Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2019: Jury

Announcing the judges for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2019:

Sonia Faleiro is a journalist and the author, most recently, of Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars (2010); her next book, The Good Girls: Love and Death in a Village in India, is forthcoming from Grove Atlantic/Bloomsbury.
Prayaag Akbar’s first novel Leila won the Crossword Jury Prize in 2018 and the Tata LitLive Award for Debut Fiction in 2017, and was developed into a series by Netflix. He is a Senior Fellow of Krea University.

Ruskin Bond wrote his first short story at the age of sixteen. Since then he has written more than five hundred stories, essays and novels, and won the Padma Bhushan, the Padma Shri and the Sahitya Akademi Prize. He lives in Mussoorie, a constant presence or character in his fiction.

Announcing the judges for the 2016 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2016

Now in its ninth year, the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize is set to release its 2016 shortlist. The Shakti Bhatt Foundation has announced the three judges who will select the winner in November; authors Samanth Subramanian, Mahesh Rao and Janice Pariat.

Samanth Subramanian is a New Delhi-based writer and journalist. He has written, among other publications, for the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Guardian, Granta, Intelligent Life and Caravan. His first book, Following Fish: Travels Around the Indian Coast, won the 2010 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Andre Simon Award. His second book, This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War, won the 2015 Crossword Non Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Award and the Ondaatje Prize the same year.

Mahesh Rao is a novelist and short story writer. His fiction has been shortlisted for various awards, including the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. His work has appeared in publications like the New York Times, The Baffler, Caravan and Elle. His debut novel, The Smoke Is Rising, won the Tata First Book Award for fiction, and was shortlisted for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize and the Crossword Prize. One Point Two Billion, his collection of short stories, was published in October 2015.

Janice Pariat is the author of Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories and Seahorse: A Novel. She was awarded the Young Writer Award from the Sahitya Akademi (Indian National Academy of Letters) and the Crossword Book Award for Fiction in 2013 for Boats on Land. She studied English Literature at St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and History of Art at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Her work—including art reviews, cultural features, book reviews, fiction and poetry—has featured in a wide selection of national magazines and newspapers. Currently, she lives in New Delhi, India.

This year’s shortlist will be decided by poet and author Jeet Thayil, and author Arshia Sattar, who runs the Sangam House international writers' residency programme.

The Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize is a cash award of 2 lakh rupees, and a trophy. It is funded by the Shakti Bhatt Foundation, and Priti Paul through the Apeejay Trust.

Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2013: short list

Announcing the shortlist for the 2013 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize.
The six books in contention for this year’s cash prize of Rs. 1 lakh and trophy are:

Boats on Land

by Janice Pariat

Vintage Books Random House India

India Becoming

by Akash Kapur

Penguin Viking

The King’s Harvest by Chetan Raj Shreshta (Aleph)

The Wildings

by Nilanjana Roy

Aleph

Foreign

by Sonora Jha 

Vintage Books Random House India

a pleasant kind of heavy and other stories

by aranyani 

Aleph

Writer and arts consultant Sanjay Iyer and poet and novelist Jeet Thayil selected the six titles from a list of seventy-four. “Arguably, this is one of the strongest shortlists in the prize’s history,” said Iyer. “The books represent a variety of genres as well as concerns, and the advisory board recognised the quality of books published in India by Indian authors living elsewhere. The stories and non-fictions take us from the far reaches of Meghalaya and Sikkim, through the length and breadth of India to the whimsical universe of street cats in a neighbourhood in New Delhi.”

Boats on Land and Foreign explore socio-economic realities in Meghalaya and Vidharba respectively, through poignant and moving fictional lenses. India Becoming has a sweeping canvas that explores changing lives through an important work of non-fiction. The King’s Harvest is two novellas that create magic out of the particularities of Sikkim. aranyani is the pseudonymous author of a pleasant kind of heavy and other stories, classic and classy literary erotica set in a South Indian milieu. The Wildings is a startling narrative in which the characters are street cats in Delhi’s Nizamuddin East.

The judges of the 2013 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize are poet and novelist Meena Kandasamy, author and professor Sunil Khilnani and novelist Niven Govinden.

 The winner will be announced in November, 2013.

Judges announced for Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2012

Literary agent David Godwin, dancer, author and poet Tishani Doshi and author Basharat Peer will be the judges of the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2012.

In its fifth year, the prize is a cash award of one lakh rupees, and a trophy. Entries in the following genres were submitted: poetry, fiction (including graphic novels), creative non-fiction (travel writing, autobiography, biography and narrative journalism), and drama.

A two-member advisory board will be short-listing 6 books published between June 1, 2011 and June 30, 2012, which will then be sent to the judges. The winner will be announced in the second half of November and the prize will be presented in December.

This year has seen a record number of 94 entries as opposed to last year's 66; the winner in 2011 was 79-year-old Jamil Ahmad for The Wandering Falcon.

The Shakti Bhatt Foundation which runs the prize is a non-profit trust. It wishes to reward first-time authors of all ages. For further information, mail shaktibhattprize@gmail.com