Pramila Venkateswaran

Pramila Venkateswaran, poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island (2013-15), is the author most recently of Exile is Not a Foreign Word (Copper Coin 2024) and Tamil Dalit Feminist Poetics (Rowman and Littlefield 2024). We are Not a Museum (Finishing Line, 2022) won the New York Book Festival award, in the poetry category. Her earlier books include Thirtha (Yuganta 2002) Behind Dark Waters (Plain View 2008), Draw Me Inmost (Stockport Flats 2009), Trace (Finishing Line 2011), Thirteen Days to Let Go (Aldrich, 2015), Slow Ripening (Local Gems, 2016), and The Singer of Alleppey (Shanti Arts, 2018), She has performed her poetry internationally, has authored numerous essays on poetics, and was the 2011 Walt Whitman Birthplace Association Long Island Poet of the Year. Her critical essays on Dalit poetry appear in journals such as the International Women’s Studies Journal. She leads writing workshops at many writing and holistic health organizations. She is the co-director of Matwaala: South Asian Diaspora Poetry Collective, and is Professor Emerita at SUNY Nassau.