Hiro (Hiroshima) Boga was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) and moved to Canada in the 1970s. She now lives in Nanaimo, British Columbia. Boga is a graduate of the M.F.A. program in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. She also holds a B.Sc. in Psychology from the University of Oregon and a B.A. in Creative Writing from Malaspina College. Boga worked as an editor, and taught creative writing at UBC. Her ancestral heritage is Parsi. Boga’s recent focus has been upon creative mentorship and self-published a guide book, To Be Soul, Do Soul: Adventures in Creative Consciousness (2017).
Poetry
Love Songs for a Tender God
Lantzville, B.C.: Oolichan Books, 2002.
PS8553 .O37 L68 2002
Publisher’s Synopsis
The poems in Love Songs for a Tender God are a coming together of the various threads of an essential story, a complete cycle, in which one person’s vision of the universal mandala, of the Divine, is affirmed. This is a munificent and tender God who embraces us no matter how small or insignificant we might think we are; a God who rejoices in the wholeness of our being.
Fiction
Shahnaz
Lantzville, B.C.: Oolichan Books, 2000.
Publisher’s Synopsis (from its website)
Shahnaz, which means “beloved of the Emperor,” is the name given to the novel’s protagonist by a family that honours a distant Persian past. The novel opens on the day Shahnaz and her new husband, Shahrukh, depart for the United States, where both plan to do graduate work. For Shahrukh, this sojourn is merely an interlude before he resumes his life of power and privilege in Bombay. For Shahnaz, however, this journey begins as an escape from her mother’s madness, which has terrorized and shaped her childhood, and plunges her into a future brimming with the possibilities of a new and exciting world.
Selected Criticism and Interpretation
Chilana, Rajwant Singh. “Hiro Boga.” In South Asian Writers in Canada: A Bio-Bibliographical Study. Surrey, BC: Asian Publications, 2017, 203.
Z1376 .S68 C45 2017