2 Telugus win Sahitya Akademi awards

New Delhi: The Sahitya Akademi on Saturday announced the names of 23 writers, including English writer K Vaishali and Hindi author Gaurav Pandey, who will receive the prestigious Yuva Puraskar across as many languages. The National Academy of Letters also announced the names of 24 winners of the Bal Sahitya Puraskar for 2024. The winner of the Yuva Puraskar in Sanskrit will be announced at a later date, the Akademi said in a statement.

"The Executive Board of the Sahitya Akademi in its meeting held on Saturday under the Chairmanship of its President Sri Madhav Kaushik approved selection of 23 writers who were selected on the basis of recommendations made by the Jury comprising three members each in the concerned language in accordance with the rules and procedure laid down for the purpose," the literary body said in a statement.

While K Vaishali will be honoured for her memoir "Homeless: Growing up Lesbian and Dyslexic in India", Gaurav Pandey won the prestigious award for his poetry collection "Smritiyon Ke Beech Ghiri Hai Prithvi".

The Yuva Puraskar has been awarded for 10 poetry books, seven collections of short stories, two collections of articles and one of essays, one novel, one book of ghazals and one memoir. The other winners of the Yuva Puraskar are Nayanjyoti Sarma (Assamese), Sutapa Chakraborty (Bengali), Self Made Rani Baro (Bodo) and Heena Choudhary (Dogri).

Rinku Rathod (Gujarati), Shruti B R (Kannada), Mohd Ashraf Ziya (Kashmiri), Adwait Salgaonkar (Konkani), Rinki Jha Rishika (Maithili), and Shyamkrishnan R (Malayalam) are also among the winners. Waikhom Chingkheinganba (Manipuri), Devidas Saudagar (Marathi), Suraj Chapagain (Nepali), Sanjay Kumar Panda (Odia), Randhir (Punjabi), Sonali Sutar (Rajasthani) have also been picked for the Yuva Puruskar. The other winners are Anjan Karmakar (Santali), Geeta Pradeep Rupani (Sindhi), Lokesh Raghuraman (Tamil), Ramesh Karthik Nayak (Telugu) and Javed Amber Misbahi (Urdu). Yuva Puraskar awardees will receive a casket containing an engraved copper plaque and a cheque of Rs 50,000 at an awards ceremony later.

For the Bal Sahitya Puraskar, the Akademi has picked English writer Nandini Sengupta for her historical fiction “The Blue Horse and Other Amazing Animal Stories from Indian History” and Devender Kumar’s collection of children’s stories “51 Baal Kahaniyan”.