Sahitya Akademi announces Bal Sahitya Puraskar, Yuva Puraskar 2020

Sahitya Akademi on Friday announced a list of 21 winners of the Bal Sahitya Puraskar and 18 recipients of the Yuva Puraskar for the year 2020.

The names were announced on the opening day of Akademi's annual 'Festival of Letters' event here.

While English author Yashica Dutt received the Yuva Puraskar for her memoir "Coming Out As Dalit", Ankit Narwal's criticism in Hindi "U R Ananthamurti Pratirodh ka Vikalp" got him named for the prestigious award.

The Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar 2020 will be given for 10 books of poetry, three of short stories, two of essays, one each of memoir, criticism and travelogue.

Those who have won the Yuva Puraskar for their collection of poetry include Dwijen Das (Assamese), Newton K. Basumatary (Bodo), Ganga Sharma (Dogri), Muzaffar Ahmad Parray (Kashmiri), Rameshwar Sharongbam (Manipuri), Deepak Kumar Dhalewan (Punjabi) Anjali Kisku (Santal), Rishiraj Pathak (Sanskrit), Shakti (Tamil) and Saquib Faridi (Urdu).

Also read: Veerappa Moily, Arundhati Subramaniam among recipients of Sahitya Akademi Award 2020

K S Mahadevaswamy (Kannada), Sonu Kumar Jha (Maithili) and Manasa Yendluri (Telugu) have received the Yuva Puraskar for their collection of short stories.

For the collection of essays Chandrasekhar Hota (Odia) and Anjan Baskota (Nepali) have been selected, while Sampada Shenvi Kunkoliekar (Konkani) will receive the award for her travelogue.

The Yuva Puraskar for Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam, Marathi, Rajasthani and Sindhi languages will be declared at a later date.

According to the procedure, the Yuva Puraskar relates to books published by an author of the age of 35 and below as on January 1 of the year of the award.

While writer-director Venita Coelho has been named as the recipient for the Bal Sahitya Puraskar 2020 for her book "Dead as a Dodo" in English, veteran Hindi writer Balswaroop Rahi has won the award for his collection of poetry "Sampurna Bal Kavitayen".

Apart from Rahi, the Bal Sahitya Puraskar will be given to Syed Akhtar Hussain Mansoor (Kashmiri), Siya Ram Jha 'Saras' (Maithili), Naorem Bidyasagar (Manipuri), and Mangat Badal (Rajasthani) for their poetries.

The other recipients of the Bal Sahitya Puraskar 2020 are Madhurima Gharphalia (Assamese), Pracheta Gupta (Bengali), Ajit Boro (Bodo), Shiv Dev Sushil (Dogri), Natwar Patel (Gujarati), H S Byakod (Kannada), V Krishna Vadhyar (Konkani), Aba Mahajan (Marathi), Dhruba Chouhan (Nepali), Ramachandra Nayak (Odia), Karnail Singh Somal (Punjabi), Joyram Tudu (Santali), Sahib Bijani (Sindhi), Kanneganti Anasuya (Telugu), and Hafiz Karnataki (Urdu).

The award in Malayalam, Sanskrit and Tamil will be declared on a later date.

The recipients of both the awards will be given a casket containing an engraved copper plaque and a cheque of Rs. 50,000 at a special function to be held at a later date.