Assam’s Aruni Kashyap in JCB Prize for Literature jury panel

India'shighly coveted literary award, the JCB Prize for Literature, announced the juryfor this year's prize on Wednesday. Assam writer and translator Aruni Kashyapis one of the jury members announced today.

Thepanel will be chaired by Leela Samson, Bharatanatyam dancer, former chairpersonof Sangeet Natak Akademi, and author. Apart from Aruni Kashyap and Leela Samson,cultural theorist and author Tejaswini Niranjana, playwright and director RamuRamanathan and head of the Arts & Culture portfolio at Tata Trusts DeepikaSorabjee are the members of the panel.

Thejury will announce the longlist of ten titles on September 1st, followed by theshortlist of five titles on September 25. The winner of the Rs. 25-lakh prizewill be announced at the awards ceremony on November 7, 2020. If the winningwork is a translation, the translator will be awarded an additional Rs. 10lakh. Each of the five shortlisted authors will receive Rs. 1 lakh; if ashortlisted work is a translation, the translator will receive Rs. 50,000.

It maybe mentioned here that Aruni Kashyap writes and translates in both English andAssamese. His books included ​'His Father's Disease and Other Stories, TheHouse With a Thousand Stories,' and Noikhon Etia Duroit. His poetrycollection,​ There is No Good Time for Bad News, was a finalist for the2018 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize and the 2018 Four Way Books Levis Award inPoetry. Aruni won the Charles Wallace India Trust Scholarship for CreativeWriting to the University of Edinburgh, and has penned short stories, poems,and essays for the Oxford Anthology of Writings from Northeast, The KenyonReview, The New York Times, and The Guardian UK, amongst others.