After seeing my author byline, people have asked what I’d like to be called. Here's a picture to help explain. My family's culture doesn't have the concept of a "family name" so we don't have a first name-last name structure.

I was S. Divya before I got married. The S stands for my father's given name. If I'd married a man from the same culture, traditionally I would take his given name as my new first initial (read more about that here). I married a white American guy, though, so I took on his father's last name instead.

When my parents emigrated to the USA, we had to write our names in the first name-last name way so for years, my mom & I had a different last name from my dad. When we became US citizens, my dad changed his legal last name to ours (i.e. his first name became his last name).

I got married pretty young and since I didn't have a middle name, I decided to take my husband's last name and keep my dad's name. I'm still ambivalent about that decision.

When I was going to submit fiction for publication (many years later), I realized I had an opportunity to choose again. The solution to my feminist dilemma came to me as soon as I remembered how my family wrote my name in India (I moved away when I was 5): I would adopt the style of someone who doesn't have a legacy name.

Neither my dad nor my father in-law’s names have anything to do with ME. My name is Divya. That's what I want people to call me, and that's also what I want them to see on book spines and in reviews.

People have asked if I'm obscuring my "real name" because I'm female and writing science fiction. Not at all. There are many women with my name in India, and I doubt the average American would have a clue. However, I did think about the fact that two initials + name was a common byline.

That's how I ended up with S.B. Divya as my published author name. It's not a pen name. It's me reclaiming a bit of my family heritage while ditching the not-so-feminist legal last names I've had.