Padma was born in Nelson, BC, and grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, with no intention of becoming a writer. After completing a sociology degree, she worked in research, as a librarian, and in educational and social-action theatre. This continued until she joined a local playwrights’ circle and wrote the first scene of her first play, House of Sacred Cows. It was in writing this scene that she discovered — to her relief — a discipline to which she could commit.

Shortly after this first epiphany came another: it finally occurred to her to ask her grandmother about their family history. The story her grandmother told, about her own grandmother, a Brahmin widow left with two small children after her astrologer husband’s death, inspired her to write her first novel, The Toss of a Lemon, which was shortlisted for Amazon.ca's First Novel Award and for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best First Book Award (Canada and the Caribbean).

Padma's work has received many awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Canada Council for the Arts, as well as residencies at MacDowell, Sacatar and the Banff Center for the Arts. She won the 2007 Boston Review Short Story Prize, and other of her stories and articles have been published in journals and magazines across Canada and the US.

With the publication of her novel in Canada, she was named a New Face of Fiction for 2008 by Random House, her Canadian publisher. The Toss of a Lemon met with many positive reviews there and made several bestseller lists. Now published in the US by Harcourt, the book has received starred advance reviews, has been named to the October "Indie Next List" (formerly Book Sense Picks), and has been selected for several First Editions clubs. She may be reading in your hometown: have a look at her events page!

Personal details, for readers who want to know: her husband, Geoffrey Brock, a poet and literary translator, lured her away from Montreal, where she was living when they met. She followed him to San Francisco; he followed her to Tucson; there was some tarrying in India, Brazil and Italy, but they are now settled in the startling and verdant Arkansas Ozarks, where they care for two ever-amusing bairns, as well as a cat that came with the house, a snake that came with the garden, and several fish readily available retail.