Maura Moynihan

It’s appropriate that around the Tibetan New Year, that a blog for Maura Moynihan launch. Here’s a little about Maura.

At age fifteen, Maura Moynihan moved to New Delhi, India, where her father, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was appointed the US Ambassador. She graduated in 1975 from the American International School, New Delhi, known as “Hindi High.”

By age 19 she learned to speak Hindi and Urdu and had traveled to Kashmir, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China and Japan. At twenty-three, a Harvard graduate and rock musician, Moynihan appeared on the cover of Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine with her first band, “Maura and the Mystics.” For five years Moynihan and Warhol worked together at Interview and co-hosted “Andy Warhol’s TV.”

In her thirties, Moynihan returned to India and Nepal as a well-known Tibetan refugee and human rights advocate. She testified before the Senate Foreign Relations committee and was widely published, in the Washington Post and elsewhere. She launched a multi-lingual radio show in Kathmandu, Nepal, and became the Radio Free Asia Kathmandu Bureau Chief.

Now in her forties, with a clothing line in Saks, a short story collection and CD being released this summer (both named YOGA HOTEL), Moynihan is the ultimate renaissance woman, whose creativity and experience integrates East and West, politics and pop music, Bollywood and Manhattan.

In her new collection of stories, YOGA HOTEL (ReganBooks; on-sale August 12th, 2003), Moynihan explores the relationship between Eastern and Western cultures in India.

“Everyone knows about the India of the Raj, maharajas, tiger-hunting, and it’s inspired fantastic reading, but I wanted to write about the India I know, ex-pats, seekers, gurus, discos, third class trains, Delhi cocktail parties with diplomats and World Bankers, a place where worlds and people collide, with unpredictable and complex results.”

When she was living in India, Moynihan became an ardent practitioner of Yoga and studied Kundalini, Iyengar and Shivananda techniques. The title of the book and the CD refers to the nickname her friends gave her home in Kathmandu, a spontaneous Yoga ashram and popular international guest house, always open to guests from around the world.

Now listen to a song by Maura called Bangkok High. Click to play below.

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