Literary awards and festivals

September is the month for literary festivals and awards at least as far as Sri Lanka is concerned. This week's column is dedicated to local and international literary awards and to outline a few lessons that we could learn from other countries.

The month of September in Sri Lanka is also a month for awards, rewards, frustrations, criticism even back biting as a result of several organisations working hard to bestow literary awards to authors, novelists, poets and translators.

The month started with the fifth 'Vidyodaya Literary Awards and ceremony held on 1 September at Sri Jayewardenepura University. The following day, on the 2nd September Godage publishers held their 12th literary awards ceremony in Colombo. Inaugurated in 1993, Godage Literary Awards are widely recognised as one of the leading literary awards in Sri Lanka, second only to the State Literary Awards ceremony organized by the Sri Lankan Government.

The State Literary Festival and ceremonies and Sri Lankan Book Publishers ' award will be held this month and perhaps all or some of the festivals and award ceremonies will end up with anger generated by some circles of men and women (or literary gangsters!) who are deeply into the business of receiving/granting awards and rewards for "friendly" authors and sometimes for their relatives or close associates.

A few weeks later, the debates, anger and even occasional threats will dissipate until another cycle of awards and ceremonies are scheduled for the following year. Those who won the awards will collect their money and titles. Unfortunately, no one beyond our shores will not know anything about our awards and winning authors and their work which is a sad tale of the Sri Lankan literary affairs. The situation is entirely different in the East and West.

Man Booker Prize for fiction

First, let's look at the widely acclaimed Man Booker Prize for fiction. This 50,000 pound award is the leading literary award in the English speaking world.

This year, thirteen novels were short-listed for this prestigious award and the chair of judges, former Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion observed: "Here are thirteen exceptional novels - books we have chosen for their intrinsic quality, without reference to the past work of their authors. Wide-ranging in their geography and their concern, they tell powerful stories which make the familiar strange and cover an enormous range of history and feeling. We feel confident that they will provoke and entertain."

This year's shortlisted novels were be announced on Tuesday 7 September at a press conference in London. All the shortlisted authors, including the winner, will receive £2,500 and a designer bound edition of their shortlisted work.

The winner of the Man Booker Prize for 2010 will be announced on Tuesday,12 October in London's Guildhall and will be broadcast on the BBC.

The winner will collect a cheque for £50,000 and can look forward to greatly increased sales and worldwide recognition.

Once the short-listed novels in public arena, anyone who has a logon access to the Man Booker Prize website can provide comments.

In Sri Lanka, unless you are associated with one of the selected panels, no one knows what the long list of work selected for an award and most of the time, the selection criteria, let alone having the ability to provide comments on chosen work.

Ireland's IMPAC Literary

The highly recognised award is organized by Dublin City Libraries, on behalf of Dublin City Council and sponsored by IMPAC, (International Management Productivity Company). The prize award is €100,000. It is the largest literary prize for a single novel. Uniquely, the IMPAC DUBLIN receives its nominations from public libraries around the world.

This year's IMPAC DUBLIN Literary Award was awarded to the novel The Twin, a debut novel by author Gerbrand Bakker who wrote the novel in Dutch. The 2010 International IMPAC DUBLIN Literary Award was divided between the author and the novel's translator, David Colmer, who received €25,000. Is this a trend (not the value of the award), to promote Sri Lankan fiction widely by seeking nominations via libraries?

The Commonwealth Writers' Prize

The Commonwealth Writers' Prize is another prestigious literary award for fiction which was first awarded in 1987. It is organised and funded by the Commonwealth Foundation. This is an intergovernmental organisation working in the 53 countries of the Commonwealth of Nations. The aim of the Prize is to encourage new Commonwealth fictions, and to ensure that works of merit and recognition reach a wider audience outside the author's country of origin.

India's Sahitya Academy Award

The objectives of the prestigious award are to promote the Singapore literary talent through due recognition to outstanding published works by Singapore authors in any of the four official languages: English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil and to stimulate public interest and support for creative writing in Singapore.

It is pertinent to look at the preamble to The India's Sahitya Academy Award's official website which gives insights into the importance of literary awards and the value it asserted on up keeping high literary standards in large numbers of languages spread throughout India.

"The Sahitya Akademi was formally inaugurated by the Government of India on 12 March 1954. The Government of India Resolution, which set forth the constitution of the Akademi, described it as a national organisation to work actively for the development of Indian letters and to set high literary standards, to foster and co-ordinate literary activities in all the Indian languages and to promote through them all the cultural unity of the country. Though set up by the Government, the Akademi functions as an autonomous organisation. It was registered as a society on 7 January 1956, under the Societies Registration Act, 1860.

Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters is the central institution for literary dialogue, publ ication- and promotion in the country and the only institution that undertakes literary activities in twenty-two Indian languages, including English. Over the 49 years of its dynamic existence, it has ceaselessly endeavored to promote good taste and healthy reading habits, to keep alive the intimate dialogue among the various linguistic and literary zones and groups through seminars, lectures, symposia, discussions, readings and performances, to increase the pace of mutual, translations through workshops and individual assignments and to develop a serious literary culture through the publication of journals, monographs, individual creative works of every genre, anthologies, encyclopedias, dictionaries, bibliographies, Who's Who of Writers and histories of literature. It has so far brought out over four thousand two hundred books, the present pace of publication being one book every thirty hours. Every year the Akademi holds at least thirty seminars at regional, national and international levels along with the workshops and literary gatherings - about 200 in number per year, under various heads like Meet the Author, Samvad, Kavisandhi, Kathasandhi, Loka: The Many Voices, Men and Books, Through My Window, Mulakat, Asmita, Antaral, Avishkar and Literary Forum.

Akademi gives twenty-two 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 yearlong process of scrutiny, discussion and selection. It also gives special awards called Bhasha Samman to significant contribution to the languages not formally recognised by the Akademi as also for contribution to classical and medieval literature. It has also a system of electing eminent writers as Fellows and Honorary Fellows and has, also established fellowship in the name of Anand Coomaraswamy. The Akademi has launched Centres for Translation in Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Kolkata and Delhi, and an Archive of Indian Literature in Delhi. Many more imaginative projects are on the anvil. Sahitya Akademi is aware of cultural and linguistic differences and does not believe in forced standardisation of culture through a bulldozing of levels and attitudes. At the same time, it is also conscious of the deep inner cultural, spiritual, historical and experiential links that unify India's diverse manifestations of literature. This unity seeks an international species-dimension through the Akademi's Cultural Exchange Programmes with other countries on the globe."

The Singapore Literature Prize

The Singapore Literature Prize (SLP) is a prestigious literary award presented annually by the National Book Development Council of Singapore (NBDCS) with the support of the National Arts Council, the National Library Board and The Arts House for outstanding published works of fiction in four official languages of Singapore; English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil. The Award presents a cash prize of up to S$ 10,000 dollars.

In Singapore, awards are offered for other categories such as writings on economics and media. For example, The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies bestowed an Excellence Award in the Category of Best Book/Best Writer on Asian Socio-Economic or Media, Asian Publishing Awards 2010: The Singapore Lion: A Biography of S. Rajaratnam by Irene Ng.

National media and communication studies award for Sri Lanka

This is an area that we in Sri Lanka could explore. After all, each and every Sri Lankan university is now trying to teach media and communication studies and some academics publish heaps of books (we are not commenting the quality of these books here) on media and Communication including pioneers in Communication studies.

Thus, we have an opportunity here and perhaps name the awards to recognise our own media gurus such as Edwin Ariyadasa and Wimal Dissanayake.