Nayak (born 18 September 1935) is a Kannada poet, writer and professor who was awarded the Central Sahitya Akademi Award for Kannada language for 2014 for his work Sanskrit Chintana.
Nayak was born in Surve near Ankola, a village in coastal Karnataka, India.
In 1951, Nayak earned his high school diploma from Peoples Multi-purpose High School, Ankola.
He was a professor of Kannada at University of Mysore.