Preeta Samarasan, an American writer of Tamil-Indian descent, was born in Batu Gajah, Malaysia. Her father was a schoolteacher in Ipoh. Her education began at Sekolah Menengah Convent School, after which she moved to the United States in 1992, to the United World College in Las Vegas, New Mexico. After graduating in 1994, she went to Hamilton College, and then to pursue PhD in musicology at the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester. For her work on Gypsy music festivals in France, she was awarded a Council for European Studies fellowship in 2002. In 2006, she earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan, where she worked on her first novel. She currently lives in central France with her husband and two daughters .