Poet Arundhathi Subramaniam and political-writer M Veerappa Moily are among the 20 writers who will be bestowed with the Sahitya Akademi Award 2020.
Key Points
- Apurba Kumar Saikia (Assamese), (late) Hiday Koul Bharti (Kashmiri), (late) Dharanidhar Owari (Bodo), Gurdev Singh Rupana (Punjab), and Kamakant Jha (Maithili) have received the award for short stories.
- The Akademi has named Jetho Lalwani (Sindhi) and Gian Singh (Dogri) the winners for their plays, while Shankar (Mani Shankar Mukhopadhyay) in (Bengali) received the award for a memoir.
- English author Yashica Dutt received the Yuva Puraskar for her memoir Coming Out As Dalit while writer-director Venita Coelho has been named as the recipient for the Bal Sahitya Puraskar 2020 for her book Dead as a Dodo.
- The books were selected on the basis of recommendations made by a jury of three members in the concerned languages in accordance with the procedure laid down for the purpose.
- According to the procedure, the Executive Board declared the Awards on the basis of unanimous selections made by the jurors or selection made on the basis of a majority vote.
- The awards relate to books first published during the five years immediately preceding the year of the award (i.e. between 1 January 2014 and 31 December 2018).
The award contains an engraved copper plaque, a shawl, and an amount of Rs 1,00,000. The award will be presented at the award function later.
