Jhumpa Lahiri, a bilingual writer and translator, is the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Barnard College (Columbia University). She received the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies , her debut story collection. She is also the author of The Namesake , Unaccustomed Earth , and The Lowland , which was a finalist for both the Booker Prize and the National Book Award in fiction. Since 2015, Lahiri has been writing fiction, essays, and poetry in Italian: In Altre Parole ( In Other Words ), Il Vestito dei libri ( The Clothing of Books ), Dove mi trovo (self-translated as Whereabouts ), Il quaderno di Nerina , and Racconti romani . She has translated three novels by Domenico Starnone and is the editor of The Penguin Classics Book of Italian Short Stories , which was published in Italy as Racconti Italiani . Lahiri received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama in 2014, and in 2019 she was named Commendatore of the Italian Republic by President Sergio Mattarella. Her most recent book in English is a collection of essays entitled Translating Myself and Others , published in Spring 2022 by Princeton University Press.