali Bose Perkins was born in Kolkata (Calcutta), India. Her name means "friendly" in Bangla, and she had to try and live up to it because the Bose family moved so often--they lived in India, Ghana, Cameroon, London, New York City, and Mexico City before settling in the San Francisco Bay Area when she was in middle school.
Mitali studied political science at Stanford University and public policy at U.C. Berkeley, surviving academia thanks to a steady diet of kids' books from public libraries and bookstores, and went on to teach middle school, high school, and college students. She lived in India, Bangladesh, Thailand, and California with her husband and twin sons before the Perkins family moved to Newton, Massachusetts. They now live in Orinda, California.
Mitali's books include Monsoon Summer (Random House), The Not-So-Star-Spangled Life of Sunita Sen (Little Brown), and First Daughter: Extreme American Makeover (Dutton).
To learn more, visit Mitali Perkin's Fire Escape, on Facebook, and on Twitter.
Watch this interview with Mitali at Girls Leadership:
Listen to Mitali talk about Bamboo People on BookExpo's podcast.
Watch a slide show of Mitali's visit to the Waldorf School in San Francisco, California.
Still can't get enough Mitali? Read her interviews with:
• The Girl Scouts Studio
• BookBundlz
• Charlesbridge Author Spotlight
• HipWriterMama
• Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
• Paper Tigers
• Listen to Mitali's name pronunciation and story at TeachingBooks.net
Read a Q & A with Mitali Perkins.
Read our Biography of Mitali Perkins.