• The Sahitya Akademi announced the names of 23 writers, including English writer K.Vaishali and Hindi author Gaurav Pandey, who will receive the prestigious Yuva Puraskar across as many languages.

• The National Academy of Letters also announced the names of 24 winners of the Bal Sahitya Puraskar for 2024.

• Yuva Puraskar awardees will receive a casket containing an engraved copper plaque and a cheque of Rs 50,000 at an awards ceremony later.

• The Yuva Puraskar has been awarded for 10 poetry books, seven collections of short stories, two collections of articles and one of essays, one novel, one book of ghazals and one memoir.

• The other winners of the Yuva Puraskar are Nayanjyoti Sarma (Assamese), Sutapa Chakraborty (Bengali), Self Made Rani Baro (Bodo) and Heena Choudhary (Dogri).

• The Bal Sahitya Puraskar has been awarded for seven novels, six books of poetry, four stories, five short stories, one play, and one historical fiction.

What is Sahitya Akademi Award?

• Sahitya Akademi was established in March 1954 by the government of India. 

• It is an autonomous body under the ministry of culture with the objectives to work for the development of Indian letters and to set high literary standards, foster and co-ordinate literary activities in all the Indian languages and promote through them the cultural unity of the country.

It aims to:

• Promote good taste and healthy reading habits.

• Keep alive the intimate dialogue among the various linguistic and literary zones and groups through seminars, symposia, lectures, discussions and readings.

• Increase the pace of mutual translations through workshops and individual assignments.

• Develop a serious literary culture through publication of translations, journals, monographs, individual creative works of every genre, anthologies, encyclopedia, bibliographies, histories of literatures, dictionaries, etc. 

• The Akademi has a special programme called Gramalok for the writers from remote village areas.

• The Akademi has recently introduced a new programme titled Dalit Chetna to give exposure especially to Dalit writers. 

• Akademi gives 24 awards annually to literary works in the languages it has recognised and an equal number of awards to literary translations from and into the languages of India, both after a year-long process of scrutiny, discussion and selection.

• Sahitya Akademi bestows Bal Sahitya Puraskar on the best literary works in the field of children’s literature and Yuva Puraskar for young writers who have achieved excellence in creative writing and Bhasha Samman for significant contribution to classical and medieval literature and unrecognised languages. 

• It also awards fellowships and honorary fellowships to eminent writers, Indian and non-Indian, and Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy Fellowship and Premchand Fellowship to a person of eminence in the field of art, culture, literature and language studies, and to scholars doing research on Indian literature or to creative writers from the SAARC countries other than India.

(The author is a trainer for Civil Services aspirants.)