Raminder Sidhu was born and raised in Mackenzie, B.C., and now resides in Surrey. She holds a B.Ed. from the University of British Columbia and a BBA from the University of the Fraser Valley.

In her first novel, Tears of Mehndi (Caitlin $24.95), Sidhu examines the lives of contemporary women in Vancouver's tightly-knit Little India district to shed light on "the shrouded violence within Canada's Punjabi community."

Similar in scope to Gurjinder Basran's Ethel Wilson Prize-winning debut novel in 2010, Everything Was Good-Bye, the author is young and beautiful, and the characters are caught between two cultures--a fundamental theme in B.C. fiction first made conspicuous in Hubert Evans' Mist on the River in 1954.

Sidhu was featured on the cover of the Punjabi Patrika and in the South Asian Post. She was interviewed for Sheryl MacKay's North by Northwest and CBC North, as well as appearing on OMNI TV's Punjabi news and OMNI TV's Women in Focus.

BOOKS:

Tears of Mehndi (Caitlin, 2012 )$24.95 978-1-894759-73-1

[BCBW 2012]