2017-2018
Ravi Shankar is founding editor of Drunken Boat, one of the world’s oldest electronic journals of the arts and teaches for the New York Writers Workshop and at City University of Hong Kong. He has published or edited ten books and chapbooks of poetry, including most recently with Priya Sarukkai Chabria The Autobiography of a Goddess, translations of the 9th century Tamil poet/saint Andal, and What Else Could it Be, which includes collaborations with over two dozen contemporary artists and poets, including Rodger Kamenetz, Mong Lan, Eileen Myles, Quintan Ana Wikswo, Brian Turner and many others. Along with Tina Chang and Nathalie Handal, he edited W.W. Norton’s Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East & Beyond, called “a beautiful achievement for world literature” by Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer. He has won a Pushcart Prize and a Glenna Luschei Award from Prairie Schooner, been featured in The New York Times, The Paris Review, Caravan, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, appeared as a commentator on the BBC, the PBS Newshour and NPR, received fellowships from the Blue Mountain Center, the MacDowell Colony, the Corporation of Yaddo, and most recently the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts, and has performed his work around the world.