Purabi Basu was born on born 21 September 1949. She is a Bangladeshi short-story writer, pharmacologist, and activist.
She completed her bachelor’s degree in pharmacy from the University of Dhaka. She moved to the United States in 1970. She then earned her master’s degree in biochemistry from Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1972 and a Ph.D. from the University of Missouri in nutrition in 1976. She later worked as a postdoctoral fellow in pharmacology at the University of South Alabama.
She won Anannya Literary Award in 2005 and Bangla Academy Literary Award in 2013. As of 2005, she has been working as a senior executive at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, a drug company based in New York.
