Supriya Kelkar: Hi, my name is Supriya Kelkar and I'm going to talk to you about American as Paneer Pie. I'm going to tell you a little bit about my inspiration for the book and then I'll read a short excerpt for you. I was inspired to write this story at a time when it felt like hate was really being encouraged and emboldened. Some of the story is also based on my experiences growing up in a small town in Michigan that didn't value diversity. While I didn't really find my voice until college, Lekha, the main character in American as Paneer Pie, luckily finds her voice much earlier than that. I hope this book full of heart and puns empowers and inspires readers everywhere to stand up for what they believe in and to speak out against hate.

I actually studied screenwriting in college and I use all of the things I learned about screenwriting to write my books. The first thing that comes to me usually is the basic idea for a story and then I think about the characters for a really long time. In screenwriting, I was taught to write character journals for each character in the story, not just the main character. So I write diary entries for each character, using their voice, and through that I figure out what their wants are, what their fears are, and what their goals are and how they need to change. From there I write an outline and after that I start writing the actual novel. So I spend a lot of time plotting before I actually get to the story.

American as Paneer Pie is full of lots of puns because my friends and I used to make really bad puns to make each other laugh. So in this book Lekha makes a lot of puns based on an aquatic theme, so having to do with water. There are puns like shrimp-possible instead of impossible, and on porpoise instead of on purpose. And so there are lots of pretty bad funny puns in the book that I hope you enjoy. And now I'm going to read an excerpt from American as Paneer Pie.

Chapter One. It's funny how something as small as a dot could matter so much, but it did. Most Desi kids I knew had been asked about it at some point in their lives, "Do you have a dot? Where's your dot? Why do you guys have dots on your forehead?" It was kind of annoying, but I didn't know any Desi kids who had to walk around with a bindi on their forehead at all times. I had to though, for 11 years and counting. That's because mine was a birthmark, a bindi-size, dark brown freckle that I couldn't take off and that was really annoying.