KOHIMA — Poet and
author Dr. Easterine Kire has been named among 21 writers across the country to
be honoured with the Sahitya Akademi Award 2024.
Her novel, 'Spirit Nights,' released in 2022, won her the
award. The Sahitya Akademi on Wednesday announced its annual Sahitya Akademi
Awards in 21 languages.
The categories awarded included eight poetry books, three
novels, two short stories, three essays, three literary criticisms, one play,
and one research.
The 21 awardees for this year are Sameer Tanti (Assamese),
Dileep Jhaveri (Gujarati), Gagan Gill (Hindi), K Jayakumar (Malayalam), Haobam
Satyabati Devi (Manipuri), Paul Kaur (Punjabi), Mukut Maniraj (Rajasthani),
Dipak Kumar Sharma (Sanskrit), Aron Raja (Bodo), Easterine Kire (English),
Sohal Koul (Kashmiri), Yuva Baral (Nepali), Hundraj Balwani (Sindhi), Mukesh
Thali (Konkani), Mahendra Malangia (Maithili), Baishnab Charan Samal (Odia), KV
Narayana (Kannada), Sudhir Rasal (Marathi), Penugonda Lakshminarayana (Telugu),
Maheshwar Soren (Santali), and AR Venkatachalapathy (Tamil).
The award in Bengali, Dogri, and Urdu will be declared at a
later stage, the academy stated in the update.
The awards relate to books first published during the five
years immediately preceding the year of the award (i.e., between 1 January 2018
and 31 December 2022).
It comes with an engraved copper plaque, a shawl, and an
amount of INR 1 lakh each to awardees, which will be presented next year on
March 8.
Kire has won several awards in the past years for her works,
including the Governor's Medal for Excellence in Naga Literature, the Bal
Sahitya Puraskar 2018, the Hindu Literary Prize 2015, and the first Gordon
Graham Prize for Naga Literature.
Spirit Nights is “inspired by a story of darkness narrated
by the Chang Naga tribe.”
Her latest book, titled 'Freerain,' will be released on
December 21.
