Kannada literature is the corpus of written forms of the Kannada language, spoken mainly in the Indian state of Karnataka and written in the Kannada script.
Kuppalli Venkatappa Puttappa, popularly known by his pen name Kuvempu, was an Indian poet, playwright, novelist and critic. He is widely regarded as the greatest Kannada poet of the 20th century. He was the first Kannada writer to receive the Jnanpith Award.
Kannada Saahithya Parishath is an Indian non-profit organisation that promotes the Kannada language and its literature. Its headquarters are in the city of Bengaluru in the state of Karnataka, India. It strives to promote Kannada language through publishing books, organising literary seminars and promoting research projects. It also organises an annual conference on Kannada literature called Kannada Sahithya Sammelana. The current president of the parishat is Dr. Mahesh joshi.
Bengaluru Gundappa Lakshminarayana Swamy was an Indian botanist and Kannada writer who was professor, head of the botany department and principal of Presidency College, Chennai. He was the son of D. V. Gundappa, an Indian philosopher and writer in the Kannada language.
The Halmidi inscription is the oldest known Kannada-language inscription in the Kadamba script. While estimates vary slightly, the inscription is often dated to between 450 CE - 500 CE. The inscription was discovered in 1936 by Dr. M. H. Krishna, the Director of Archaeology of the (princely) State of Mysore, in Halmidi, a village in the Hassan district.
Theerthapura Nanjundaiah Srikantaiah commonly known as 'Thee. Nam. Shree., was a Kannada poet, essayist, editor, translator, linguist and teacher. He was awarded the Pampa Prashasthi for his work on the history and tradition of Indian poetics spanning two millennia titled Bharathiya Kavyamimamse. T. N. Srikantaiah was instrumental in preparing and publishing the Kannada version of Constitution of India in 1952. He is credited with the use of the vernacular equivalent of Rashtrapathi for the English 'President', a usage which is still in vogue. Srikantaiah was responsible for guiding the doctoral theses of Kannada litterateurs like S. Anantanarayan and M. Chidananda Murthy. An active participant in the Kannada Dictionary Project, Srikantaiah later laid the foundations for the Post Graduate Department at Manasa Gangotri campus at University of Mysore.
Guggari Shanthaveerappa Shivarudrappa, or colloquially GSS, was an Indian Kannada poet, writer, and researcher who was awarded the title of Rashtrakavi by the Government of Karnataka in 2006.
Chandrashekhara Basavanneppa Kambara is a prominent Indian poet, playwright, folklorist, film director in Kannada language and the founder-vice-chancellor of Kannada University in Hampi also president of the Sahitya Akademi, country's premier literary institution, after Vinayak Krishna Gokak (1983) and U.R. Ananthamurthy (1993). He is known for effective adaptation of the North Karnataka dialect of the Kannada language in his plays, and poems, in a similar style as in the works of D.R. Bendre.
Extinct Kannada literature is a body of literature of the Kannada language dating from the period preceding the first extant work, Kavirajamarga.
Mysore Venkatadasappa Seetharamiah or M. V. See was an Indian Kannada language author, editor and translator. Through a career spanning over sixty years, he published over 100 works spanning short stories, poetry, novels, and dramas. Some of his notable works included Sri Vijaya kruta Kavirajamarga, a retelling of the classical Kavirajamarga, Udayadityalankara, a work on Kannada poetics, and also other works on ancient Kannada language grammar.
Dr. H. R. Vishwasa is a Sanskrit scholar residing in Mangalore, India. He won a Sahitya Akademi Translation Prize in 2010 for translating S. L. Bhyrappa's Kannada novel Aavarana into Sanskrit.
Adya Rangacharya, known as R.V. Jagirdar till 1948, later popularly known by his pen name Sriranga, was an Indian Kannada writer, actor and scholar, and a member of the Adya Jahagirdar family. He was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship in 1967 and the Sahitya Akademi Award for literature in 1971 for Kalidasa, a literary criticism in Kannada.
Dr. D. R. Nagaraj was an Indian cultural critic, political commentator and an expert on medieval and modern Kannada poetry and Dalit movement who wrote in Kannada and English languages. He won Sahitya Akademi Award for his work Sahitya Kathana. He started out as a Marxist critic but renounced the Marxist framework that he had used in the book Amruta mattu Garuda as too reductionist and became a much more eclectic and complex thinker. He is among the few Indian thinkers to shed new light on Dalit and Bahujan politics. He regarded the Gandhi-Ambedkar debate on the issue of caste system and untouchability as the most important contemporary debate whose outcome would determine the fate of India in the 21st century.
Togere Venkatasubbasastry Venkatachala Sastry, commonly known as T. V. Venkatachala Shastry, is a Kannada-language writer, grammarian, critic, editor and lexicographer. He has authored in excess of 100 books, translations and has edited collections of essays, biographical sketches and felicitation volumes. Recipient of the Kannada Sahitya Akademi Award (honorary), Sastry is an authority on Kannada language grammar and its various facets ranging from the metre scale on which he has written extensively to the history of Kannada literature spanning two millennia.
Kampalapura Veeranna Narayana, also known as KVN, is an Indian linguist, professor of Kannada language and literature, and a literary critic. He is currently the Chairman of the Kuvempu Bhasha Bharathi Pradikara, Government of Karnataka. He hails from Piriyapattana in Mysore district. During his time as a professor in Bangalore University, he initiated investigations into Kannada language and culture from the root level. He served as the registrar of Hampi Kannada University. His major areas of interest are Kannada language, literature, teaching and science.
Lankappa Hanumanthaiah is an Indian poet, politician of the Indian National Congress and a member of the upper house of the Indian Parliament, the Rajya Sabha, from the state of Karnataka.
Kamala Hampana was an Indian writer who wrote in the Kannada language. Born in Devanahalli in Karnataka, she worked as a scholar and professor of ancient works and undertook studies on difference genres of Kannada literature, as well as topics involving Jainism.
Haleyuru Srinivasa Krishnaswamy Iyengar was a Kannada columnist, essayist, novelist, critic and teacher of Economics and Commerce studies in Mysore. He is remembered for his character sketches and short essays on personalities and issues of national & international import, in his weekly column "Varada Vyakthi". These appeared in the Kannada magazine "Sudha" continuously for nearly two decades. His literary critique "Kannadadalli Vidambana Sahitya" won him the Kannada Sahitya Akademi Award in 1981. His perspective on elements of Vishistadvaita in the works of Kuvempu were brought forth in his book "Kuvempu Sahityadalli Vishistadvaita – Darshana". H. S. K. penned close to thousand character sketches over two decades. These were later published in four collected volumes. He received the "Rajyotsava Award" from Government of Karnataka in 1997. For his lifetime contribution to Journalism and Kannada literature, the University of Mysore conferred a doctorate degree on him in 2004.
Pratibha Nandakumar is an Indian poet, journalist, feminist, columnist and activist who works in Kannada and English. She is considered as one of the pioneers of modern woman's poetry in Kannada literature. For her work Kavadeyaata, Pratibha was awarded the Karnataka Sahitya Akademi Award for Poetry in 1998.
Taľaku Subbanna Venkannayya was University of Mysore's first Kannada Professor. He was also a popular Kannada writer, translator, editor and teacher who nurtured many later Kannada littérateurs like Kuvempu, D. L. Narasimhachar, T. N. Srikantaiah, K. S. Narasimhaswamy, M. V. Seetharamaiah, C. K. Venkataramaiah, K. Venkataramappa, G. Venkatasubbiah and S. V. Parameshwara Bhatta. In fact, Kuvempu begins his book Sri Ramayana Darshanam with a two-page dedication to his teacher T. S. Venkannayya. T. S. Venkannayya translated the biography of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa from Bengali into Kannada for the first time in 1919. T. S. Venkannayya along with D. V. Gundappa, V. Seetharamaiah, B. M. Srikantaiah and T. N. Srikantaiah were at the forefront of the Kannada Movement from 1920s onwards and were instrumental in the founding of Kannada Sahitya Parishat (Bangalore) and Kannada Sangha at Central College, Bangalore and Maharaja College, Mysore. T. S. Venkannayya was responsible for the organising of the 1931 Kannada Sahitya Sammelan at Mysore.
