Anju Kanwar

Author, Educator, Communications Expert

Rise Global Initiative represents a philosophy that advocates education for sustainable development. It adopts interdisciplinary and integrative pathways to break through traditional approaches that are no longer working.  Kanwar is keenly interested in building communities through collaborative approaches between Arts/Humanities and Science/Technology for innovative solutions to challenges.   

Committed to education for all, Kanwar has served in Higher Education in both India and the United States. Her experience includes serving as an administrator (with the responsibility, most recently, to build and operate a federal grant-funded academic support program for graduation success) and a professor. Kanwar's previous work experience also includes successfully relaunching a defunct national consumer magazine. 

Kanwar supports gender equity through forging pathways to empowerment and leadership development. Her book, The Sound of Silence, is a literary and cultural study of unmarried women - including the role of men and feminism. Understanding the ways in which patriarchy works to disempower women, one can develop strategies for resistance and change. The book was nominated for the Independent Scholar's Award of the Modern Language Association. Kanwar also wrote the Introduction for the Barnes and Noble edition of D.H. Lawrence's novel, The Lost Girl. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in The Journal of Humanities in Rehabilitation, Indian Literature, Amsterdam Quarterly, Stonepile Writers' Anthology, etc. She is interested in global migration and issues of borders and boundaries, particularly the 1947 India Partition. Kanwar believes passionately in the power of  the written (and spoken) word to transform lives.

Kanwar has given talks at local organizations, and made numerous national and international academic presentations and public readings of her fiction and poetry. She opened the Atlanta premiere (and fundraiser) of the BBC documentary, India's Daughter, with her poetry. She has received the Arnold B. Fox writing award (special reference) and the 2018 Loquat Literary Prize (third place) in poetry.

Kanwar earned a Bachelor's in English (Hons) from Jesus and Mary College of the University of Delhi and a Master's in English from the Faculty of Arts, University of Delhi.  She received her PhD on a full teaching scholarship from Northern Illinois University, where she majored in English Literature (and culture) with an emphasis on narrative and gender. Kanwar has since availed of numerous professional development opportunities, including, most recently, "Poetry and Training the Eye" at Harvard Medical School. 

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