Ravi Shankar - Bio

Ravi Shankar is poet-in-residence at Central Connecticut State University and founding editor of the international online journal of the arts, Drunken Boat. His first book of poems, Instrumentality, was published by Cherry Grove in 2004. He coordinated the 2005 CSU Writing Conference, has published work or has work forthcoming in such places as The Paris Review, Poets & Writers, Time Out New York, The Massachusetts Review, Blackbird, Catamaran, Smartish Pace, and the AWP Writer's Chronicle. Shankar has been a commentator on Wesleyan Radio and NPR, received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Atlantic Center for the Arts, has given readings at such venues as the National Arts Club, the Asia Society, and Columbia University, and is currently editing an anthology of South Asian, East Asian, and Middle Eastern poetry. As a youth, he was once forced to conjure silken scarves from an empty hat as his father's, Sam the Super's, magician's apprentice.