Kannada biographer among 20 writers to win Sahitya Akademi Award

Kannada biographer DS Nagabhushan, English author Namita Gokhale, Telugu poet Goreti Venkanna, Tamil writer Ambai are among the 20 awardees of the Sahitya Akademi Award 2021. The award, which carries an amount of Rs 1,00,000 was announced Thursday and will be awarded on a later date.

The Sahitya Yuva and Sahitya Bal Puraskar, too, were awarded in various languages.

While Gokhale won the award for her novel ‘Things To Leave Behind’ under the novel category, Nagabhushan was awarded in the biography category. Assamese novelist Anuradha Sarma Pujari, playwrights Bratya Basu (Bengali) and Daya Prakash Sinha (Hindi), short story writers Khalid Hussain (Punjabi), Raj Rahi (Dogri), Kiran Gurav (Marathi), and Niranjan Hansda (Santali) are some of the other awardees.

Poets Mwdai Gahai (Bodo), Sanjiv Verenkar (Konkani), Hrushikesh Mallick (Odia), Meethesh Nirmohi (Rajasthani), Vindeshwariprasad Mishr ‘Vinay’ (Sanskrit), Chhabilal Upadhyaya (Nepali) and Arjun Chawla (Sindhi) were awarded for the poetry category.

Kashmiri critic Wali Mohd Aseer Kashtawari and Malayali biographer George Onakkoor, too, were awarded. The Akademi said that winners of Gujarati, Maithili, Manipuri, and Urdu languages will be announced at a later date.

Awardees of the Sahitya Yuva Puraskar include English author Megha Majumder (for her novel A Burning), Kannada poet H Lakshmi Narayan Swamy (for his poems in Togala Cheelada Kara), Konkani poet Shraddha Garad (for her poems in Kavya Pamal), Malayali novelist Mobin Mohan (for his novel Jacaranda), among others.

All the 22 awardees of the Sahitya Yuva Puraskar will receive Rs 50,000 each. The Akademi said that the award in Tamil will be declared at a later date, and there will be no award in Rajasthani this year.

Awardees of the Bal Sahitya Puraskar 2021 include Basu Bevinagida (Kannada), Mu. Murugesh (Tamil), Devaraju Maharaju (Telugu), Anita Vaccharajani (English), among the 22 awardees this year. The Akademi is skipping the Bal Sahitya Puraskar in Gujarati and Punjabi this year.

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