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About

Select Literary Awards, Fellowships, Publications, and Readings

• Five-time Pushcart Prize nominee (2013, twice in 2017, 2018, 2020).

• Winner, River Heron Poetry Prize, 2020.

• Winner, Iowa Sweet Corn Prize in Poetry, 2017.

• Winner, Paper Nautilus Debut Series chapbook competition, 2017, for Postcards from the New World.

• Awardee, 4Culture artist grant for project Making Space, focused on raising voices of writers of color in Seattle, 2017.

• Kundiman Fellow, nation’s premier fellowship focused on Asian-American writers, 2016.

• Kundiman Northwest Co-Chair, 2017-present.

• Made at Hugo House Fellow, developing works around themes of race, technology, and mythology, 2016-17.

• Jack Straw Writers Fellow, 2018-19.

• Frequent featured reader at city- and statewide events, including Seattle LitCrawl, Open Books, Hugo House, WordsWest, Jack Straw Writers, Cascadia Poetry Festival, Seattle Public Library, Seattle Central College, Inland Poetry Prowl, Duvall Poetry Series, EasySpeak, and elsewhere.

• Featured at readings focusing on issues impacting disempowered communities, including multiple readings for Race—Under Our Skin issue of Raven Chronicles, Kundiman reading at Seattle LitCrawl 2016 focused on communities of color, and Resistance and Immigration for WordsWest in March 2017.

short bio

Shankar Narayan explores identity, power, mythology, and technology in a world where the body is flung across borders yet possesses unrivaled power to transcend them. Shankar is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the winner of prizes and fellowships from Kundiman, Hugo House, Jack Straw, Flyway, and River Heron. He is a 4Culture grant recipient for Claiming Space, a project to lift the voices of writers of color, and his chapbook, Postcards From the New World, won the Paper Nautilus Debut Series chapbook prize. Shankar draws strength from his global upbringing and from his work at the intersection of civil rights and technology. In Seattle, he awakens to the wonders of Cascadia every day, but his heart yearns east to his other hometown, Delhi. Connect with him at shankarnarayan.net.

media AND UPDATES

AWP Conference Happenings, March 8-9, 2023: For those not in the category of hardcore writing geeks, AWP is the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, and they’re having their annual conference here in Seattle next week.  Amazingly, I’ve actually never been, but this time around, I’m participating in or connected to several events.  I imagine you all will be busy with many events, but I hope you can make it to some of these, and say hi!

•  Race to Machine: Asian-Americans Write Tech, Colonialism, and Dystopia (Thursday March 9th, 12:10 PM): I’m super-excited to be moderating and participating in this panel of Asian-American writers writing about tech and its impact!  With Betsy Aoki, Franny Choi, Margaret Rhee, and Neil Aitken, I’ll have a wide-ranging, intersectional chat about the challenges and joys of writing in this complicated space.

•  They Rise Like a Wave: A Night of Asian-American Poetry (AWP Offsite; Thursday March 9th, 5:30 PM, Zeitgeist Café):  A group of Pacific Northwest Kundiman fellows is organizing this reading celebrating a new anthology of Asian American women poets.  In addition to the reading itself, there will be time to mingle with Kundiman fellows from all over the country!

•  Defining Cascadia: A Cultural Celebration (AWP Offsite; Thursday March 9th, 6 PM, Town Hall):  A reading in celebration of the aforementioned Cascadia anthology.  I’m not reading, but I’m honored to have poems in this anthology celebrating the giant Pacific octopus (enteroctopus dofleini, in case you were curious) and the Douglas-fir (pseudotsuga menziesii), two of my favorite species.  Incidentally, I’ve got my copy of the book, and it’s beautiful!  Even if you can’t make the reading, the book is highly recommended for anyone who loves nature and/or Cascadia. 

• Informal Happy Hour with Current/Former Students (Thursday March 9th, 8 PM, Noi’s Thai outdoor space):  If you’re one of my current or former students and happen to be in town (or even if you live in Seattle!), please join me for an informal happy hour at the outdoor space at Noi’s Thai downtown, within walking distance of the Convention Center.  I’ll be hanging out there starting at 8 PM, and would love to see you in person!

• Hand to Stone: Fujitaro Kubota and James W. Washington Jr. in Poetry and Prose (Room 337, Friday, March 10th, 10:30 AM):  This reading honors master landscaper Kubota and noted sculptor Washington by bringing together contributors to celebrate the fusion of spiritual beliefs with natural landscapes.  I’ll be reading a couple of poems, including the one that appears in the Spirited Stone anthology.

Exhibit: Spirited Stone Exhibit at the UW College of Built Environments:  Events around the wonderful Spirited Stone book, commemorating Kubota Garden, continue.  For a limited time, you can catch an exhibit about the book at the UW College of Built Environment’s Gould Hall.  The exhibit includes multimedia elements, photos, and the garden’s Rainforest Bell—and as a bonus, you can see me as a virtual talking head, discussing the project and reading a poem.  No registration required—just drop in any time between noon and 5 on a weekday.

Exhibit: Wild‖Life Exhibit at Collins Memorial Library:  For another enchanting, limited-time exhibit, head down to Collins Memorial Library at the University of Puget Sound, where you can view Wild‖Life, a national exhibition by the Guild of Book Workers.  Happily for me, Bonnie Thompson Norman, the talented book artist who created this broadside of one of my poems, submitted it for inclusion, and it was accepted!  So the poem has been traveling the country, and is currently (until April 21st) on its only local stop.  I attended a related Zoom event recently in which every artist represented spoke about their work, and it was a wonderful immersion in the intricacy and beauty of the book arts world.  Highly recommended—no registration required for this one, either.

Book Review: Antiman, by Rajiv Mohabir: Looking for a good book to read this fall? You’re in luck! (Although my opinion is, of course, biased.) Rajiv Mohabir, a queer poet of the South Asian diaspora, has long written beautiful poetry that includes meldings of language, theology, mythology, sexuality, identity, and ecology—not coincidentally, many of the same themes that often emerge in my own writing. Now, this favorite poet of mine has a new memoir out—and it’s a shattering one. Mohabir documents his long struggle for identity and acceptance—as a South Asian, queer, writer, and activist—in a uniquely written book that seamlessly interweaves disparate histories and tongues. My review, written for Raven Chronicles, is here. Enjoy!

Equitable Change at Hugo House: Many of you are likely aware of the work of WOCA, or the Writers of Color Alliance—a group of five writers, including Anastacia-Renee, Claudia Castro Luna, Dujie Tahat, Harold Taw, and me. Over the past year, we have been working to bring change to Hugo House, ensuring it becomes a welcoming, inclusive, and equitable institution for all writers in our community. I won’t recap the history of that struggle here—the South Seattle Emerald’s excellent article on the subject is a good place to catch up. You’ll recall WOCA’s asks of Hugo House leadership and board—a collaborative community power sharing agreement with Hugo House (the G9) that would allow community power over the hiring of a new ED and DEI consultant, as well as a roadmap toward greater equity. In service of those goals, WOCA proposed a leadership committee of WOCA, Board, staff, and Hugo House DEI Committee members that could advance transparency and community power-sharing. After a period of silence, that ask was rejected by the Board via email to us in March. Instead, the Board determined it would move forward with its own committee, in which we were not invited to participate. In the more than six months since that communication, we have heard nothing further. As always, I (or another WOCA member) can provide further details if you’re interested in knowing more.

Pictures of Poets Project:  Photographer Dean Davis took some portraits and recordings of me to include in his wonderful project, Pictures of Poets.  I love this project, particularly the landing page, where the many familiar faces juxtaposed with one another so strikingly remind me of the richness of our writing community.  My own page on the project features several portraits as well as audio of me reading from an as-yet-unpublished series, Black Box.  Thanks to Dean for this amazing labor of love that documents our precious writing community.

Sorry to Podcast This Episode:  Back when we could still engage in person rather than virtually, my poetry friend Danielle Holland hosted me on her podcast, Sorry to Podcast This.  While most of the episode concerns tech and surveillance policy, some does relate to creative writing.  You can listen to it here.

Geekwire Profile: This profile mixes mentions of my professional and creative work.

Interview in Moss, Volume 3: I was fortunate to be interviewed by my friend Dujie Tahat in this wide-ranging discussion!

KVRU Interview: I was happy to be interviewed in July by Jim Cantu for his long-running program on KVRU, Hearts and Soul. Jim is a fixture in our literary and broadcasting community, with a wonderfully compassionate style of interviewing. The interview can be found at the Hearts and Soul website.