Bapsi Sidhwa was born in Karachi and bought up in Lahore. An active social worker among Asian women, she represented Pakistan at the Asian Women's Congress in 1975. Author of THE ICE CANDY MAN, which won the 1991 Liberateur Prize in Germany, she has also received the Sitara-l-Imtiaz, the highest honour in the arts that Pakistan bestows upon its people. in 1993, she also received a writer's grant of US $105,000 from the Lila Wallace Readers Digest Fund. She is married with three children and divides her time between the US where she teaches and Lahore where she lives.