Anu Garg

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Anu Garg
Born April 5, 1967 (1967-04-05) (age 44)
Meerut, India
Occupation Writer, Speaker, Columnist, Software engineer
Genres non-fiction
Notable work(s) The Dord, the Diglot, and an Avocado or Two: The Hidden Lives and Strange Origins of Common and Not-So-Common Words, A Word A Day: A Romp Through Some of the Most Unusual and Intriguing Words, Another Word a Day: An All-New Romp through Some of the Most Unusual and Intriguing Words in English
[http://wordsmith.org http://wordsmith.org]

Anu Garg (born April 5, 1967), an Indian-American author and speaker, is best known as the founder of Wordsmith.org, an online community comprising word lovers from an estimated 200 countries. His books explore the joy of words. He has authored A Word A Day: A Romp Through Some of the Most Unusual and Intriguing Words, Another Word a Day and The Dord, the Diglot, and an Avocado or Two: The Hidden Lives and Strange Origins of Common and Not-So-Common Words. He writes about language-related issues for magazines and newspapers and speaks internationally. He is a columnist for MSN Encarta[1] and Kahani magazine.[2]

He has been profiled in The New York Times,[3] USA Today,[4] Reader's Digest, The Wall Street Journal,[5] Smithsonian,[6] National Public Radio, and BBC, among others.

[edit] Biography

Garg was born in rural India. His schooling took place under a mango tree, his classroom consisting of a few broken sticks of chalk and a blackboard made by painting a flat piece of wood with soot. The only language he knew was Hindi, and did not see a library until college. Anu Garg graduated from Harcourt Butler Technological Institute in Computer Science in 1988.[7]

He moved to the United States to do graduate studies in Computer Science at Case Western Reserve University, and then worked as a Computer Scientist at AT&T and other corporations. He founded Wordsmith.org in 1994, during his graduate work. In 2010, the number of subscribers to Wordsmith.org's "A Word A Day" email list reached one million.[8]

He lives in the Seattle area with his wife and daughter. He is a vegan.[9]

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ "MSN Encarta". Archived from the original on 2009-10-31. http://www.webcitation.org/5kwKV5JqY. Retrieved 2008-07-30. 
  2. ^ "Kahani". http://kahani.com/each_contributors.php?id=7&contrib_type=W. Retrieved 2008-07-30. 
  3. ^ Hafner, Katie (2002-11-28). "A Word of the Day Keeps Banality at Bay". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=technology&res=9F01E3DF1538F93BA15752C1A9649C8B63. Retrieved 2007-07-01. 
  4. ^ Johnson, Kevin (2003-01-02). "He spread the words, one e-mail at a time". USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-01-02-email-book_x.htm. Retrieved 2007-07-01. 
  5. ^ "A Word a Day -- Say, 'Gasconade' -- Keeps Boredom at Bay". The Wall Street Journal. 2001-09-26. http://online.wsj.com/PA2VJBNA4R/article/SB1001466663243057240-search.html?KEYWORDS=anu+garg&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month. Retrieved 2007-07-01. 
  6. ^ "Log-o-phil-ia Is Addictive". Smithsonian. 2000-12-01. Archived from the original on 2007-07-03. http://web.archive.org/web/20070703190349/http://www.smithsonianmag.com/issues/2000/december/wordaday.php. Retrieved 2007-07-01. 
  7. ^ [1]
  8. ^ Garg, Anu. Distribution email dated 19 September 2010
  9. ^ "On Food: Wordsmith delves into the origins of food-related terms", Seattle Post-Intelligencer. URL last accessed on March 19, 2008.

[edit] External links

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