Novelist Geetanjali Shree, Dr Ramesh Prasad Panigrahi To Be Conferred With Kalinga Literary Awards

Writer Geetanjali Shree, whose novel Ret Samadhi, translated into English as Tomb of Sand by Daisy Rockwell, won the International Booker Prize last year, will be felicitated at the Kalinga Literary Festival (KLF) in Bhubaneswar this February, where she will be awarded the prestigious ‘Kalinga International Literary Award (English and Hindi language)’. The award comes with a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh. Shree is a Hindi-language novelist and short-story writer based in New Delhi, India. Her 2000 novel, Mai was shortlisted for the Crossword Book Award in 2001, while its English translation by Nita Kumar was published by Niyogi Books in 2017. She is the author of three novels and several story collections, and her work has been extensively translated into English, French, German, Serbian, and Korean.

The ‘Kalinga Literary Award (Odia)’, which comes with a cash prize of Rs 50,000, will be conferred upon Dr Ramesh Prasad Panigrahi—noted educationist, screenplay writer, playwright, art critic, and theatre director. Dr Panigrahi, who is considered a living legend in the world of Odia drama with 83 plays to his credit as well as a number of books in English on the art and culture of Odisha, is a professor of English literature by profession and a playwright by passion.

Two publishing houses, Penguin Random House and Rajkamal Prakashan will be getting the ‘Publishing House of the Year’ award, as announced by Rashmi Ranjan Parida, founder and director of the KLF. 

The awards will be conferred upon the winners at the inaugural ceremony of the 9th edition of the KLF, on February 24 at Hotel Swosti Premium in the temple city of Bhubaneswar. The award will also carry a trophy and citation. 
 
The annual iconic Kalinga Literary Festival is all set to run from February 24 to February 26in the temple city of Bhubaneswar. Marking its ninth year, the festival will showcase a powerhouse of writers, speakers, thinkers, and humanitarians from all walks of life. The literary extravaganza will see a spectacular range of language diversity in the program, represented by 10 countries and over 25 languages.

For its 2023 edition, the festival will host over 500 speakers from a vast array of nationalities, as well as recipients of major awards such as the Nobel, the Booker, the International Booker, the Sahitya Akademi, and many more. It will feature a range of themes including the ongoing climate justice debate under the theme of ‘the urgency of borrowed time’; the great women writers and artists focusing on female voice and identity, crime fiction, memoir, translation, poetry, economics, tech morality and Artificial Intelligence, science, art, photography, and health and medicine, amongst others.

The KLF is well-known for its socially relevant themes, and in a way compels all creative people to think and articulate ‘the contemporary’. Like its past editions, the 9th edition of the KLF, too, will function around a central theme, with this year’s being: “India and the World,” a hard-hitting paradigm for writers, poets, and artists to work under.