Malathi Michelle Iyengar

Children’s poet and author Malathi Michelle Iyengar grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She earned a BA at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an MFA in music at the California Institute of the Arts, and an MA in education at California State University, Los Angeles.

In the free-verse poems in her children’s book Tan to Tamarind: Poems About the Color Brown (2009, illustrated by Jamel Akib), Iyengar celebrates the beauty of brown skin with tender, joyful odes to a wide range of hues. In a 2009 interview published on the School Library Journal blog, she states, “In thinking about my own journey, I remember certain works of literature that played a huge role in transforming the way I saw myself. But most of the books that changed my life were written for much older children or for adults, meaning that I didn’t read them until I was twelve or thirteen years old. The books available to me as a very young child tended to reinforce my negative view of myself as a brown-skinned person. I wanted to write a literary work for very young children that would captivate their sensibilities and engage their imaginations with images evoking the amazing beauty of the color brown.” 

She is also the author of the children’s story book Romina’s Rangoli (2007, illustrated by Jennifer Wanardi). Iyengar lives in Long Beach, California, where she is an elementary school teacher. She is also an accomplished clarinet player.