Pramila Venkateswaran, the current poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island, is the author of Thirtha (Yuganta Press, 2002), Behind Dark Waters (Plain View Press, 2008) Draw Me Inmost (Stockport Flats, 2009), Trace (Finishing Line Press, 2011) and The Singer of Alleppey (Shanti Arts, 2018), and has published widely in the United States, Canada, and India in journals such as Prairie Schooner, Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, Atlanta Review, and Kavya Bharati, and in award winning anthologies, such as Indivisible: An Anthology of South Asian American Poetry, A Chorus for Peace, and Letters to the World. A finalist for the Allan Ginsberg Poetry Prize, first prizes in national poetry competitions such as Two Review and String Poetry, and a finalist for Trace, she has performed her poems internationally, at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival and International Poetry Festival in Grenada. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle, The Women’s Studies Quarterly, Socialism and Democracy, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, and in anthologies of literature, culture and politics. She is a Professor of English at Nassau Community College, New York, is actively involved in giving workshops and readings across the island and beyond, and is the co-director of Matwaala: South Asian Diaspora Poets Collective.. She is the 2011 Walt Whitman Birthplace Association’s Long Island Poet of the Year.

Website: www.pramilav.com

Twitter Username: @alimarp

Publications

• Trace , Finishing Line Press (2011)
• Behind Dark Waters , Plain View Press (2008)
• Thirtha , Yuganta Press (2002)
• Draw Me Inmost , Stockport Flats (2009)

Awards

• String Poetry Award(2012)
• Walt Whitman Long Island Poet of the Year(2011)
• poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island(2013)

Employment

• Professor at SUNY, Nassau (1990 - )

Degrees

• Doctoral Degree in English Literature from George Washington University (1988)

Genres of Interest

Fiction, Creative nonfiction, Poetry