Amit Shankar

Amit Shankar

Shankar was born in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India. He completed his schooling from St. Joseph's College, Allahabad and then moved to Delhi for further studies. He holds a post graduate degree in Commerce from University of Delhi.

Shankar began his advertising career by joining McCann Erickson. He has worked at companies like Publicis Groupe, Solutions and Dentsu. His clientele included: Nestle, GM, Microsoft, Cisco, WHO, Pedigree and USAID.

Shankar has also worked at the Canadian company Nortel Networks. After which he joined Sparrow, an animation agency, as the CEO of the company.

He quit his job to focus full-time on his writing career because he was missing lessons and morals in contemporary writing.

His first fiction title Flight of the Hilsa (2010) explores the meaning of happiness through the character of Avantika Sengupta, a young Bengali painter. The novel garnered critical acclaim and has represented the contemporary Indian fiction at the Frankfurt and Beijing Book Fair in 2014.

"I don't want it to be taken just as a good piece of work while having no bearing on one's real life”, Shankar said about the book. His second fiction title, Chapter 11 (2011), is a commentary on the urban conflict and provides answers to day-to-day complex issues. Love is Vodka – A Shot Ain’t Enough (2012), Shankar’s third book, explores the confusion around the word love.

Café Latte (2014), a collection of 18 short stories, was registered in the Limca Book of Records for being the first book launched with a film on one of the stories. The book surveys various hues of death.

Shankar’s latest offering, Never Alone, Always Lonely is an international poetry coffee table book where fifty of his poems have been interpreted by 12 artists, both from India and abroad.

Shankar is also the founder of The Great Indian Literary Festival or TGILF which focuses on bringing Indian literature in regional languages to the fore. Its maiden edition was held in Udaipur in 2017.