Rajiv Mohabir, Professor of Poetry and award-winning author (Kundman Prize; Best American Poetry; Academy of American Poet’s Prize; Bamboo Ridge Journal Editor’s Choice Award, and others), joins us from Auburn University in Alabama. Winner of the inaugural Chapbook Prize by Ghostbird Press for Acoustic Trauma, he is the author of three other multilingual chapbooks: Thunder in the Courtyad: Kajari Poems, A Veil You’ll Cast Aside, na mash me bone, and na bad-eye me. Selected by Brenda Shaughnessy for the 2014 Intro Prize in Poetry by Four Way Books for his book entitled The Taxidermistʻs Cut (Spring 2016), Rajiv Mohabir's first collection was a finalist for the 2017 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry. His book of translations I Even Regret Night: Holi Songs of Demerara (1916) is forthcoming from Kaya Press 2019.

Rajiv holds a BA from the University of Florida in religious studies, an MSEd in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages from Long Island University, Brooklyn, and an MFA in poetry and literary translation from Queens College, CUNY where he was Editor in Chief of Ozone Park Literary Journal. While in New York working as a public-school teacher, Rajiv also produced the nationally broadcasted radio show KAVIhouse on JusPunjabi (2012-2013). He received his PhD in English from the University of Hawai’i.