Thrity’s 6^th novel will be out Aug. 19

Former BJ reporter Thrity Umrigar’s upcoming 6^th novel and 7^th book is “The Story Hour,” scheduled for an Aug. 19^th unveiling.

Posted Thrity on Facebook:

“Just got the advanced reader copy for the upcoming novel, ‘The Story Hour,’ and I must say, it feels as thrilling as the very first time I ever held a galley of one of my novels. I think they did a great job with the jacket.”

Bombay, India native Thrity’s previous novels are “Bombay Time” (2002), “The Space Between Us” (2007), “If Today be Sweet” (2008), “The Weight of Heaven” (2010) and “The World We Found” (2012), and all set in the country of her birth, as was her memoir, “First Darling of the Morning”  (2008).

After a childhood as a Parsi child in a middle-class family attending a Catholic school in a predominantly Hindu country, Thrity left India at the age of 21 to attend Ohio State University. Parsis are members of a small ethnic minority who came to India as political refugees from Persia more than 900 years ago and became one of India's most affluent and Westernized ethnic communities.

Why Ohio State? “I was sitting in my living room in Bombay, checking off a list of American universities that offered an M.A. in journalism, when my eyes fell on ‘Ohio State University.’ There was a Joan Baez record playing on the turntable and right then, her song, “Banks of the Ohio,” came on. I looked up and thought, ‘It's a sign,’ and decided to apply there.”

After Ohio State, Thrity began her reporting career with The Lorain Journal. Two years later, in 1987, she came to the BJ.

She left the Beacon to attend Harvard on a Nieman Fellowship, wrote “Bombay Time” and her author career took off.

In 2002 Thrity began teaching creative writing, journalism and literature at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.