About the Speaker: Ravi Shankar is the founding editor and Executive Director of Drunken Boat [http://www.drunkenboat.com], one of the world’s oldest electronic journals of the arts. He has published or edited ten books and chapbooks of poetry, including "Autobiography of a Goddess," some Tamil translations of Andal, the 8th century poet/saint, "Union" an anthology of the best of Singaporean literature over the last 50 years, and a book of collaborative poems called "What Else Could it Be." He also authored the 2010 National Poetry Review Prize winner, "Deepening Groove" called the "work of one of America's finest younger poets," and the finalist for the 2004 Connecticut Book Awards, "Instrumentality". Along with Tina Chang and Nathalie Handal, he edited W.W. Norton’s "Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East & Beyond," called “a beautiful achievement for world literature” by Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer. He has won a Pushcart Prize, been featured in The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Financial Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education, appeared as a commentator on the BBC, the PBS Newshour and NPR, received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Corporation of Yaddo and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, and has performed his work around the world. He is currently Chairman of the Connecticut Young Writers Trust, and on the faculty of the first international MFA Program at City University of Hong Kong.

Abstract: Drunken Boat, one of the world's oldest electronic journals of the arts, celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2015. In that time, the journal has published more traditional forms of representation, like poetry, prose and photography, alongside works of art endemic to the medium of the web, such as hypertext, sound, video, digital animation and web art. The journal has also done significant archival work, digitizing interviews with Norman Mailer, course material from the Black Mountain School, drafts of poems by Pulitzer Prize winning poet William Meredith and drafts of drawings by late American artist Sol LeWitt. Founding editor Ravi Shankar will discuss how the paradigm of publishing shifts online and will showcase some of the award-winning works from the journal. Drunken Boat also has begun to publish books, and Shankar will discuss the intersection of digital media with print publication, and where he sees publishing going in the future.