As the awards season approaches, a poet and editor offers some suggestions to the Sahitya Akademi
The awards, publishing, journal and events strategies of the Akademi have continued unchanged for years, says Medha Singh. Sahitya Akademi Award
The Sahitya Akademi awards are considered among the most prestigious literary accolades in the country, with good reason. But the awards, and many of the Akademi’s other activites, have continued in unchanged form for a long time. Perhaps some change – or, at the very least, re-examination – is in order.
Yuva Puraskar There are two reasons the Akademi should remove the age category and start an award for best debut and perhaps best second book in prose and poetry in each language. For one thing, the patronising and sexist connotations that accompany the prefixes “young” or “emerging” attached to a writer are unnecessary. A man gets to be called young or “in his prime” well into his forties in India, while a woman
Cookery, self-improvement and newsy non-fiction books are predicted to rule the roost this year
Like a lot of industries, English-language publishing in India is in the middle of a slow recovery following a drastically lean patch in the summer of 2020. December is typically a strong period for sales across sectors (thanks to Christmas and New Year gifting), and publishing is no different. Because of this, Indian publishers are looking forward to 2021 with a sense of cautious optimism.
(Stay up to date on new book releases, reviews, and more with The Hindu On Books newsletter. Subscribe here.)
In the second half of 2020 we saw a number of writers releasing books written during and about the lockdown; Zadie Smith and Slavoj Žižek, among them. There were also books by medical experts, breaking down the science behind COVID-19 to its basics. According to Udayan Mitra, Publisher (Literary) at HarperCollins India, this general trend will continue in 2021, and even expand in scope. Mi
A YOUNG boy from North Yorkshire who has written a poem based around the Covid-19 pandemic is set to have his work featured in a new book. William Kennedy, from Woldgate School, Pocklington, is the only child chosen from North Yorkshire to have his poem published within the ‘Lockdown Life’ book. The book was put together as part of a new initiative from Selby-based author, Christina Gabbitas. The author invited children, young people and teachers to pen a poem about how they were feeling in lockdown. The children’s author said: “I set up this voluntary initiative in the first lockdown to help give me purpose as all my events were cancelled. It was enlightening to receive poems each day from all over the UK.”