Rajiv Joseph, the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Indian American playwright, has been named a winner of the 6th Annual Steinberg Playwright Award, an annual theater honor organized by the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust.
He shares the honor with playwright Annie Baker and will accept a cash prize of $50,000.
Joseph was awarded for his latest work, “The Lake Effect,” which had its world premiere at Chicago’s Silk Road Rising in April. “The Lake Effect” is about two estranged Indian American siblings (played by Adam Poss and Minita Gandhi) who are forced to reunite when their father passes away and his newly revealed secrets change their perception of a man they thought they knew. “The Lake Effect” is also nominated for The Chicago-based 2012-13 Jeff Equity Awards, it was announced Oct. 3.

Previously, Joseph held the world premiere of the suspenseful drama “The North Pool” in 2011 in Palo Alto, Calif. His other works include “Huck and Holden,” “Animals Out of Paper” and “Gruesome Playground Injuries.” India-West has reported previously that Joseph’s first screenplay, a football-themed film titled “Draft Day,” had been selected for Hollywood’s prestigious “Blacklist” in December 2012.

Joseph, born in Cleveland, Ohio, is the son of a French-German mother and Indian father who credits his three years spent with the Peace Corps in Senegal for having a profound effect on him and preparing him for a writing career. He earned a B.A. in creative writing from the Oxford, Ohio campus of Miami University and a master’s degree in writing from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

Joseph is best known for his incendiary drama “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2010. “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo” was first presented at the Kirk Douglas Theatre and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles before opening on Broadway with Robin Williams in 2011.

The play will open Oct. 5 at the San Francisco Playhouse and will run through Nov. 14, directed by Bill English.

Source: IndiaWest

The Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes, an award that celebrates inspiring, public-spirited, diverse young people from all across America, recently announced that 18-year-old Sruthi Ramaswami was among its 2013 national winners.

Each year, the Barron Prize honors 25 outstanding young leaders ages 8 to 18 who have made a significant positive difference to people and our planet. The top ten to 15 winners each receive a $5000 cash award to support their service work or higher education.

Ramaswami, an Indian American from California, was recognized for having founded the Mitty Advocacy Project, a network of over 1,000 students lobbying legislators to support bills that help the less fortunate by addressing social justice issues such as poverty and immigration.

Teams of students research issues such as poverty, education, immigration, and criminal justice, and then identify bills designed to address these issues. Students lobby legislators in Sacramento and have traveled to Washington, D.C. to do so at the national level. Five of the six bills they have lobbied for have been signed into law.

Ramaswami began her work as a high school freshman, invited by a teacher to prepare for and participate in Catholic Lobby Day, an advocacy event to mobilize Catholics in California to lobby state legislators. Inspired and empowered by that experience, she created MAP in her sophomore year to form a community of youth lobbyists to represent the interests of the less fortunate.

As the cornerstone of MAP, Ramaswami founded California Youth Advocacy Day, an annual event to promote civic engagement. For the past three years, over 600 high school students have taken part in the event, participating in issue-specific workshops led by MAP students and then lobbying their legislators at the state Capitol.

MAP has grown to involve 100 students at Sruthi’s school and has expanded to over 50 schools nationwide.

“I’ve learned that mobilizing people to believe in and work towards a common goal is not the purview of adulthood,” the teen stated in a press release. “Motivation and self-belief trump age.”

Source : IndiaWest

Trailblazer Sri Srinivasan was on Friday sworn in as judge of the second most powerful court of the United States, making him the first Indian-American to be on the bench of the U.S. Courts of Appeal for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Chandigarh-born Srinivasan, 46, whose parents migrated to the United States in 1970s, was sworn in the oath of office in an overflowing court room of U.S. Courts of Appeal for the District of Columbia Circuit by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, in presence of legal luminaries, friends and families.

Gursharan Kaur, the wife of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, was present on the occasion when Srinivasan took the oath of office on the Gita with his mother Saroja Srinivasan holding the holy book for him.

Gursharan Kaur, literally drive off directly from the airport, with a brief stopover at the hotel, to be in time for the swearing in ceremony of the Indian-American.

It was in May this year that Srinivasan was confirmed by the U.S. Senate by a huge 97-0 vote.

He is the first South Asian American to serve as a circuit court judge in American history.

The retired Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor who administered the oath of office called Srinivasan “fair, faultless and fabulous.”

He once clerked for her. Addressing the gathering, Srinivasan acknowledged the contribution of his parents and family on his achievements.

Srinivasan was first nominated by Obama on June 11, 2012. On January 2, his nomination was returned to the President, due to the sine die adjournment of the Senate.

On January 3, 2013, Obama re-nominated him for the same office.

His appointment is a testimony to his credibility and calibre as a brilliant legal luminary of the US.

Srinivasan was previously the principal deputy solicitor general of the United States.

He is a highly-respected appellate advocate who has spent a distinguished career litigating before the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Courts of Appeals, both on behalf of the United States and in private practice.

Born in India to Indian parents, Srikanth “Sri” Srinivasan’s well-deserved rise to the top echelons of the American judiciary – the first by an Indian-American to such a position – is a matter of great pride and satisfaction for India and the Indian-American community, and yet another proof of the sterling contributions of the community to U.S. society and indeed, to India-US relations.

Srinivasan began his legal career by serving as a law clerk for Judge J Harvie Wilkinson on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1995 to 1996.

He then spent a year as a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General before clerking for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor during the Supreme Court’s 1997-98 term.

He was an associate at the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers LLP in Washington, DC from 1998 until 2002.

In 2002, he returned to the Solicitor General’s Office as an assistant to the Solicitor General, representing the United States in litigation before the Supreme Court.

For his work, he received the Attorney General’s Award for Excellence in Furthering U.S. National Security in 2003 and the Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Excellence in 2005.

In 2007, Srinivasan became a partner with O’Melveny & Myers LLP.

In 2011, he was named the chair of the firm’s Appellate Practice Group.

He was named as the principal deputy solicitor general in August 2011.

Srinivasan is widely recognised as one of the country’s leading appellate and Supreme Court advocates.

He has argued before the Supreme Court twenty times, drafted briefs in several dozen additional cases, and has also served as lead counsel in numerous cases before the federal and state appellate courts.

He has also served as a lecturer at Harvard Law School, where he taught a class on appellate advocacy.

Chandigarh-born Srinivasan grew up in Lawrence, Kansas. He received his BA with honours and distinction in 1989 from Stanford University and his JD with distinction in 1995 from Stanford Law School, where he was elected to Order of the Coif and served as an editor of the Stanford Law Review.

He also holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, which he received along with his JD in 1995.

Srinivasan’s mother is from Chennai and father was from Tirunelveli.

His parents came to the U.S. in the 1960s, returned to India, and then back in 1971 to Kansas.

Source: The Times of India