Tishani Doshi

Tishani Doshi publishes poetry, fiction and essays. For fifteen years she worked as the lead dancer of the Chandralekha company in Madras, India, performing on stages all across the world, and as such, the body has been a central preoccupation in her work—a vehicle to explore gender, violence, sexuality and power, but also as an agent of renewal and transformation. Since her debut, Countries of the Body, which won the Forward Prize for best first collection (2006), she has sought to find joineries between the lyric and the political. Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods (2017) headlined the All About Women Festival at the Sydney Opera House and was shortlisted for a Ted Hughes Award. Her novels, The Pleasure Seekers (2010) and Small Days and Nights (2019), have been shortlisted for the Hindu Fiction Prize, Tata Fiction Award and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. A God at the Door, her most recent collection of poems, was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize 2021. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Associate Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at New York University, Abu Dhabi. ​

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Yogesh Patel

As a co-editor of Skylark, Yogesh Patel has published international contemporary poetry since the seventies. Currently, he runs Skylark Publications UK and a non-profit Word Masala project to promote writers and poets of the South Asian diaspora. Yogesh is also a founder of the literary charity, Gujarati Literary Academy and he has served as its president. He was a Fellow of the International Poetry Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. A recipient of the Freedom of the City of London, he has four LP records, two films, radio programmes, children’s book, fiction, and non-fiction books, including three poetry collections to his credit. In 2017, he was presented to The Queen in Buckingham Palace by The British Council to represent the best in poetry. Apart from being a recipient of the IWWP award, the International Scottish Diploma for excellence in poetry, Vatayan International Award for the Excellence in Poetry in the House of Lords, and a Hon. Diploma from the Italian University of Arts, he has received the Co-Op Award for the poetry on the environment. His recent collection of poems is Swimming with Whales. His poems have appeared in PN Review, The London Magazine, Shearsman, Under the Radar, IOTA, Envoi, Fire, Orbis, IPSE, BBC, Asian Literary Review, Muse India, Confluence, Asian Voice, Skylark, and others. He is also anthologised in MacMillan, Redbeck and other anthologies. He has read at many prestigious venues, including the House of Lords and the National Poetry Library, Southbank.

By profession, Yogesh is a qualified optometrist and an accountant. Author’s Website: www.patelyogesh.co.uk

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Ravi Shankar

Pushcart-prize winning poet, Dr. Ravi Shankar is the author / translator / editor of 17 books, including the Memoir Magazine and Connecticut Book Award finalist "Correctional," the Muse India-award winning translations of Andal, "The Autobiography of a Goddess," a collaboration with late American visual artist Sol LeWitt "Seamless Matter," and W.W. Norton & Co's "Language for a New Century," called "a beautiful achievement for world literature" by Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer. He has appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review, Caravan, The Chronicle of Higher Education and on the BBC, NPR and the PBS Newshour. He founded Drunken Boat, one of the world's oldest electronic journals of the arts, has won awards from Ploughshares, residences and fellowships from the Corporation of Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, been featured at Ubud and the Jaipur Literary Festival, given a TEDx talk on #impuritanthinking and currently teaches creative writing for the New York Writers Workshop and at Tufts University. 
POEMS
Poetry International: 
https://www.poetryinternational.com/en/poets-poems/poets/poet/102-27272_Shankar

Poetry Foundation: 
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ravi-shankar

Academy of American Poets:
https://poets.org/poet/ravi-shankar#tabbed-content
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INTERVEIWS
The Rumpus:
https://therumpus.net/2016/06/13/the-rumpus-interview-with-ravi-shankar/

Ilanot Review:
http://www.ilanotreview.com/the-men-issue-2/interview-with-ravi-shankar/

Plougshares:
https://pshares.org/blog/my-hope-is-this-book-is-not-simply-a-literary-artefact-and-that-it-is-used-for-more-than-my-own-personal-redemption-an-interview-with-ravi-shankar/

MISC LINKS: 
TEDx talk on #impuritanthinking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAclRHL_nYY&themeRefresh=1

Marshall Project: 
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/10/04/animation-inside-story-life-inside-shankar

GBH
https://www.wgbh.org/forum-network/lectures/exceptionalism-oppression-revisioning-caste

Poetry Society of America:
https://poetrysociety.org/poems-essays/q-a-american-poetry-1/ravi-shankar

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