Senior Congress leader M Veerappa Moily, Tamil writer Imaiyam, Konkani poet R S Bhaskar were among the 20 writers who were selected for the Sahitya Akademi Award for 2020.
Moily was honoured for his epic poetry 'Sri Bahubali Ahimsadigvijayam', Imaiyam has been chosen for the award for his novel 'Sellatha Panam' and Bhaskar for his poem 'Yugaparivarthanacho Yatri'.
'Nanoo Ambedkar', a novel by HS Byakod and 'Dhoopada Makkalu' a collection of short stories by K S Mahadevaswamy have been selected for the 'Bal Sahitya Puraskar' and 'Yuva Puraskar' respectively.
Poet Arundhathi Subramaniam was named for the Sahitya Akademi Award for her poetry collection 'When God is a Traveller' in English,
The awards for Malayalam, Nepali, Odia and Rajasthani languages will be announced at a later date, the Akademi said in a statement.
Apart from Subramaniam, the others who won the award in poetry include Harish Meenakshi (Gujarati), Anamika (Hindi), Irungbam Deven (Manipuri), Rupchand Hansda (Santali), and Nikhileswar (Telugu).
Nanda Khare (Marathi), Maheshchandra Sharma Gautam (Sanskrit), and Sri Hussain-ul-Haque were named as winners for their novels.
Apurba Kumar Saikia (Assamese), (late) Dharanidhar Owari (Bodo), (late) Hiday Koul Bharti (Kashmiri), Kamakant Jha (Maithili) and Gurdev Singh Rupana (Punjab) have received the award for short stories.
The Akademi has named Gian Singh (Dogri) and Jetho Lalwani (Sindhi) the winners for their plays, while Shankar (Mani Shankar Mukhopadhyay) in (Bengali) received the award for memoir.
The Award, which will include a casket containing an engraved copper plaque, a shawl and an amount of Rs 1,00,000, will be presented at the award presentation function, which will be held at a later date
In the 'Yuva Puraskar' category, Yashica Dutt was awarded for her memoir 'Coming Out As Dalit' in English, while Ankit Narwal was selected for his Hindi volume of critical essays 'U R Ananthamurti Pratirodh Ka Vikalp'.
The award for Sanskrit went to Rishiraj Pathak for his poetry 'Aadhyonmeshah', while the award for Tamil went to poet Shakti for the book 'Maara Naai'.
Venita Coelho was selected for the Bal Sahitya Puraskar for her work of fiction 'Dead as a Dodo'.