Shiv K. Kumar is an Indian English poet, playwright, novelist, and short story writer. Shiv K Kumar was born in Lahore, British India, in 1921. He matriculated from Dayanand Anglo Vedic High School in 1937. He studied for his B.A. at Government College, Lahore and his M.A. at Forman Christian College, Lahore (1943). Shiv K. Kumar taught English literature at Osmania University, Hyderabad, and the University of Hyderabad. During 1972–74, he was a UGC National Lecturer in English. He is the founder Head of the Department of English and the first Dean of the School of Humanities at the University of Hyderabad. He retired as the Vice-Chancellor (I/c) of the University of Hyderabad in 1980. He was Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Universities of Oklahoma and Northern Iowa, and Visiting Professor at the Universities of Drake, Hofstra, Marshall, etc. He was also a Visiting Fulbright Fellow at Yale University. He was nominated as a member of the Jury for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (USA, 1981). 

Several of his poems and short stories have been broadcast over the BBC and published in Indian, British, American, Canadian and Australian journals and magazines. They have also been translated into several Indian and foreign languages. In 1978, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, London during his stay in England as Commonwealth Visiting Professor of English at the University of Kent at Canterbury . He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1987 for his collection of poems Trapfalls in the Sky . In 2001 he was awarded the Padma Bhushan for his contribution to literature.