THRISSUR: The Kerala Sahitya Akademi awards for the year 2021, announced on Wednesday brought well deserved honours to a bunch of gifted writers in Malayalam while honouring the contributions of seniors. However, the biggest surprise was the award for autobiography. T J Joseph, a former Malayalam professor at Thodupuzha Newman College, who fought his emotional trauma and scribbled his account of the incident in which a question framed for an internal examination infuriated the fringe elements through his memoir ‘Attupokatha Ormakal has been selected for the award.
R Rajashree and Vinoy Thomas shared the honours in the novels category, while Anwar Ali bagged the award for his poem Mehboob Express. V M Devadas was selected for the award his short story Vazhi Kandupidikkunnavar. Former Akademi president and writer Vaisakhan and author K P Shankaran have been selected for the Fellowship considering their lifetime contributions.The fellowship consists of `50,000 in cash, 2 sovereigns of gold, a citation and a memento.
Former chief secretary K Jayakumar, Kadathanattu Narayanan, Janamma Kunjunni, Kaviyoor Rajagopalan, Geetha Krishnankutty and K A Jayaseelan were selected for lifetime achievement awards. The award consists of `30,000 in cash, a memento and a citation.
Pradeep Mundur bagged the award for theatre, N Ajayakumar for literary criticism, Gopakumar Cholayil for knowledge literature (Vainjanika Sahityam), M Kunhaman for autobiography, Venu for travelogue, Ayamanam John for translation, Raghunath Palery for children’s literature, and Ann Palee for comedy literature (Hasya Sahityam). E V Ramakrishnan was selected for the Vilasini Award for the year 2018.
Vaikom Madhu won the I C Chacko Award while Ajay P Mangat was selected for the C B Kumar award. P R Harikumar won the K R Namboothiri Award. Kanaka Sree award goes to Prince John aka King Johns while Vivek Chandran won Geetha Hiranyan award.