Hindi poet Gagan Gill won an award for her poetry book Main Jab Tak I Bahar. English author Esther Keer was recognized for her novel Spirit Nights.
The Sahitya Akademi Awards for 2024 have been announced to honor 21 writers and poets from various Indian languages. The award honors outstanding work in novels, poetry, short stories, essays, plays and literary criticism.
Hindi poet Gagan Gill won an award for her poetry book Main Jab Tak I Bahar. English author Esther Keer was recognized for her novel Spirit Nights. The list of winners includes eight poetry collections, three novels, two short story collections, three essays, three literary criticisms, one play and one research work.
Other winners include Sohan Kaul for his Kashmiri novel Psychiatry Ward and Paul Kaur for his Punjabi poetry book Sun Gunavant Sun Buddhivant: A History of Punjab. Poets like K Jayakumar (Malayalam), Haobam Satyavati Devi (Manipuri), Dilip Jhaveri (Gujarati), Sameer Tanti (Assamese), Mukut Maniraj (Rajasthani), and Deepak Kumar Sharma (Sanskrit) were also honoured.
In the novel category, Aaron Raja won for his Bodo book Swarni Thakhai. The short story section featured winners like Yuva Baral’s Chichhimira (Nepali) and Hundraj Balwani’s Purjo (Sindhi).
The essay winners were Mukesh Thali (Konkani), Mahendra Malangia (Maithili), and Baishnav Charan Samai (Odia). AR Venkatachalapathy (Tamil) won for his research and Maheshwar Sorn won for his Santali play Seched Savanta Ren Andha Manmi. Awards for literary criticism were given to KV Narayan (Kannada), Sudhir Rasal (Marathi), and Penugonda Lakshminarayan (Telugu).
The award was approved by the executive committee of Sahitya Akademi and announced by the president Madhav Kaushik. Eligible books must be published between January 1, 2018, and December 31, 2022.
The winners will receive a plaque, shawl and Rs 1 lakh at a ceremony on March 8, 2025. Awards for Bengali, Dogri and Urdu will be announced later.