Samrat Upadhyay was born in Kathmandu, Nepal, but has spent almost as much of his life in the United States as he has in his native country. His parents were civil servants and saw to it that their son was well versed in English. When he was twenty-one, Upadhyay won a scholarship to the College of Wooster in Ohio, where he earned a bachelor's degree. He had first thought that he would major in business but found that he was not particularly drawn to that subject, so he switched to English because of his love of literature. He soon enjoyed high praise from his professors for his command of the English language, so when he was considering graduate school, he decided to pursue a creative writing degree at Ohio University. He followed this up with a doctorate from the University of Hawaii.

Upadhyay was at the...