Women writers sweep Kalinga Literary Awards-2024

All four Kalinga Literary Awards for the year 2024 have gone to women writers, informed Rashmi Ranjan Parida, Founder and Director, Kalinga Literary Festival.

Hindi novelist Nasira Sharma and former assistant secretary-general at the United Nations, Diplomat, writer, novelist, Lakshmi Murdeshwar Puri, will be conferred Kalinga Literary Awards.

Nepalese writer Prof. Beena Poudyal will receive the Kalinga International Literary Award for her contribution to literature, art and culture while young writer Radhika Iyengar will receive the Kalinga Literary Award (Youth).

KLF-Publishing House of the Year Award will be conferred on Penguin Random House and HarperCollins Publishers India. The awards will be conferred to the winners at the inaugural Ceremony of the 10th Kalinga Literary Festival on February 9 at Swosti Premium in Bhubaneswar.

Nasira Sharma is an acclaimed Hindi writer who has published 10 Hindi-language novels including ‘Parijat’, ‘Mere Priya Kahaniyaan’ and ‘Ajnabi Jajira’. Lakshmi Murdeshwar Puri has been an Indian Foreign Service diplomat for 28 years. She served in leadership positions at the United Nations for 15 years. She is the recipient of the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights, among others. Lakshmi Murdeshwar Puri’s debut novel is ‘Swallowing The Sun’. Professor Bina Paudyal lives in Kathmandu, Nepal. In her 40 years of teaching and researching, she has published more than 100 research articles so far in the field of culture, and 19 books, including the history of Nepali culture. Radhika Iyengar is an Indian journalist, writer, and recipient of the 2018 Red Ink Awards in the category of human rights. After eight years of research on the Dom community of Varanasi, she wrote ‘Fire on the Ganges: Life among the Dead in Banaras’, published in 2023 by HarperCollins India.

The festival will run from February 9 to 11 in Bhubaneswar and will host over 400 speakers from across a vast array of nationalities. It will feature a range of themes including the ongoing climate justice debate under the urgency of borrowed time theme; the great women writers and artists focusing on the female voice and identity, crime fiction, memoir, translation, poetry, economics, tech morality, and Artificial Intelligence, the global crisis, cutting-edge science, India and the World, art and photography, health and medicine, amongst others.