Thanks to Ashima S. for sharing this link. Life for Kaavya Viswanathan, class of 2008 at Harvard must be hell right now. Just as the raging world renown for being such a gifted and well-paid budding writer was settling down, she is being accused of plagiarising parts of her writing. And as if that wasn't the worst, the piece appears in her college paper, the Harvard Crimson.
-Sumita Sheth

Student’s Novel Faces Plagiarism Controversy
Book by Kaavya Viswanathan ’08 contains similarities to earlier author’s works
Published On Sunday, April 23, 2006 11:28 PM
By DAVID ZHOU Crimson Staff Writer

A recently-published novel by Harvard undergraduate Kaavya Viswanathan ’08, “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life,” contains several passages that are strikingly similar to two books by Megan F. McCafferty—the 2001 novel “Sloppy Firsts” and the 2003 novel “Second Helpings.”
At one point, “Opal Mehta” contains a 14-word passage that appears verbatim in McCafferty’s book “Sloppy Firsts.”
In that example, McCafferty writes on page 6 of her first novel: “Sabrina was the brainy Angel. Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other: Pretty or smart. Guess which one I got. You’ll see where it’s gotten me.”
Viswanathan writes on page 39 of her novel: “Moneypenny was the brainy female character. Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other: smart or pretty. I had long resigned myself to category one, and as long as it got me to Harvard, I was happy. Except, it hadn’t gotten me to Harvard. Clearly, it was time to switch to category two.”
The italics appear in the originals.
Page 237 of McCafferty’s first novel reads: “Finally, four major department stores and 170 specialty shops later, we were done.” Similarly, Viswanathan wrote on page 51 of her novel: “Five department stores, and 170 specialty shops later, I was sick of listening to her hum along to Alicia Keys....”
McCafferty first learned about the similarities on April 11 in an e-mail from a fan, according to her agent Joanna Pulcini. Pulcini said that she has notified Random House, which published both of McCafferty’s novels, about the matter.

Read more here

Other posts of interest:
The Boston Globe
Business Standard