Welcome to Pramila's poetry
Pramila Venkateswaran, poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island, is author of Thirtha (Yuganta Press, 2002), Behind Dark Waters (Plain View Press, 2008), Draw Me Inmost (Stockport Flats, 2009), Trace (Finishing Line Press, 2011), Thirteen Days to Let Go (Aldrich, 2015), Slow Ripening (Local Gems, 2016) The Singer of Alleppey (Shanti Arts, 2018), and We are Not a Museum (Finishing Line Press, 2022).
Her poems have been published internationally in journals such as Prairie Schooner, Patterson Literary Review, Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, Mom Egg Review, Long Island Quarterly, Atlanta Review, and Muse India, to name a few, and in award-winning anthologies, such as Indivisible: An Anthology of South Asian American Poetry.
She has won first prizes in national poetry competitions, such as New York Festival of Books for her book, We are Not a Museum, Two Review, String Poetry, and was a finalist for the Allan Ginsberg Poetry Prize and in the Finishing Line PressChapbook poetry contest.
She has performed her poems internationally, most recently at the Internacional de Poesia des Granada and The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival.
Her essays and reviews have appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle, The Women’s Studies Quarterly, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics and Journal of Comparative Poetics and in anthologies of literature, culture and politics. She conducts writing workshops across the tri-state area in the US and in Chennai, India. She also leads write to heal workshops for breast cancer patients and survivors.
She is Professor of English at Nassau Community College (SUNY), is actively involved in giving workshops and readings across Long Island and beyond, and is the co-coordinator of Matwaala South Asian Diaspora Poetry collective. She is the current President of the Suffolk chapter of the National Organization for Women.
Photo: Pramila Venkateswaran receiving her award as the 2011 Long Island Poet of the Year from the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association.
Contact Information:
Pramila Venkateswaran
pramilavenkateswaran@gmail.com