Ravi Shankar

A longtime Connecticut resident, Ravi Shankar holds a tenured position as Associate Professor and Poet-in-Residence at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU). Mr. Shankar also co-directs the CCSU English Department’s Creative Writing program, teaching poetics seminars and poetry writing workshops. He represents CCSU in the Creative Writing Group of the Arts Committee, which brings together faculty from all four Connecticut State University System schools.

Ravi Shankar completed his B.A. Modern Studies at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in 1996, graduating with highest distinction. He subsequently earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University in New York, achieving the Bennett Poetry Prize. Throughout his years at CCSU, Mr. Shankar has engaged in numerous projects and initiatives beyond the scope of his primary teaching responsibilities, notably leading the school’s Biennial Writing Conference in 2003 and 2005. He also instructed a 2007 summer study abroad class in China’s Shandong Province. In 2009, Ravi Shankar received the Board of Trustees Research Award for Outstanding Scholarship. This annual CCSU award is given to the faculty member most engaged in research with exceptional promise.

Mr. Shankar has received a number of accolades and awards throughout his career as a poet, earning Finalist status for the 2009 Third Coast Poetry Prize. The following year, his poem “Barter,” (first published in AGNI 70) won the Pushcart Prize in Poetry, and his poetry book Deepening Groove won the National Poetry Review Prize. Ravi Shankar also co-edited the anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East & Beyond (W.W. Norton & Co., 2008), which earned critical praise from Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer.

Ravi Shankar is a lifetime member of the South Asian Journalists Association, and he has been part of the MacDowell Fellows Executive Committee since 2009. He serves as an advisor with the Hill-Stead Museum's Sunken Garden Poetry Festival and is on the Board of Directors of the Soul Mountain Writers Retreat, a weeklong rural Connecticut event founded by poet Marilyn Nelson. Ravi Shankar holds a position as founding editor of Drunken Boat, a literary web magazine that features international reviews, poetry, interviews, and translations.