Ravi Shankar

Shankar's collections of poetry include A Field Guide to Southern China (2019) written with T. S. Eliot Prize winner George Szrites,The Many Uses of Mint (2018), What Else Could it Be (2015), Instrumentality (2004), a finalist for the 2005 Connecticut Book Awards, and Deepening Groove (2011), winner of the National Poetry Review Prize. He has also served as an editor for other works such as Language for a New Century (2008), which was hailed as "a beautiful achievement for world literature" by Nobel laureate in Literature Nadine Gordimer. He won a Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship in 2017 His translations with Priya Sarukkai Chabria of the 8th century Tamil poet/saint Andal won the 2016/2017 Muse India Translation Award at the Hyderabad Literary festival. He also appeared as a guest speaker at the Jaipur Literature Festival in January 2018.

In 2015, Shankar resigned from teaching at Central Connecticut State University. He also filed multiple charges against the public university system of Central Connecticut. All of the pending cases filed by both parties were dismissed with a settlement of $60,409, paid by the college authority to Shankar.

His literary works appeared in Paris Review, Fulcrum, McSweeney's, the AWP Writer's Chronicle, and Scribner's Best American Erotic Poems. In 2014, he won Glenna Luschei Award from Prairie Schooner.

Shankar became the subject of several controversies during 2010. He won a settlement against the NYPD, after being racially profiled under the stop-and-frisk policies later found illegal by New York Superior Court Judge Shira Scheindlin and appeared on NPR to discuss his wrongful arrest . He was later alleged in a number of cases including driving under the influence,and unauthorized use of university funds. He served 90 days in Hartford Correctional Center.

Shankar received his bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia and his M.F.A. in poetry from the Columbia University School of the Arts. Upon completion of his graduation, he moved to Chester from Brooklyn, and joined the Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) as a faculty member in 2002. He was also a guest teacher of the masters program at Fairfield University. He was elected as the chairman of the Connecticut Young Writers Trust in 2011. In 2014, he was promoted from the rank of associate professor to professor at CCSU. He also served as the co-director of the creative writing minor at CCSU. He has also appeared on PBS and on National Public Radio. He received the University-level Trustees Research Award as a faculty member at CSUS in 2009. In the same year, he also received fellowship award from The Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism (CCT) and Summer Literary Seminars fellowship to Kenya.

In 1999, he founded an international online arts journal named Drunken Boat. Currently, he is a teacher at the New York Writers Workshop and City University of Hong Kong.

Ravi Shankar (born 1975) is an American poet, editor, and former literature professor at Central Connecticut State University and City University of Hong Kong. He is the founding editor of one of the earliest online literary journals, Drunken Boat. He had been called "a diaspora icon" by The Hindu and "one of America's finest younger poets" by former Connecticut poet laureate Dick Allen (poet).