She was born on 19 august 1938 in
Dharwad,
Karnataka, the second daughter of the Kannada dramatist and writer
Adya Rangacharya and Sharada Adya. She was educated in
Bombay (now Mumbai) and
Bangalore. Deshpande has degrees in
Economics and
Law. In Mumbai, she studied
journalism at the Vidya Bhavan and worked for a few months as a journalist for the magazine 'Onlooker'. She published her first collection of short stories in 1978, and her first novel, 'The Dark Holds No Terror', in 1980. She won the
Sahitya Akademi Award for the novel
That Long Silence in 1990 and the
Padma Shri award in 2009. Her novel
Shadow Play was shortlisted for
The Hindu Literary Prize in 2014. Deshpande has written four
children’s books, a number of short stories, thirteen
novels, and an essay collection entitled
Writing from the Margin and Other Essays. On 9 December 2015, she resigned from her position in the
Sahitya Akademi's general council and returned her Sahitya Akademi award. In doing so, she joined a broader protest by other writers against the Akademi's perceived inaction and silence on the murder of
M. M. Kalburgi. On 6 December 2018, during her inaugural address of the ninth edition of the
Goa Arts and Literature Festival (GALF), Deshpande urged Indians to think about the consequences of wanting a Hindu nation, and reminded those present of the violence and carnage that had been caused by the India-Pakistan partition. ==Selected bibliography==