Rate My Professor Rushi Vyas

Rushi Vyas recently completed his Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Linguistics at the University of Otago, with a thesis titled 'Diasporic Form: Embodied Practice in Contemporary Anglophone Poetics of the South Asian Diaspora,' supervised by Professor Jacob Edmond. The dissertation investigates how poets from the South Asian diaspora utilize embodied practices to confront and process cultural violence, loss, silence, and inheritance in their work. Born in Toledo, Ohio, on the ancestral lands of the Odawa, Seneca, Shawnee, and Wyandotte peoples to immigrant parents from western India, Vyas relocated to Ōtepoti Dunedin in 2019 to pursue his doctoral studies. His professional trajectory encompasses teaching and counseling roles across several institutions. At the University of Otago, he tutored Advanced Creative Writing (English 320) in 2022 and facilitates programs at the Ōtepoti Writers Lab since 2022. Previously, he served as Lead Graduate Instructor in the Department of English-Creative Writing at the University of Colorado-Boulder from 2017 to 2018, Creative Writing Instructor there from 2015 to 2018, Assistant Director of Career Services at New York University from 2018 to 2019, and Career Advisor at the University of Michigan from 2011 to 2013. He co-founded and developed curricula for Beyond Bounds from 2012 to 2014 and contributed to a Psychology seminar on 'The Meaning of Life and Death' in 2014-2015.

Vyas is a distinguished poet whose debut collection, When I Reach for Your Pulse (Four Way Books and Otago University Press, 2023), garnered acclaim as a two-time finalist for the National Poetry Series in the United States (2019 and 2018), honoree for the 2024 Midland Authors Award, and longlisted for the 2024 New Zealand Book Awards. He co-authored the chapbook Between Us, Not Half a Saint with Rajiv Mohabir (GASHER Press, 2021), which was runner-up for the 2020 Center for Book Arts Chapbook Contest and semi-finalist for the 2019 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. His poems appear in prominent publications including Tin House, The Offing, The Rumpus, The Georgia Review, PEN America, Adroit Journal, The Spinoff, Poetry Daily, and Ōrongohau - Best New Zealand Poems 2023; selected anthologies feature his work such as A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand (Auckland University Press, 2021) and Plume 10 Anthology (2022). Vyas served as Reviews Editor and Poetry Editor for GASHER from 2020 to 2022, authoring reviews for Landfall Review Online, GASHER, and Timber, alongside interviews in The Common, Pine Hills Review, and Napkin Poetry Review. His poetry has inspired musical adaptations, including 'Three Songs to Poems by Rushi Vyas' by Andrew Perkins and 'How Alive You Are' by Kenneth Young. In addition to his scholarly and literary contributions, Vyas dedicates time to counseling, workshop facilitation, career guidance for creatives, and poetry manuscript editing to foster healing from personal, communal, and intergenerational challenges.