Corporation of Yaddo MacDowell Colony Rhode Island State Council of the Arts Artist Fellowship Dr. Ravi Shankar (born 1975) is an American poet, editor, and former literature professor at Central Connecticut State University and City University of Hong Kong and Chairman of the Asia Pacific Writers & Translators (APWT).

He has held fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, Djerassi Artists Residency, Ragdale, the Blue Mountain Center, the Jentel Foundation, iPark, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Vashon Artist Residency and he received the prestigious University of Sydney International Research Fellowship to complete work on his memoir "Correctional" and to do research on the Puritanical roots and racial demographics of mass incarceration in the United States of America.

Shankar's collections of poetry include A Field Guide to Southern China (2019) written with T. S. Eliot Prize winner George Szrites, The Many Uses of Mint (2018), What Else Could it Be (2015), Instrumentality (2004), a finalist for the 2005 Connecticut Book Awards, and Deepening Groove (2011), winner of the National Poetry Review Prize.

[27] His literary works appeared in Paris Review, Fulcrum, McSweeney's, the AWP Writer's Chronicle, and Scribner's Best American Erotic Poems.

He won a settlement against the NYPD, after being racially profiled under the stop-and-frisk policies later found illegal by New York Superior Court Judge Shira Scheindlin, and appeared on NPR to discuss his wrongful arrest.

He also filed suit against the public university system of Central Connecticut and won a settlement of $60,409, paid by the college authority to Shankar, in exchange for his resignation.