Padma Viswanathan is a Canadian writer who has written several produced plays and been awarded residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Banff Playwrights’ Colony, and the Sacatar Foundation. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, she has been a finalist for the Bronwen Wallace Award and the Writers Union of Canada Short Prose Competition. Her _AGNI _piece, “The Barber Lover,” is taken from her novel-in-progress, a historical work set in southern India. (4/2006)