User:MDash100/sandbox

Request review at WP:AFC
Life and Career

A poet, literary critic, writer and scholar, Shanta Acharya was born in Cuttack in the coastal state of Orissa, India, in 1953. She studied in St Joseph’s Convent School, and completed her Master of Arts in English at Ravenshaw College, Cuttack. Having won a scholarship to study abroad she came to Oxford in 1979. She was the first Oriya woman to come to Oxford, and among the first batch of women admitted to Worcester College. After being awarded the DPhil in 1983, she went to Harvard as a Visiting Scholar.

In 1985, Shanta moved to London and joined Morgan Stanley Asset Management. She worked in the City with various Fund Management institutions until she joined London Business School in 2002, where she served as an Executive Director, Initiative on Foundation and Endowment Asset Management, until 2008.

She has also been published in the field of Literature and also finance and asset management. The CFA Institute’s Member Magazine for Investment Professionals, featured Shanta in The MOST Issue (November/ December 2005); she was among the three people chosen to represent the “Extreme Career Change” category. The author of nine books, her publications include five collections of poetry, three books on asset management, and a critical study of The Influence of Indian Thought on Ralph Waldo Emerson. Her articles and reviews, on asset management and poetry, have been published in distinguished journals internationally.

Her poems have been widely anthologized appearing in major publications including Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond, edited by Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal, and Ravi Shankar (W.W. Norton and Co, USA; 2008), The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets, edited by Jeet Thayil (Bloodaxe Books, UK; 2008), We Speak in Changing Languages: Indian Women Poets 1990-2007, edited by E V Ramakrishnan and Anju Makhija (Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, India; 2009), India in Verse edited by Antara Dev Sen (The Little Magazine, India; 2011), The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry edited by Sudeep Sen (HarperCollins, India; 2012). Her article “On the Nature of Poetry and the Creative Process” was published in the 50th anniversary issue of Agenda Poetry (Winter 2009).

A regular performer of her poems, Shanta has done poetry readings in the UK, USA and India. She is the founder director of Poetry in the House, at Lauderdale House in Highgate, London, where she has been hosting monthly poetry readings since June 1996. Shanta has served on the Board of Trustees of the Poetry School, and on the Development Board of the Arvon Foundation in the UK. She was a Member of Council of the Poetry Society in the 1990s, and remains a Life Member of the Poetry Society. She was elected to the Board of Trustees of the Poetry Society, UK, in September 2011. Shanta has lived in Highgate, London, since 1987.

Works

Poetry

Dreams That Spell The Light (Arc Publications, UK; 2010) ISBN 978-1906570-05-7 (HB); 978-1904614-61-6 (PB)

Shringara (Shoestring Press, UK; 2006) ISBN–13: 978-1-904886-23-5; ISBN 1-904886-23-X

Looking In, Looking Out (Headland Publications, UK; 2005) ISBN 1-902096-89-4

Numbering Our Days’ Illusions (Rockingham Press, UK; 1995) ISBN 1-873468-34-2

Not This, Not That (Rupa & Co, India; 1994) ISBN 81-7167-152-7

CD Somewhere, Something: Shanta Acharya reading a selection of her poems (Sama Arts Network Limited, UK; 2010) ISBN 978-0-9566030-0-5; Barcode – 5060240920006

Studies in American Literature

The Influence of Indian Thought on Ralph Waldo Emerson (Edwin Mellen Press, 2001) (ISBN 0-7734-7629-6 and SAL Series ISBN 0-88946-166-X)

Asset Management

Endowment Asset Management: Investment Strategies in Oxford and Cambridge, with Elroy Dimson (Oxford University Press, UK; 2007) ISBN: 978-0-19-921091-6

Asset Management: Equities Demystified (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, UK; 2002) ISBN-13: 978-0-471-55791-3; ISBN: 0-471-55791-9

Investing in India (Macmillan Press Ltd, UK; 1998) ISBN: 0-333-68691-8