RAVI SHANKAR LAUNCHES DEEPENING GROOVE
IN AN EVENING OF NEW POETRY

Writers and Readers Series
Thursday, August 25, 2011 | 6 PM
$5/FREE Real Art Ways' Members

Hartford, Connecticut – Real Art Ways' is pleased to announce an evening with acclaimed poet Ravi Shankar who will launch his new book Deepening Groove, winner of the 2009 National Poetry Review Prize. Three notable authors Joel Allegretti, Suzanne Frischkorn and Lisa C. Taylor will join Shankar each reading from their new works.

Writers and Readers is a social gathering for people who love books. Readings will be preceded and followed by an informal discussion providing an opportunity to talk with others interested in reading, writing and thinking.

Connecticut Poet Laureate Dick Allen will introduce Deepening Groove and has hailed Shankar as "one of America's finest younger poets."

Deepening Groove is a collection of poems comprised of detailed observations about the natural world and the human condition. Many of the poems are set in New England, where Shankar lives. Poems from the collection have been featured by the Academy of American Poets and have appeared in the journals Blackbird, Barrow Street, Fulcrum, The Mississippi Review and Slope.

About Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar is founding editor of Drunken Boat, an international online journal of the arts, and Co-Director of Creative Writing at Central Connecticut State University. He has published five other books and chapbooks. With Tina Chang and Natalie 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.

Joel Allegretti is the author of two full-length volumes of poetry from The Poet's Press: The Plague Psalms and Father Silicon, selected by the Kansas City Star as one of 100 Noteworthy Books of 2006. Poets Wear Prada released his third collection, Thrum (2010) a chapbook of poems, prose poems and poetic essays about musical instruments. Poets Wear Prada will publish his fourth collection, Europa/Nippon/New York: Poems/Not-Poems, in 2012.

Suzanne Frischkorn is the author of Girl On A Bridge (2010), and Lit Windowpane (2008) both from Main Street Rag Publishing. In addition she is the author of five chapbooks, most recently American Flamingo (2008). Her honors include the Aldridge Poetry Award for her chapbook Spring Tide, selected by Mary Oliver, a 2009 Emerging Writers Fellowship from the Writers Center, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism.

Lisa C. Taylor is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently a collaborative collection with Irish poet and writer Geraldine Mills, The Other Side of Longing (Arlen House/Syracuse University Press, 2011). They were both named 2011 Elizabeth Shanley Gerson Readers of Irish Literature at University of Connecticut. She has a new collection due out in 2012.

Support
Real Art Ways' literary programming is made possible with the generous support of Travelers, Bank of America Foundation, Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, the Greater Hartford Arts Council's United Arts Campaign, the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, NewAlliance Foundation, Sandy and Howard Fromson, and Real Art Ways' members.

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