N S Lakshminarayan Bhat

N. S. Lakshminarayan Bhatta (born 1936) is a Kannada poet from Shivamogga district. He was awarded the Karnataka Sahitya Akademi in 1974. After completing a M.A., from Maharaja's college in Mysore and a PhD at Bangalore University, he served briefly as a teacher of Kannada literature at Acharya Pata Shala (APS College) in Bangalore before joining Bangalore University where he served as a professor and chairman of the department for more than 20 years serving as the dean (1990) of the Arts College prior to his retirement from the University. Bhat is a scholar-poet widely read in Kannada, English and Sanskrit literature.

His very early work Horalu Daariyalli Kaavya (Poetry on a fun road), in the early 1970s earned him the Sahitya Academy award and announced him to the literary world as a poet of much skill. Dr. Bhatta has translated 50 sonnets of William Shakespeare, the poetry of TS Elliot and works of poet Yeats into Kannada language. The Masti Award was given to poet N.S. Lakshminarayana Bhatta in 2007. He has been recognized for his contribution to modern Kannada poetry and literary criticism with numerous awards and honors. His effort related to popularizing the works of the bard Shishunala Sharif led to a renaissance in the Kannada Bhavageetha movement, earning Dr. Bhatta the moniker of "Sharif Bhatta".

His work "Readings in Kannada" on making Kannada more accessible to the masses has been among the popular books ever written in that realm and sold over 200,000 copies over several editions. He has been honored with numerous awards including the Central Sahitya Academy Award and The AnaKru Prashasthi. He is widely recognized as the foremost scholar of the history of Kannada literature and his numerous lectures during workshops conducted in the United States has been captured in the links below

His latest work, Samagra Kannada Sahitya Charitre (A Comprehensive History of Kannada Literature) was published in early 2014.