Bio
Pramila Venkateswaran, poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island (2013-15), is the author of 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), The Singer of Alleppey (Shanti Arts, 2018), and more recently, We are Not a Museum (Finishing Line, 2022) which won the New York Book Festival award. Her latest books are Exile is Not a Foreign Word (Copper Coin 2024) and Tamil Dalit Feminist Poetics (Rowman and Littlefield 2024). 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 teaches at SUNY Nassau.