Latest / Book Flood Podcast / Encore Summer 2026: Padma Venkatraman (E68)
Transcript
- Thomas Nixon: Welcome to the Book Flood podcast. I am your host, Tom Nixon. My guest this week is Padma Venkatraman. Padma is an oceanographer and the award-winning author of numerous books for young people, including The Bridge Home, Born Behind Bars, A Time to Dance, Islands End, and Climbing the Stairs. Her books have won numerous major awards and honors, including the WNDB Walter Award, an SCBWI Golden Kite Award, and three South Asia Book Awards. A new middle grade novel, in verse, Safe Harbor, about a girl who finds a stranded seal is forthcoming in January 25. Welcome, ⁓ Padma Venkatraman: Thank you so much. Very honored to be here. Thomas Nixon: So why don't we start by looking at your career trajectory? How did you get here? Padma Venkatraman: Actually, think the more important question, or it's a different way that it happened. I feel like I was an author all my life. Well, maybe I was not an author, but I loved to write all my life. So even when I was very little, I was already writing poetry. It may not have been very good, but, you know, writing was part of me. I don't know who I would be if I were not a writer, but. Oceanography was sort of the interesting, what shall I say, detour. And I did that, I think, because I was growing up in India. And as a young woman in India who wanted to be able to make the choices about her own life, it was very important for me to have a career that was financially able to keep me independent. And writing even to this day, I mean, I've been very lucky, you know, to have so many successes, but it's still something that isn't predictable. And I felt as though I needed something that was predictable. And I knew that science would give that to me, even though I never saw dark skinned females as scientists, you know, in my life growing up. Thomas Nixon: The number of people who think that all writers are millionaires, that they make this crazy money is, I've had these conversations so many times and it's, we're that way, but you have to keep writing. Padma Venkatraman: you Yep, we certainly do. Thomas Nixon: Absolutely. So how did you becoming an oceanographer lead to your writing career? Padma Venkatraman: So what happened was actually that I, like I said, I love to write and initially when I came to this country, I was about 19 or 20 and I came to graduate school. So I was very young in graduate school. Thomas Nixon: That is very young for graduate school. Padma Venkatraman: It was. So it was that much sort of a generation gap as it might've been a culture shock. But when I came, I kept continuing to write initially to sort of keep in touch with India, write for magazines in India and all of that. I thought, why not do that for newspapers and magazines and things here in this country? So I started doing that and places like Highlights and so on. took some of my work early on and I knew that I wanted to write novels. And it was always there, but my scientific work was very important to me. And I was, well, the only dark skinned female in my incoming graduate class. So I felt like I had a lot to prove. And oceanography is a very demanding field, both physically and mentally. So I was doing, you know, physical chemistry, mainly people usually think oceanography means marine biology, not in my case. So I did that for a long time, continued to write a little bit, sort of dabbled in it. It was my hobby. And then there came a time when I felt for several reasons as though I had, you know, I started to really question why I was doing even oceanography. And I think there was a big part of me that really wanted to change the world to protect the way that, you know, our planet is now under threat from climate change. And we already knew that when I was a graduate student. So that was very much part of what I wanted to do in, you know, oceanography was to protect our world from pollution and all of that. But I realized that sometimes throwing facts at people doesn't change what they think and they have to feel to change. And I knew that I could, make people more empathetic, I feel like through my writing, or at least give them an exercise in empathy through writing and reading. And I, to me, that's what a book is. That's what a good book does is, you know, it just allows you to be a little more compassionate because it sort of invites you into someone else's mind, into someone else's heart. And you can disagree with them if you like, but at least you have seen and maybe understood where they're coming from, different characters in the book. And so I thought, okay, I'll try writing and see if that, you know, takes off. And it did. So my first novel, actually, I have it here, Climbing the Stairs, is what got me climbing the stairs as an author. And now that was about 17, 18 years ago, so it was a long time ago. Yep. Thomas Nixon: So you have a new book coming out in January, Safe Harbor. How did you come up with the idea for that? Padma Venkatraman: So Safe Harbor is the book that is probably closest to oceanography. So Safe Harbor, it has this beautiful cover with a seal on it. And the idea came to me when I was taking a walk in Narragansett where we live, which is so beautiful in the ocean state of Rhode Island. And I was taking a walk along the beach, just like the girl does in the book. Thomas Nixon: ⁓ nice. Padma Venkatraman: and she finds a stranded seal. And I found a seal that was washed up, you know, on our beach. I was actually, usually you don't see seals hanging out on our beaches. So I was a little worried and I called and you know, in the case of my seal using the possessive here, the seal was fine. And you know, it just went back into the water, which happens a lot. So if anyone is listening and they do actually find a marine mammal washed up on the beach, what you should do is call the marine mammal stranding hotline. If you're in the United States, find out which one is closest to you, call them and they will tell you what to do. Never get too close to the animal. So I knew those things, of course. So I stayed away and called them and I observed it and then it went back in. So there was no problem with that one. But I know, of course, the problems of others and being an author. this girl came to me and I could see this little girl seeing this seal that was actually not able to get back into the water because it has, you plastic line that it's entangled in. And that became the seed of this story, Safe Harbor Thomas Nixon: Nice. And you have, is that a finished copy in your hands? Padma Venkatraman: It's an ARC, it's an advanced reader copy. it looks like it's, it kind of looks like the finished copy. has everything in it almost exactly like the real one. Thomas Nixon: Now, ⁓ this book is in verse. Do you write a lot in verse? Padma Venkatraman: So verse is what I started writing in when I was a kid. And so it comes out naturally. Sometimes I have another novel that I wrote, which is called A Time to Dance. And A Time to Dance is also a novel in verse. In fact, some people say, and I don't really know because I'm not an English professor, that A Time to Dance was one of the first, if not the first, South Asian Indian novel in verse for young people in the English language. That's kind of cool. And it took me a long time after that, you know, I wrote a lot of books on prose after that. And then Safe Harbor just showed up in verse. I think part of the reason is because the young girl who is, you know, the hero in the story, if you like, has in the picture, you can see that she has a flute that she's holding on the cover. And in my mind, she was a musician. So Thomas Nixon: That is very- Padma Venkatraman: one of the things that I think sort of transcends cultures and transcend species is actually music. And so I feel like A Time to Dance is about dance, which of course has rhythm in it. So it lends itself naturally to a novel which is written in verse. And in that same way, Safe Harbor being about music also lent itself almost naturally to being told in verse, which is a very poetic a way that the language then sings, you know. Thomas Nixon: When you were young, were you a dancer or a musician or anything, or has this just come from somewhere else? Padma Venkatraman: you I wish I were a dancer, I'm pretty discombobulated, so I'm not a very good dancer at all. you know, sometimes when you have a book, it can make you do things we were talking about, like putting ourselves in somebody else's mind and someone else's heart and someone else's body too. So I kind of put myself in the body of a fantastic dancer when I was writing A Time to Dance. And I love music. I play an Indian instrument called a vina, but you know, it's been years. I say I play, I should probably say I used to play it. I carry it around with me, but I don't know how good I am at it anymore. But I do love music, all kinds of music, know, Indian classical music and other kinds of music. So that's part of, I think, why. Thomas Nixon: Your books tend to have both a stem focus and BIPOC characters. Why do you make sure to include these features? Padma Venkatraman: One of the big things for me, think, growing up, knowing that I never had books in which I saw my, you know, people who were dark skinned like me in a positive way. It's really important for me to have that be there for young people and young women like me. And I think being one of the only, in fact, the only, when I came in, right, a BIPOC female in graduate school at that time. It was quite isolating in many ways, you know, and it was a big challenge, obviously, because you, you know, you had a lot of things that hurdles really that you had to overcome. Later on, I became a chief scientist actually of a research vessel in Germany. again, being the only there I was the only dark skinned person, the only female, the only person under six feet tall, and the only non native German speaker and I was the you know, kind of the scientific boss of the vessel. So that was quite a challenge. And I think it's hard for those of us who do these path-breaking things, it's harder because we've never seen that done before. We don't have a role model either in real life or in our heads. And I think what I can do for young people in general is to give them different kinds of role models. And for me, in this book, there is a scientist that works with the heroine in the book. And you know, the main characters are all BIPOC. And the scientist who works with her, Dr. Williams, is a Black woman. And I wanted to show that you can have strong, intelligent, brown and Black women, right, who are the center of these stories. And in this story, it's very much BIPOC centered. Sometimes you see stories about animals or the environment in which, know, a BIPOC character may be there, but that person is not the focus, is not the center. And to me, it is important that we are sometimes the center of these stories, in part because unfortunately, young people have to think about the environment these days. And, you know, as we have seen sometimes with these natural disasters, People who are the most affected by climate change disasters or pollution are often people who live in areas of, you know, where low economic, socioeconomically depressed, I guess you can say, areas, or, and or people who are BIPOC, all of, you know, people all over the world, countries that are have populations that are majority dark skinned people are the ones who are going to be most affected, unfortunately, by climate change and are often adversely affected by pollution, even if it isn't created in their own countries. So I think it's very important for us to also see people who are not just being affected by pollution and climate change adversely, but also people who are actively combating these things and being You know, the center of the stories about change in a positive way that are BIPOC. So we're not just seen as, you know, victims, we're seen as heroes. Thomas Nixon: I like that. So sort of a side note, how long were you in Germany? Padma Venkatraman: Yeah. I was in Germany for a couple of years. I went there between my masters and my doctorate and I worked there for a little while. And I say this sometimes, so it's not really true because I didn't meet my husband when I was there, but my husband is German. So the German immigrant, I mean, he's also American now, but yeah. Thomas Nixon: I have a- Padma Venkatraman: And I bizarrely, I worked in the same tiny little town in which he was born, which is just a very unusual and weird coincidence because when I was there, it is very odd. So when I was actually working there, he was not there. He had left and he was studying in an Ecole blah, blah in France. So I always say he was trying to escape his fate and he was running away from his future wife, but I caught up to him in the end. Thomas Nixon: Well, odd. funny. I'm going to Germany next month. I have a child moving to Germany from Spain. Padma Venkatraman: ⁓ how nice! Wow, where in Germany! Thomas Nixon: Berlin. He works for a company and he convinced them to let him move to Germany now and do what he does. Padma Venkatraman: ⁓ wow. ⁓ gosh. You know, one of my friends whom I just met recently had a book that was called The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin. And it's a verse novel for young adults. So it's a different age group. mean, think, you know, Safe Harbor is much more young people. I think you could read it if you're an older elementary school to, you young middle grade. The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin is the YA, but I just wanted to give a little shout out to that book. It's by someone called Kip Wilson. And it came into my mind because he said Berlin. Thomas Nixon: So what's next for Padma? You have a book in January and then... Padma Venkatraman: I have a book in January and after that I have two picture books that are coming out in 2026 from my very dear editor Nancy Paulson who has her own imprint in Penguin Random House or Penguin Young Readers as we used to call them and one of those books is called A Far Away Family. And I absolutely love it. And it's about a little girl who, ⁓ who goes from America to her home country and it's not her home. And that's part of the problem. You know, her parents think of it as home. Her parents know her grandparents, obviously her parents are delighted to see her grandparents. But for this little girl, it's the first time that she can remember meeting them as in they remember her as a baby, but she doesn't remember. So it's about that awkwardness that happens sometimes with immigrant families when the child grows up here and has no clue who the grandparents are and then needs to sort of make friends with people who are family. And, know, we often hear of the other way around, but yeah, this kind of turns that stereotype on its head. So that's new for me. I also have another book. which is a picture book also coming out in 2026 and it's called Strong as a Lotus because my name Padma means Lotus and my daughter's name and my mom's name also mean Lotus and of course Kamala for Kamala Harris also means Lotus. So there's so many ways in which you can say the word Lotus in Sanskrit and it is No matter how you say it, whether you say Kamala or whether you say Ambuja more, whether you say Padma, the little girl in the book is called Ambuja. It is a symbol of strength. So it's called strong as a lotus. Thomas Nixon: Nice. What advice do you have for new writers Padma Venkatraman: You know, the main thing that I would say is do it if you love it and be practical about it. You know, we spoke earlier about the fact that it sometimes doesn't necessarily make you very much money. So I would never ditch your day job. know, that's something that's very practical. But the other thing I would say is do it because you love it and do it for. for a bigger reason than just to have a book. And I mean that in the best way. I think whatever you do, if there's a larger reason for you that is driving that push to write or that push to do anything else, then you will do it well. For me, I think I said earlier that I see books, I'll use an oceanography metaphor. I'll say that, you know, they're like the little ships that help you sail the ocean of compassion for me, you know? And I think of my books as vessels of compassion. I think of my readers as exercising compassion together with me when they engage with my book. And so for me, it's not just the one story, it's something larger. It's about making the world a more compassionate place. And if you can see something that is larger in why you want to write, then write because of that. Because You never know. mean, I'm lucky. have received lots of awards. My books have sold. Even one of my books, I think, has sold more than a quarter of a million copies. Those are very lucky things, but you don't control them. So, sorry. A book is like this little ship that you send out onto this ocean and you have no control about whether there'll be storms or not. Right. Thomas Nixon: right? Padma Venkatraman: The only thing you can control is how well you build that ship, how well you create this book. And you pour everything into it. You set it off on its journey and then you write your next book. So I think if you're in it for the awards, if you're in it for the money, that may or may not come. But if you're in it to change, I think that'll happen. Thomas Nixon: ⁓ for sure. I interviewed Varsha Bajaj and we had this exact same conversation is if you're in it for the money, that's probably not a good way to go. But there are a lot of good reasons to be doing that. Padma Venkatraman: Ha ha ha. No. Right. Thomas Nixon: What advice do you have for writers who write cross-culturally? Certainly you write for a variety of audiences. Padma Venkatraman: I do. And I think one of the important things for me is that my books need to speak to BIPOC and even, you know, the Indian community, whether it's the Indian Indian community or the Indian American community, whatever it is, I feel like that's very important. And of course, I think that any book that is written well, if it's written well enough to speak to your own community, it will be speaking to others as well. And so I think then it lends itself immediately, any good story lends itself immediately to saying, come in and inviting other people into that space as well. And I love doing that. And I think if you are writing for a community that isn't a majority community, let's say in the US, your books are being published in the US, I think the advice, I don't know if it's advice or just something for you. those writers to remember is this, you do change lives. You know, my book, The Bridge Home, is, you know, about some very difficult things, including abusive families and violent families. And I don't know how many kids have come up to me and said that they moved themselves to safer spaces after reading the book. And, you know, my book Born Behind Bars is about a kid who is behind bars, who's been brought up in jail because his mother has been wrongfully imprisoned. And there have been, there one distinct memory I have is of a kid who said they had been bullying another child because they had an incarcerated parent and stopped that bullying after reading Born Behind Bars. I mean, those are just amazing. And with Climbing the Stairs, my first book that I mentioned, I got this email from someone, not even email, it was on Instagram that this person connected with me. From out in Peru saying one of the reasons they had gone to college was that they had somehow they had come across climbing the stairs and they had gone to college after reading about this young person's struggles in going to college in India. So you never know how your books will change people's lives for the better, but they will. Thomas Nixon: Is there a book or a series of books from your childhood that still resonates with you? Padma Venkatraman: You know, in my childhood, I didn't really see a lot of books with people like me in them. One of the books that I think I had a very complex relationship with was The Secret Garden, because there were some aspects of the book that are very magical and beautiful, but there are parts of the book that were very, very hurtful to me, because there are some scenes and statements made in there that are very racist toward people like me, especially. And that's hard to take. you know, I think it's a book nonetheless that I think in a way spurred me to write my stories because I thought, you know, when I grow up, I'm going to write books that are not hurtful about people like me who are the center and who are good and who are, you know, the heroes, the protagonists. Thomas Nixon: Sure. Padma Venkatraman: not people who are considered to be whatever, know, or who are just in that book, they clearly stated as, know, unintelligent and brutish and all the rest of it, which is, course, Thomas Nixon: What are you reading now? Padma Venkatraman: You know, right now I have been reading a lot of newspapers. I knew you were going to ask me this. So was going to say, you know, I don't have a book on my shelf that is a young adult book. I did, though, recently read a young adult book, which is a novel in verse So I'd love to just share that title. And that's called When the Mapu Sings and it's by a writer called Nadine Pined. And there's another book that has been sitting on my shelf and I have the pleasure of starting it finally so that I could come and tell you that I just started it. And it's Aida Salazar's Ultraviolet. And I'm just really enjoying that as well. It's also a novel in this. And ooh, I shouldn't forget. I loved Wild Dreamers by Margarita Engel. Thomas Nixon: I had the pleasure. Padma Venkatraman: Who is somebody who wrote a lovely, lovely, lovely blurb for Safe Harbor. Which yeah, I'm just really excited to share just got a fantastic start review from school library journal. Which called it a must read and everything so I'm very excited and very, grateful for that. Thomas Nixon: So Margarita Engel probably lives eight miles from me, something like that. She's I think in Clovis and we're in Fresno. We're the big city, but yeah. And just the last school year I met Aida Salazar because she lives at the coast, but she was at a school here and I got invited to come. And so, and that book is wonderful. Padma Venkatraman: ⁓ That's fantastic. Yeah. Thomas Nixon: Well, Padma, I want to thank you so much for being on the podcast. I'd also like to ask our listeners to like, share, and subscribe wherever you are listening to us. Again, thank you so much, Padma, for coming. Padma Venkatraman: Thank you so much for having me. Bye. Thomas Nixon: Bye.