Daisy Rockwell


Daisy Rockwell is a renowned American writer, an award-winning literary translator working with Hindi and Urdu literature, and a visual artist. Her groundbreaking translations of South Asian classics have drawn wider readership and recognition for writing from the subcontinent than few have ever managed to achieve. The most prominent of these successes include her translation of Krishna Sobti’s final novel, A Gujarat Here, A Gujarat There, which became the first South Asian book to win the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work in 2020.
Her most acclaimed work continues to be her English translation of Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand, which became the first South Asian book to be shortlisted for and to win the International Booker Prize. Additional acclaim that Rockwell has received include the 2022 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, the Distinguished Translator Award by Vani Foundation, presented at the Jaipur Literature Festival in 2023, and the English PEN x SALT Award 2025 for Our City That Year. Her work has also been supported by the NEA and the NEH, and she has been a translator in residence at various venues including Princeton University.
Besides her literary translations, Rockwell has published two novels Taste and Alice Sees Ghosts and an essay collection. Her forthcoming projects include a collection of poems about literary translation called Mixed Metaphors coming out in 2026, as well as a memoir Our Friend, Art with Pushkin Press in 2027.

Personal life

Rockwell grew up in western Massachusetts. Born to artist parents, Jarvis Rockwell and Susan Merrill, she started pursuing art at an early age. She is the granddaughter of the painter, illustrator, and author Norman Rockwell.
She herself paints under the alias or takhallus Lapata, which means "missing" or "disappeared" in Urdu. Thematically, her collections are wide-ranging, often drawing from the zeitgeist or from literature. Her art has often used uses stylized portraiture and contemporary or historical references, although some recent work like her Quarantine Art series reveals more abstract tendencies while her Text and Violence series delves into text-based art.

Education

Rockwell has been a student of Hindi, Urdu, Latin, French, German, and ancient Greek for many years. She first learned the Devanagari script through private tuitions when she was in school. In college at the University of Chicago, she expanded on these interests by taking coursework in Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, and Sanskrit.
She received her Bachelors, Masters, and PhD in South Asian Literature from the University of Chicago, where she studied Hindi literature, translation, and social sciences under A K Ramanujan, Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, and Colin P Masica. In 1998, she received a grant to write her PhD dissertation on the Hindi author Upendranath Ashk, who became the first author whose work she would translate. After her PhD, Rockwell held a number of academic posts, including as the head of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies and as Vice Chair for the Institute of South Asian Studies at the University of California at Berkeley.
In recent years, she remains involved with SALT at the University of Chicago and gives academic talks at universities across the US, including at Cornell University for their Annual Tagore Lecture. She continues to shape discourse on Hindi literature through essays that look at new translations or biographies of the literary legacies of writers like Yashpal and Manto, as well as at reception of contemporary literature.

Works

Some of the early classics Rockwell has translated include Upendranath Ashk's Falling Walls and Hats and Doctors, Bhisham Sahni's Tamas, and Khadija Mastur's The Women's Courtyard.
In addition to her novel-length translations, she has also brought short stories and poems into English by authors such as Arun Prakash, Shrilal Shukla, S. M. Ashraf, and by poets such as Shubham Shree and Avinash Mishra.
English-Language TitleEnglish-Language Publication YearOriginal-Language AuthorOriginal-Language Title
Hats and Doctors2013Upendranath AshkTopiyan aur Doctor
Falling Walls2015Upendranath AshkGirti Deevarein
Tamas2016Bhisham SahniTamas
The Women's Courtyard2018Khadija MasturAangan
In the City a Mirror Wandering2019Upendranath AshkSheher Mein Ghoomta Aina
A Promised Land2019Khadija MasturZameen
A Gujarat Here, A Gujarat There2019Krishna SobtiGujarat Pakistan Se Gujarat Hindustan
Fifty-five Pillars, Red Walls2021Usha PriyamvadaPachpan Khambe, Laal Deewaarein
Tomb of Sand2022Geetanjali ShreeRet Samadhi
Won't You Stay, Radhika?2023Usha PriyamvadaRukogi Nahin Radhika?
Our City That Year2025Geetanjali ShreeHamara Shahar Us Baras
Sleep Journeys2025Azra AbbasNiind ki Musafatein

TitlePublication yearPressGenre
Upendranath Ashk: A Critical Biography2004KathaBiography
The Little Book of Terror2012Foxhead BooksEssay Collection
Taste2014Foxhead BooksNovel
Alice Sees Ghosts2025Bloomsbury IndiaNovel
Mixed Metaphors2026Bloomsbury IndiaPoetry Collection
Our Friend, Art2027Pushkin PressMemoir