Sahitya Akademi award for four Odia litterateurs 

New Delhi/Bhubaneswar: Four litterateurs from Odisha, Dasarathi Das, Gaganendra Nath Das, Haladhar Nag and Prafulla Tripathy, will be conferred Kendra Sahitya Akademi award 2018. Dasarathi Das will receive the prestigious award for his book ‘Prasanga Puruna Bhabana Nua’. The writer had earlier received the Atibadi Jagannath Das award and Sarala Award.

Similarly, Gaganendra Nath Das will be conferred Sahitya Akademi Bhasa Samman 2018. Das is a well-known English and Odia language author.
Haladhar Nag and Prafulla Tripathy are selected to receive the Koshali Sambalpuri Bhasa Samman. The selections have been approved by the Executive Board of the Sahitya Akademi.

Winners in 24 languages
An extensive range of works representing diversity in contemporary Indian literature, comprising seven collections of poetry, six novels, six short story collections, three works of literary criticism and two collections of essays were announced on Wednesday as the winners of the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award 2018 in 24 languages. The awards were recommended by jury members in respective languages and were then approved by the Executive Board of India's national academy of letters under the chairmanship of Akademi President Chandrashekhar Kambar.

Winners include Anees Saleem in English, Rama Kant Shukla in Sanskrit, Rajesh Kumar Vyas in Rajasthani, Rahman Abbas in Urdu, Lok Nath Upadhyay in Nepali, Chitra Mughal in Hindi and S Ramakrishnan in Tamil. Akademi Secretary K Sreenivasa Rao said at a press conference announcing the winners that the books were selected on the basis of recommendations made by a jury of three members in each language in accordance with the rules.

The awards relate to books first published during the five years immediately preceding the year of award, between January 1, 2012 and December 31, 2016. The awards, in the form of a casket containing an engraved copper-plaque, a shawl and a cheque of Rs 1 lakh, will be presented to the authors at a special function in January next year at Kamani Auditorium. The Akademi also announced its Bhasha Salman for the year 2017 and 2018.