CHENNAI: Tamil writer S Ramakrishnan (52) has been honoured with Sahitya Akademi award today for his novel Sancharam which deals with the lives of nadhaswaram artistes.
Ramakrishnan 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 of Tamilnadu. 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 Tamilnadu. 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, Coimbatore, etc.
Ramakrishnan has authored and published five novels, ten collections of short stories, 24 collections of articles, four books for children, three books of translation 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. Sangeetha Nataka Academy Award for best young playwright, Iyal Award from Canada, award for best novel from Tamilnadu government, Award of Literary Thoughts, CKK Literary Award, best novel award of Progressive Writers’ Union, Jnanavaani Award and Young Achiever Award, Kannadasan Award, etc.,