Arundhathi Subramaniam, Anamika, M Veerappa Moily Win 2020 Sahitya Akademi Award

Poet Arundhathi Subramaniam has won the 2020 Sahitya Akademi Award for her poetry collection, “When God is a Traveller.” (Meetesh Taneja photo)

NEW DELHI – Poets Arundhathi Subramaniam and Anamika, and politician and writer M Veerappa Moily are among 20 writers who will be conferred with the Sahitya Akademi Award 2020.

Announcing this, the Akademi said that Subramaniam has won the award for her poetry collection, “When God is a Traveller,” (English) while Moily has won for his poetry, “Sri Bahubali Ahimsadigvijayam” (Kannada).

The list includes four novels, seven poetry books, two plays, five short stories, an epic poetry and a memoir in twenty Indian languages.

The awards for Nepali, Malayalam, Rajasthani and Odia languages will be announced at a later date.

Besides Subramaniam, those who won in the poetry category include Anamika (Hindi), Harish Meenakshi (Gujarati), Irungbam Deven (Manipuri), Rupchand Hansda (Santali), and Nikhileswar (Telugu) and RS Bhaskar (Konkani).

Novelists who have won include Nanda Khare (Marathi), Maheshchandra Sharma Gautam (Sanskrit), Imaiyam (Tamil) and Hussain-ul-Haque (Urdu).

Apurba Kumar Saikia (Assamese), late Dharanidhar Owari (Bodo), late Hiday Koul Bharti (Kashmiri), Kamakant Jha (Maithili) and Gurdev Singh Rupana (Punjabi) have received the award for short stories.

The Akademi has named Gian Singh (Dogri) and Jetho Lalwani (Sindhi) as the winners for their plays. Mani Shankar Mukhopadhyay (Bengali) has received the award in the memoir category.

The award, comprising a casket containing an engraved copper plaque, a shawl and Rs. 1,00,000, will be presented at the award presentation function, to be held at a later date.