CHENNAI : Tamil writer S Ramakrishnan (52) was honoured with Sahitya Akademi award on Wednesday for his novel Sanjaaram which deals with the lives of nagaswaram artistes. He is a full-time writer who has been active over the last 27 years in diverse areas of Tamil literature like short stories, novels, plays, children’s literature and translations. Born in 1966, Ramakrishnan is a native of Mallankinar village of Virudhunagar district.
He is living in Chennai now. His short stories are noted for their modern story-telling style in Tamil. He had, as editor, brought out the literary publication, Atcharam for five years. His short stories and articles have been translated and published in English, Malayalam, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Kannada and French.
As a story-teller, he has organized over 30 story-telling camps for school children, all over Tamil Nadu.
He has authored four books for children besides organising a special story-telling camp for children with dyslexia-related learning disabilities. He has also organised screenplay writing camps for short film directors and students of cinema creation in important cities like Chennai and Coimbatore.Ramakrishnan has authored and published five novels, ten collections of short stories, 24 collections of articles, four books for children, three translated books and nine plays. He also has a collection of interviews to his credit.
Among the many important awards won by him are Tagore Literary Award for his novel Yamam. Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for best young playwright, Iyal Award from Canada, award for best novel from Tamil Nadu government, Award of Literary Thoughts, CKK Literary Award, best novel award of Progressive Writers’ Union, Jnanavaani Award, Young Achiever Award and Kannadasan Award.
The short film Karna Motcham with his screenplay won the National Award for Best Short Film and 27 important awards in Indian and International Film Festivals. Another short film Matraval has won three coveted awards as the best Tamil short film. His books have been prescribed as part of syllabi of two universities and nine autonomous colleges.