Vijay Seshadri
Vijay Seshadri (born 13 February 1954) is an American poet, essayist and literary critic based in Brooklyn. Vijay won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, for 3 Sections.
Vijay Seshadri

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- Name
- Vijay Seshadri
- Born
- 13 February 1954
- Birthplace
- Bangalore, India
- Education
- Oberlin College (BA) Columbia University (MFA)
- Awards
- Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
- Nationality
- United States.
- Occupation
- poet and writer.
- Honours
- Guggenheim Fellowship and Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
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Documentary summary
Vijay Seshadri (born 13 February 1954) is an American poet, essayist and literary critic based in Brooklyn. Vijay won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, for 3 Sections.
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Vijay Seshadri (born 1954) is an American poet and writer. The poet was born in Bengaluru.
Vijay Seshadri studied at Columbia University and Oberlin College. The poet worked for Sarah Lawrence College. Vijay Seshadri received Guggenheim Fellowship and Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
Composed from admitted, traceable facts · 26 September 2026
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Authority files
wikidata · Q7929205 · wikipedia · Vijay Seshadri
In this article
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Vijay Seshadri • Born — 13 February 1954 • Birthplace — Bangalore, India • Education — Oberlin College (BA) Columbia University (MFA) • Genre — Poetry • Awards — Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Early life
Early life
Vijay's parents immigrated to the United States from Bangalore, India when he was five. He is of Tamil descent. He grew up in Columbus, Ohio, where his father taught chemistry at Ohio State University. His grandson is named Bodie Jude Seshadri.
Writing career
Writing career
Seshadri has been an editor at The New Yorker, as well as an essayist and book reviewer in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Threepenny Review, The American Scholar, and various literary quarterlies. He has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; and area studies fellowships from Columbia University. As a professor and chair in the undergraduate writing and MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College, he has taught courses on 'Non-Fiction Writing', 'Form and Feeling in Nonfiction Prose', 'Rational and Irrational Narrative', and 'Narrative Persuasion'. In a 2004 interview, Seshadri discusses the creative process and his influences, in particular Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, and William Blake. He also reflects on his cultural influences including the experience of "strangeness" coming of age in Columbus, Ohio during the 1960s. Several of Seshadri's poems have been published by the New Yorker, including: "Rereading" (2012), "Visiting Paris" (2010), and "Thought Problem" (2009). His poems, essays, and reviews have also appeared in A Public Space, AGNI, The American Scholar, Antaeus, Bomb, Boulevard, Epiphany, Fence, Field, Lumina, The Nation, The Paris Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Ploughshares, Poetry, The San Diego Reader, Shenandoah, The Southwest Review, The Threepenny Review, the Times Book Review, TriQuarterly, Verse, Western Humanities Review, The Yale Review. Anthologies which have included his work include Under 35: The New Generation of American Poets, Under the Rock Umbrella, Contours of the Heart, Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times and The Best American Poetry 1997, 2003, 2006, and 2013.
The Disappearances
The Disappearances
Seshadri's poem "The Disappearances" deals with a "cataclysm" in "American history" and the baffling nature of loss. The poem was written in response to Seshdari's memories of John F. Kennedy's assassination, but not published until The New Yorker magazine printed it on its back page following the September 11 attacks. The New Yorkers poetry editor, Alice Quinn, said that the poem "summoned up, with acute poignance, a typical American household and scene [...] The combination of epic sweep (including the quoted allusion to one of Emily Dickinson's Civil War masterpieces, from 1862) and piercing, evocative detail is characteristic of the contribution Seshadri has made to the American canon."
Poetry
Poetry
• Collections • Wild Kingdom Graywolf Press: Minnesota, 1996, • The Long Meadow Graywolf Press: Minnesota, 2004,. His second book. Six of these poems were also published in the New Yorker including "The Disappearances," "North of Manhattan," and "The Long Meadow". • New and Selected Poems by HarperCollins India. Includes 'Wild Kingdom', 'The Long Meadow', 'The Disappearances'. * * • List of poems • Title — |Year — |First published — |Reprinted/collected • The estuary — 2020
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 1 entries
1954
Vijay Seshadri born at Bengaluru.
Primary material
Documents and archives
scholarly publication
- U.S.-Based but India-Born: G. S. Sharat Chandra and Vijay Seshadri, A History of Indian Poetry in English, 2016
Scholarly · Crossref registry · 2016
- Vijay Seshadri b. 1954, Name Me a Word, 2019
Scholarly · Crossref registry · 2019
reference work
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q7929205: Vijay Seshadri
Reputable secondary · Wikimedia Foundation
- “Vijay Seshadri”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
Awards
• 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry • The James Laughlin Prize of the Academy of American Poets (for "The Long Meadow") • The Paris Review's Bernard F. Conners Long Poem Prize • 2004 Guggenheim Fellow
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1."Seshadri, Vijay." World Authors, 1995-2000 (2003): Biography Reference Bank (H.W. Wilson). Web. 17 Apr. 2014.
- 2.lifeandlegends.com.
- 3.Seshadri, Vijay. Vijay Seshadri. 2 September 2003.
- 4.Vijay Seshadri.
- 5.A Poet of Belief. The New Yorker. 7 June 2004.
- 6.Vijay Seshadri. The New Yorker.
- 7.William J. Walsh. Under the Rock Umbrella: Contemporary American Poets, 1951-1977. Mercer University Press. 446–. 2006. 978-0-88146-047-6.
- 8.Writers &Poets. An Interview With Poet Vijay Seshadri (Direct Quote). Poets &Writers. 29 June 2004.
- 9.Thayil, Jeet. An Interview With Poet Vijay Seshadri (Direct Quote). Writers &Poets. 29 June 2004.
- 10.Vijay Seshadri in The New Yorker. The New Yorker. 15 April 2014.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
scholarly publication
U.S.-Based but India-Born: G. S. Sharat Chandra and Vijay Seshadri, A History of Indian Poetry in English, 2016Crossref registry
Verifiedscholarly publication
Vijay Seshadri b. 1954, Name Me a Word, 2019Crossref registry
Verifiedreference work
Wikidata, structured authority record Q7929205: Vijay SeshadriWikimedia Foundation
Partially resolvedreference work
Partially resolved
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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