Pervin Saket wins Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize 2021

Hyderabad: Pervin Saket, a Pune-based writer and poet, is the winner of the 2021 Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize. Selected from a field of about 80 talented contestants from across the country by a distinguished jury consisting of Vinay Dharwadker, author and professor of English Literature, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and two faculty members of the Department of English, University of Hyderabad, Pervin will be the 13th recipient of the prestigious literary award. Krishnakumar Sankaran and Kinshuk Gupta were among those shortlisted for the prize.

Pervin is the author of the novel 'Urmila' and of a collection of poetry 'A Tinge of Turmeric'. She was awarded the inaugural fellowship for the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive 2021. Pervin co-founded the annual Dum Pukht Writers' Workshop in 2016. She is also the Poetry Editor at The Bombay Literary Magazine and Managing Editor at The Quarantine Train – a Writing Collective. Her novel has been adapted into a dance-drama featuring the classical dance forms of Kathak, Bharatanatyam and Odissi. Her short fiction, poetry and nonfiction have been featured in the Indian Quarterly, Paris Lit Up, Singapore Unbound, Usawa Literary Review, Tiferet Journal, Borderless Journal, The Joao-Roque Literary Journal, The Madras Courier, Alipore Post, Cold Noon, Breaking the Bow and others.

Recognised as a significant award for creative writing in the country, Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize was instituted by the Hyderabad-based Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust to recognise excellence in poetry written in English by poets in the age group of 20-40 years. The prize is jointly administered by the Department of English, University of Hyderabad.

The inaugural prize was awarded in 2009 to Aditi Machado and, subsequently, to Hemant Mohapatra (2010), Aditi Rao (2011), Tushar Jain (2012), Mihir Vatsa (2013) and Ranjani Murali (2014), Aishwarya Iyer (2015), Goirick Brahmachari (2016), Debarshi Mitra (2017), Poorna Swami (2018), Prashant Parvataneni (2019) and Satya Dash (2020). Eminent poets like Jeet Thayil, Sudeep Sen, Keki Daruwalla, Arundhati Subramanian, Manohar Shetty, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Ranjit Hoskote, E V Ramakrishnan, Gieve Patel, and Mamang Dai have been associated with the prize as jury members. The award, consisting of a citation and cash prize of Rs. 15,000 will be presented to the winner at a literary event to be held soon.