| Mitra Phukan | |
| Occupation: | Novelist |
| Nationality: | Indian |
| Period: | 1986–present |
| Genre: | Fiction, translation, essays. |
| Notableworks: | The Collector's Wife |
Mitra Phukan is an Indian author who writes in English. She is also a translator, columnist, and trained classical vocalist. She currently lives in Guwahati, Assam.[1] [2]
Her published literary works include four children's books, a biography, three novels, "The Collector's Wife" "A Monsoon of Music" (Penguin-Zubaan) and "What Will People Say?" (Speaking Tiger), several volumes of translations of other novels and a collection of fifty of her columns, "Guwahati Gaze". Her recent works include a biography on Bhupen Hazarika (Sahitya Akademi).
She writes extensively on Indian music as a reviewer and essayist. Her works have been translated into many languages, and several of them are taught in colleges and Universities. As a translator herself, she has translated into English the works of some of the best known Assamese writers of fiction, including "Blossoms in the Graveyard", a translation of Jyanpeeth Awardee Birendra Kumar Bhattacharjee's "Kobor Aru Phool" and "Guilt and Other Stories" a translation of Sahitya Akademi awardee Harekrishna Deka's stories.
Among her works is the volume "The Greatest Assamese Stories Ever Told", twenty five stories in translation selected and edited by her, and "A Full Night's Thievery", a collection of her own short stories . She writes a column "All Things Considered" in the Assam Tribune.
She is the author of The Collector's Wife (2005),[3] a novel set against the Assam Agitation of the 1970s and 80s.[4] The Collector's Wife was one of the first generation novels in English written by an Assamese writer to be published by an international house.
Phukan is also a trained classical vocalist[5] and writes regularly on music.