Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (Kaling) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—June 24, 1979
• Where—Cambridge, Massachesetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Darthmouth College
• Awards—Emmy
• Currently—lives in West Hollywood, California


Vera Mindy Chokalingam, known professionally as Mindy Kaling, is an American actress, comedian, and writer. She is the creator and star of the Fox and Hulu sitcom The Mindy Project, and also serves as executive producer and writer for the show. She is also known for her work on the NBC sitcom The Office, where she portrayed the character Kelly Kapoor and served as executive producer, writer and director.

Her memoir Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concers) was published in 2011. Her second book, Why Not Me? was released in 2015. Both became top sellers.

Early life
Kaling was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to a Tamil father, Avu Chokalingam, an architect, and a Bengali mother, Dr. Swati Chokalingam (nee Roysircar), an obstetrician/gynecologist.

Both of Kaling's parents are Hindus from India, who met while working at the same hospital in Nigeria. Kaling's mother was working as an OBGYN, and her father was overseeing the building of a wing of the hospital. The family emigrated in 1979, the same year Kaling was born. Kaling's mother died of pancreatic cancer in 2012. Kaling has an older brother, anti-affirmative action activist Vijay Jojo Chokalingam.

Kaling graduated from Buckingham Browne & Nichols, a private school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1997. The following year, she entered Dartmouth College where she graduated with a B.A. in Playwriting.

While at Dartmouth, she was a member of the improvisational comedy troupe, The Dog Day Players, and the a cappella singers, The Rockapellas. She was creator of the comic strip Badly Drawn Girl in The Dartmouth (the college's daily newspaper), and a writer for the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern (the college's humor magazine). She was a Classics major for much of college, studying Latin, which she had not studied since 7th grade.

Career
While a 19-year-old sophomore at Dartmouth, Kaling was an intern on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. She described herself as a terrible intern, "less of a 'make copies' intern and more of a 'stalk Conan' intern."

After college, Kaling moved to Brooklyn and took what she said was one of her "worst job" experiences"—a production assistant for three months on the Crossing Over With John Edward psychic show. At the same time, Kaling did stand-up in New York City.

In August 2002, Kaling and Brenda Withers, a college friend, wrote an off=Broadway play called Matt & Ben, Kaling played Ben Afflect to Brenda Withers' Matt Damon. The play was named one of Time magazine's "Top Ten Theatrical Events of The Year" and was "a surprise hit" at the 2002 New York International Fringe Festival. The play reimagined how Damon and Affleck came to write the movie Good Will Hunting.

Kaling also wrote a popular blog called "Things I’ve Bought That I Love," which reemerged on her website on September 29, 2011. The blog was written under the name Mindy Ephron, "a name Kaling chose because she was amused by the idea of her 20-something Indian-American self as a long-lost Ephron sister."

The Office
When working in 2004 to adapt The Office from its BBC progenitor, producer Greg Daniels hired Kaling as a writer-performer after reading a spec script she wrote. Daniels called Kaling "very original," saying that "if anything feels phony or lazy or passé, she’ll pounce on it."

Kaling joined the The Office, as the only woman on a staff of eight. She was only 24. She took on the role of character Kelly Kapoor, debuting in "Diversity Day"—the series’ second episode. Since then she wrote at least 22 episodes, including "Niagara," for which she was co-nominated for an Emmy with Greg Daniels. Kaling both wrote and directed the webisode "Subtle Sexuality" in 2009.

In a 2007 interview with The A.V. Club, she stated that her character Kelly is "an exaggerated version of what I think the upper-level writers believe my personality is." After the "Diwali" episode, Kaling appeared with Daniels on NPR's Fresh Air.

Kaling's contract was set to expire at the end of Season 7. But in September, 2011, she signed a new contract to stay for Season 8; she was promoted to full Executive Producer status. Her Universal Television contract included a development deal for a new show (eventually titled The Mindy Project), in which she appears as an actor and contributes as a writer.

The Mindy Project
In 2012, Kaling pitched a single-camera comedy to Fox called The Mindy Project, which she wrote and produced. Fox began airing the series in 2012. Although canceled by Fox in May 2015, the series was later picked up by Hulu for a 26 episode fourth season.

Additional TV and film
Kaling's TV appearances include a 2005 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, playing Richard Lewis's assistant. She is featured on the CD Comedy Death-Ray and guest-wrote parts of an episode of Saturday Night Live in April 2006.

After her film debut in The 40-Year-Old Virgin with Steve Carell, Kaling appeared as a waitress in the film Unaccompanied Minors. In 2007 she held a small part in License to Wed starring fellow The Office actors John Krasinski, Angela Kinsey, and Brian Baumgartner.

She was also in the 2009 film Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian as a Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum tour guide and voiced Taffyta Muttonfudge in Disney's animated comedy film, Wreck-It Ralph. In 2011 she played the role of Shira, a doctor who is a roommate and colleague of the main character Emma (played by Natalie Portman) in No Strings Attached. Kaling also made an appearance as Vanetha in The Five-Year Engagement (2012). She also did voiced the role Disgust in the 2015 Pixar animated film, Inside Out.

Personal life
Kaling has said she has never been called Vera, her first name,[15] but has been referred to as Mindy since her mother was pregnant with her while her parents were living in Nigeria. They were already planning to move to the United States and wanted, Kaling said, a "cute American name" for their daughter, and liked the name Mindy from the TV show Mork & Mindy. The name Vera is, according to Kaling, the name of the "incarnation of a Hindu goddess."[15]

When Kaling started doing stand-up, the emcees could never pronounce her last name, Chokalingam, so they made fun of it. Eventually she changed it to Kaling. She stopped doing stand-up because it required a lot more time than she had. She toured solo as well as with Craig Robinson before he was on The Office.

Kaling has said that she never saw a family like hers on TV, which gave her a dual perspective she uses in her writing.[2] The "everyone against me mentality" is what she thinks she learned as a child of immigrants.[2] She loves reading books by Jhumpa Lahiri, even naming her Mindy Lahiri character after her.[29]

Kaling considers herself Hindu. She lives in West Hollywood, California. (From .)