Katha Prize Stories: 9

Afsar Ahmed was born in Bagan, Howrah in 1959. He penned many short stories and novels in his lifetime and, for his literary contributions, won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2017.

Chandra Prakash Deval teaches in the Department of Biochemistry at Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, Ajmer. Among his published works are several volumes of poetry. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award (1979), the Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad Award (1993), the Sahitya Akademi Translation Award (1980) and Meera Puraskar, the highest Hindi award conferred by the Sahitya Akademi.

Gopini is a poet and fictionist, and is assisstant director to N Shankar, a noted director in the Telugu film industry. Many of his poems have found place in well- read Telugu journals and dailies. He particularly admires the oral style of storytelling - a legacy of his blind grandmother- recreating in his writings. He says, through his writings he relives the memories of his childhood nights full of dreams and visions.

Gracy comes from a family of farmers and she started writing while studying for her BA degree and her first story was published in 1972. She later worked as a Malayalam lecturer.

Imran Hussain is a post-graduate in Political Science from Guwahati University. He is presently working as a lecturer at Sipajhar College, Darrang, Assam. He has contributed short stories, poems and articles to leading literary journals and his stories have been translated into English by Sahitya Akademi and into Gujarati by Gujarati Samachar. He was the Vice-President of the All Assam New Artists and Writers Association during 1991-92. He has won the titles of Best Literary Man, 1991, and Best Artist of the Year, 1991, bestowed by Guwahati University. He is currently the editor of Ajir Kabita brought out by Guwahati University.

Jeelani Bano began writing short stories in 1955 and has published numerous works, including novels, story collections and novellas. She strongly associates herself with developmental and anti-communalism movements. Her stories have been translated into several Indian languages, besides Russian, German, Norwegian and English. She has been conferred with the International Award 1998 by Majlis-e-Frogh-e-Urdu and the Padma Shri in 2001 by the Government of India.

Keisham Priyokumar is a civil engineer by profession and has several volumes of collected short stories in Manipuri. He has been the editor of a few journals and a literary bulletin, Sahityagi Pao. In 1998, he received the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Manipuri State Kala Akademi Award.

Meghana Pethe has been associated with Marathi Amateur Theatre since 1982. She has won the prestigious Natya Darpan Award for Best Amateur Actress. She has written several one-act plays and her articles and columns have appeared in various Marathi dailies like Aaj Dinank, Apla Mahanagar and Sanj Dinank. She is a recipient of the 1997 Anandibai Shirke Award from Maharashtra Sahitya Parishad, the 1997 Priyadarshini Award, the 1998 Bal Sitaram Mardhekar Award and the 1997 Shantaram Award.

Minakshi Sen finished her schooling from Kolkata in 1970 during the turbulent time when many youths were responding to the call of the naxalites. She was not an exception and was arrested on false charges by the police in 1973, tortured and detained without trial. After her release in 1977, despite the traumatic experience, she went on to complete her post-graduation in Physiology with a gold medal from Calcutta University. She began serious writing in the seventies and a large part of her prison memories was serialized in Spandan, a literary magazine edited by her husband. In 1993, a book in her days spent in prison, titled Jailer Bhetor Jail was published in 1993 winning considerable critical acclaim.

Mohammed Khadeer Babu is a Telugu short story writer, journalist and scriptwriter.

My Dear Jayu is the pen-name of Jayanti Gohel.

Na D'Souza is a novelist in the Kannada language.

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.

Prem Gorkhi was detained by the police soon after his matriculation because of naxalite activities. Three years of police excesses and trials in courts later, he started studying privately and got a job in a Punjabi daily upon his release. From 1971 to 1978, he dabbled in journalism at Jalandhar and later moved to Chandigarh. After his first story was published in the popular Punjabi magazine, Nagmani, he made a decision to write only for and about the deprived and disadvantaged sections of society as he felt that the literary world almost ignored them.

He is a Reader in the Department of English, Punjab University, Chandigarh. He was at Norwich on a translation project as part of the Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship to work on short stories of UK- based Punjabi writers. Teaching for over 18 years, his main areas of interest are drama, pedagogy and translation, and he has translated extensively from Punjabi into English. He has two published novels, one collection of poems and one on short stories under preparation. He has also translated Gurdial Singh’s The Survivors which was nominated for the Hutch Crossword award 2005.

Roschen Sasikumar has a PhD in Theoretical Physics and she has served as Head, Computational Materials Science Unit, under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. She currently works at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, New Delhi.

Sarita Padki has been writing since the age of eight or nine. She has handled various literary forms including translation and literature for children. Among the many awards and recognitions she has received are four state awards for literature.

Sutradhari is the pen-name for M Gopalakrishnan. A post-graduate in commerce and Hindi literature, he has served as the editor to various literary magazines. He won the Ilakkiya Chinthanai for his maiden short story.

Yogendra Ahuja is a post-graduate in Economics from Bareilly College. His published works include short stories in various Hindi magazines. He is an avid reader of poetry, and takes interest in science, history, anthropology, computers and cinema.