Anjana Appachana was born in India, received her education and also worked there for a few years before moving to USA. She has degrees from Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and in Creative Writing from Pennsylvania State University.

One of her short stories Sharmaji was included in the anthology on 50 years of Indian writing (by Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth West). Her focus, as evinced by the theme of her novel Listening Now is the experience of the ordinary Indian woman: her dreams and passions frustrated and realised, through and in spite of the mundane, repetitive and domestic pattern of her life.

Anjana Appachana is the recipient of an O. Henry Festival Prize and a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing fellowship. She lives in Tempe, Arizona.