Veena Gokhale earned a B.A. from the University of Bombay and worked as print journalist in Bombay, India in from 1985-1991. She came to Canada on a journalism fellowship. In 1995 she completed a Master of Environmental Studies at York University in Toronto. She now lives in Montreal where she works as a communications consultant, teacher, and writer.
Fiction (Short stories)
Annapurna’s Bounty: Indian Food Legends Retold
Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2025.
forthcoming June 2025
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Annapurna, the Indian Goddess of Nourishment, presides over a rich harvest of stories reimagined for the twenty-first-century palate. Here, food manifests as ploy, bargain, symbolic communication, a bone of contention, a lesson, as it weaves through the lives of a cast of characters — kings and commoners, witches and goddesses, gurus and bandits, refugees and travellers.
Each story is followed by a vegetarian recipe offered up by a character. Gathered from the four corners of India, there are well-known dishes like nourishing dal and irresistible mango lassi, novelties like avial and Bengali khichari, as well as a new twist on beloved foods, such as samosas with a peas and coconut filling.
Infused with humane values, expertly blending the timeless and the contemporary, the magical and the everyday, encompassing East, West, and the in-between, this fusion of fiction and food will delight and inspire.
Fiction (Short stories)
Bombay Wali and Other Stories
Toronto: Guernica, 2013.
PS8613 .O42 B66 2013
Publisher’s Synopsis
Twelve stories that provide startling glimpses of contemporary life in Bombay, and elsewhere. An innocuous jazz concert that awakens painful memories for a middle-aged professor and caregiver, a wealthy business woman compelled by the desire to hurt her best friend, an errant page that leads a journalist on a wild goose chase. Tales about friendship and repulsion, family ties and freedom; violence, public and private; ambition and uncertainty, alienation and acceptance, growing up and growing old
Fiction
Land for Fatimah
Toronto: Guernica Editions, 2018.
PS8613 .O42 L36 2018
Publisher’s Synopsis (from its website)
Four strong women: Anjali, an Indo-Canadian single mother who eagerly accepts an African posting with her non-profit organization; Grace, her dedicated but dominating colleague, who opposes her; Fatimah, a farmer ousted from her home and fertile farmland, whom Anjali befriends; and Mary, Anjali’s kindly maid, who must secure the future of her son, Gabriel. In Land for Fatimah, Anjali involves herself in Fatimah’s quest to find new land for her scattered community, and is thrown into a web of intrigue that upturns her safe, orderly world. Capturing the warmth and vitality of Africa, illuminating everyday heroism, the novel explores expat life, the forced displacement of the poor and the complexities of development.
Selected Criticism and Interpretation
Chilana, Rajwant Singh. “Veena Gokhale.” In South Asian Writers in Canada: A Bio-Bibliographical Study. Surrey, BC: Asian Publications, 2017, 302-303.
Z1376 .S68 C45 2017
Links
Veena Gokhale personal website
Publisher Dundurn Press
Publisher Guernica Editions
Brockton Writers Series blogpost for event 5 March 2014