Ravi Shankar (Poet) Age, Wife, Family, Biography

Some Lesser Known Facts About Ravi Shankar (Poet)

• Ravi Shankar was born in Washington, DC, USA, but later moved to Virginia, United States.

• At the age of 9, Ravi Shankar, along with his family, moved to India. He stayed in India for a year and a half before he moved back to Virginia, United States.
  

  Ravi Shankar’s childhood picture

• He scored 1480 marks on the GRE in 1999.

• In 1999, Ravi Shankar started an electronic journal titled Drunken Boat.

• Ravi Shankar has published more than 15 books and chapbooks of poetry, including “Many Uses of Mint: New and Selected Poems: 1998-2018,” What Else Could It Be, and A Field Guide to Southern China (2019).

• Ravi Shankar’s literary work has appeared in many renowned newspapers and magazines including Paris Review, Fulcrum, McSweeney’s, the AWP Writer’s Chronicle, and Scribner’s Best American Erotic Poems.

• His Literary work has been translated into more than 12 languages including French, German, Spanish, Hindi, Italian, and Bengali.

• Ravi Shankar has edited many literary works including Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East & Beyond (2008), Radha Says: Final Poems of Reetika Vazirani (2010), and The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks (2017).

• In 2004, Ravi Shankar published Instrumentality, which became a finalist for the 2005 Connecticut Book Awards.

• In 2009, he received the Summer Literary Seminars fellowship in Kenya.

• In 2010, Ravi Shankar won a settlement worth $15,000 against the New York Police Department. Ravi Shankar filed a case against the NYPD after he was stopped while he was driving in New York City in 2008 and was put in jail for 72 hours. Shankar later shared his story with the National Public Radio in America and won the settlement.

• In 2011, Ravi Shankar was appointed as the Chairman of the Connecticut Young Writers Trust.

• In 2016, he was appointed as a permanent faculty member of the New York Writers Workshop.

• In 2016, Ravi Shankar translated the works of Tamil poet/saint Andal in English along with the Indian poet Priya Sarukkai Chabria for which he won the 2016/2017 Muse India Translation Award at the Hyderabad Literary Festival. ^[2]First Post

• In 2018, The Hindu featured him in an article and named him the “diaspora icon.” ^[3]The Hindu

• In 2018, he appeared as a guest speaker at the Jaipur Literature Festival.

• Ravi Shankar has received fellowships from numerous institutes including the Corporation of Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Jentel Foundation, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Blue Mountain Center.

• In 2021, Ravi received the International Research Fellowship to research the Puritanical roots and racial demographics of mass incarceration in the United States of America from the University of Sydney.

• In 2021, he wrote a memoir titled “Correctional,” which included incidents from his life. It includes incidents like his parents’ immigration from South India to the United States and his own experience of facing racism and going to prison in the United States.

• An American historian and scholar H. Bruce Franklin described Ravi Shankar’s memoir as a brave voyage of discovery and said,
  

  A brave voyage of discovery, Correctional is a real odyssey, barely making it home after navigating treacherous cultural and psychological waters. Thanks to Shankar’s brilliant writing and admirable honesty, we relive his harrowing, but eventually inspiring, personal saga. And his deep insights into our justice system are alone worth the price of admission.”

  

  Ravi Shankar holding the book Correctional

• Ravi Shankar is also the chairman of the Asia Pacific Writers & Translators (APWT).
  

  Ravi Shankar at Asia Pacific Writers & Translators

• Ravi Shankar has taught at many institutes across the globe including Wesleyan University Summer Writing Conference, City University of Hong Kong, Eastern Mediterranean University in Cyprus, and Sun Yat-Sen University in China.

• In March 2023, Ravi Shankar appeared at a TEDx Talk event at Tufts University, Massachusetts.
  

  Ravi Shankar at TUFTS University

• During an interview, Ravi Shankar talked about being a diasporic writer and said that he is an ABCD (American Born Confused Desi). He said,
  

  In the common parlance, I’m ABCD, an American Born Confused Desi, someone whose very displacement is a source of parody.”

• Ravi Shankar enjoys travelling and has visited many countries including Singapore, Italy, India, and Myanmar.

• Ravi Shankar loves dogs and owns two pet dogs named Annie, and Rishi, and he often uploads their pictures on his social media accounts.
  

  A screenshot of Ravi Shankar’s Instagram post about his dog

• Ravi Shankar loves adventure sports and has done many including Ziplining and skydiving .
  

  Ravi Shankar skydiving in New Zealand in 2018