Sahitya Akademi Awards 2013

Poets held sway over the recently declared Sahitya Akademi Awards 2013 as they ran away with 8 of the total 22 awards. Four books of essays, three of novels, two each of short stories and travelogues, one each of autobiography, memoirs and play captured the rest of the prizes.

Awards (category-wise):

For Poems: 8

• Javed Akhtar (Urdu)
• Subodh Sarkar (Bengali) 
• Anil Boro (Bodo) 
• Sitaram Sapolia (Dogri) 
• Ambika Dutt (Rajasthani) 
• Radhakant Thakur (Sanskrit), 
• Arjun Charan Hembram (Santali) 
• Namdev Tarachandani (Sindhi) 

For Essays: 4

• C.N. Ramachandran (Kannada)
• Tukaram Rama Shet (Konkani)
• Satish Kalasekar (Marathi)
• Katyayani Vidmahe (Telugu)

For Novels: 3

• Mridula Garg for 'Miljul Man' (Hindi) 
• Manmohan for 'Nirvaan' (Punjabi) 
• R.N. Joe D’ Cruz for 'Korkai' (Tamil) 

For Short stories: 2

• Mohi-ud-din Reshi for 'Aina Aatas' (Kashmiri) 
• Temsula Ao for 'Laburnum For My Head' (English)

For Travelogues: 2

• Makhonmani Mongsaba (Manipuri)
• Man Bahadur Pradhan (Nepali)

For Play: 1

• Bijoy Misra for 'Banaprastha' (Odia)

For Autobiography: 1

• Malayalam writer M N Paloor for 'Kathayillathavante Katha'. 

For Memoirs: 1

• Sureshwar Jha for his memoirs 'Sangharsh Aa Sehanta' (Maithili)

About:

• Sahitya Akademi Awards are one of the top and most prestigious literary honors of India.
• Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, distribute the prizes annually to writers of outstanding works in the 24 major Indian languages.
• Its purpose is to honour and promote excellence in Indian writing concurrently welcoming new trends.
• The Award, established in 1954, is in the form of a casket containing an engraved copper-plaque, a shawl and a cheque of 100000 rupees.
• Books, in order to be eligible for awards, must be first published during the three years immediately preceding the year of Awards. 

More:

• The awards for Assamese and Gujarati languages will be announced later.
• Vishwanath Prasad Tiwari: President of Sahitya Akademi