Gauri Awasthi talks to Jared about how McNeese allowed her to earn an MA and MFA in three years, decolonizing the poetry cannon, and how she first found poems through Bhakti poetry, love poems to the divine.

Gauri Awasthi is an Indian poet and environmentalist who recently graduated with an MFA in poetry from McNeese State University. She has won awards from Sundress Academy For The Arts, Louisiana Office of Cultural Development, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and Kundiman. Her writing has been published in Quarterly West, Notre Dame Review, The Punch Magazine, The Wire, Buzzfeed, and others. She teaches the Decolonizing Poetry Workshop at Catapult.

MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.

This episode was requested by Shalini Singh. Thank you for listening, Shalini!

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