Shayok Misha Chowdhury is a queer Bengali director, playwright, poet, and vocalist. Born on the coast of southern India, he developed a taste for sour rice cakes and the seaside before moving to old-colony Massachusetts, where, in a high school theater rehearsal, he received his mantra -- story comes first -- from an unlikely medicine man with a galaxy of Harley tattoos.

A Fulbright and Kundiman fellow, Chowdhury's poetry has been published in Hayden's Ferry Review, Portland Review, Asian American Literary Review, Lantern Review, and elsewhere. He was a featured soloist on the Grammy-winning album Calling All Dawns (Christopher Tin) and has performed the album in concert at Carnegie Hall. He received his bachelors in performance and diaspora under the mentorship of Maestra Cherríe Moraga at Stanford University and is completing his master of fine arts in directing theater at Columbia University under Anne Bogart (SITI Company) and Brian Kulick (Classic Stage Company).