She is undoubtedly one of the most gifted and accomplished amongst the contemporary short story writers and novelists in Orissa. She has an impressive corpus of eighteen novels, several short story collections, one travelogue, nine books for children and ten for neo-literates. She has received numerous awards and honours, including the Orissa Sahitya Akademi Award (1985) for her novel Shilapadma, the Sarala Award for her novel Yajnaseni, the Katha Award for Creative Fiction for the story “Shapya” (1994) and the Biswv Award (1995) for her contribution to Oriya literature. She is also the first woman to receive the Moorti Devi Award of the Bharatiya Jnanpith (1991) for her path-breaking work, Yajnaseni.