KOCHI
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Writer Priya AS has won Kendra Sahitya Akademi’s Bal Sahitya Puraksar for the year 2023.
The novel, Perumazhayathe Kunjithalukal, written by her in 2018, won her the prize. She had earlier won the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award for translating Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things.
Talking of the honour, Ms. Priya told The Hindu that her foray into children’s literature happened accidentally, with Chithrasalabhangalude Veedu. “My son was small then and when I captured his childhood in a collection of stories, Ammem Kunjunneem Kunjunneem Ammem, it received widespread applause. This was what prompted me to write on how children from vastly varied backgrounds viewed the floods of 2018,” she said.
Ms. Priya was working at the instrumentation department of CUSAT when the floods hit Kerala, and she saw the life of people at a relief camp opened on the campus. “When Dr. Sreekumar requested a work for the Sammanappothi series edited by him, this was included in it,” she said. The book was published by Poorna Publications.