Durga Chew-Bose is a Canadian writer and filmmaker. She is best known for her essay collection, Too Much and Not the Mood (2017), and her directorial debut, Bonjour Tristesse (2024). Her book was named among the best of 2017 by NPR, The Guardian, Slate, Nylon, and The Globe and Mail. In 2024, she received the Emerging Talent Award at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Durga Chew-Bose was born in Montreal to parents from Kolkata. She was named after the character Durga in Satyajit Ray’s film Pather Panchali. At the age of seventeen, Durga moved to the United States to attend boarding school in New Mexico. She later studied at Sarah Lawrence College and spent a year at the University of Oxford.
She began her career as a writer, contributing essays and criticism to The Guardian, BuzzFeed, Rolling Stone, GQ, The New Inquiry, Interview, Paper, Hazlitt, and other publications. She also taught writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Among her listed influences are Agnès Varda and Wong Kar-wai. In 2015, she co-founded the website Writers of Color, a searchable database of contemporary writers.
Her first book, Too Much and Not the Mood (2017), took its title from a Virginia Woolf diary entry. It is a collection of essays addressing questions of identity, creativity, and the experience of being a first-generation Canadian. Publishers Weekly praised the book, writing that “twists in language and heady cultural references elevate Chew-Bose’s debut above the recent crop of personal essay collections by young writers.”
Bustle also highlighted the collection as one of the “15 Most Anticipated Feminist Book Releases Of 2017.”
Reflecting on her approach to writing, she has said: “So much of my book has film in it as well, so when the producers approached me as a writer, the jump didn’t feel like a leap. It felt more like a natural progression.” This connection between her literary and cinematic interests shaped her move into directing.
Her debut film, Bonjour Tristesse (2024), adapted from Françoise Sagan’s novella, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Chew-Bose chose to focus on adapting the book rather than remaking Otto Preminger’s 1958 film version. “Deciding early on that we were adapting the book and not making a remake of the film provided a lot of calm and focus,” she explained.
Discussing her adaptation, Durga Chew-Bose noted: “I think that so much of coming into yourself is fraught and inelegant. It’s actually quiet and humiliating… And I wanted to make that very clear.” The film was received as a contemporary reading of Sagan’s story, emphasising female perspectives and generational dynamics.
Chew-Bose now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Photo credits: saraa.kom
Durga Chew-Bose was born in Montreal to parents from Kolkata. She was named after the character Durga in Satyajit Ray’s film Pather Panchali. At the age of seventeen, Durga moved to the United States to attend boarding school in New Mexico. She later studied at Sarah Lawrence College and spent a year at the University of Oxford.
She began her career as a writer, contributing essays and criticism to The Guardian, BuzzFeed, Rolling Stone, GQ, The New Inquiry, Interview, Paper, Hazlitt, and other publications. She also taught writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Among her listed influences are Agnès Varda and Wong Kar-wai. In 2015, she co-founded the website Writers of Color, a searchable database of contemporary writers.
Her first book, Too Much and Not the Mood (2017), took its title from a Virginia Woolf diary entry. It is a collection of essays addressing questions of identity, creativity, and the experience of being a first-generation Canadian. Publishers Weekly praised the book, writing that “twists in language and heady cultural references elevate Chew-Bose’s debut above the recent crop of personal essay collections by young writers.”
Bustle also highlighted the collection as one of the “15 Most Anticipated Feminist Book Releases Of 2017.”
Reflecting on her approach to writing, she has said: “So much of my book has film in it as well, so when the producers approached me as a writer, the jump didn’t feel like a leap. It felt more like a natural progression.” This connection between her literary and cinematic interests shaped her move into directing.
Her debut film, Bonjour Tristesse (2024), adapted from Françoise Sagan’s novella, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Chew-Bose chose to focus on adapting the book rather than remaking Otto Preminger’s 1958 film version. “Deciding early on that we were adapting the book and not making a remake of the film provided a lot of calm and focus,” she explained.
Discussing her adaptation, Durga Chew-Bose noted: “I think that so much of coming into yourself is fraught and inelegant. It’s actually quiet and humiliating… And I wanted to make that very clear.” The film was received as a contemporary reading of Sagan’s story, emphasising female perspectives and generational dynamics.
Chew-Bose now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Photo credits: saraa.kom
Books
- unavailable
Audiobooks
- unavailable
fb2epub
Drag & drop your files
(not more than 5 at once)