The Kerala Sahitya Akademi or Academy for Malayalam Literature is an autonomous body established to promote the Malayalam language and literature. It is situated in the city of Thrissur, Kerala in India.
Madath Thekkepaattu Vasudevan Nair, popularly known as M.T., is an Indian author, screenplay writer and film director. He is a prolific and versatile writer in modern Malayalam literature, and is one of the masters of post-Independence Indian literature. At the age of 20, as a chemistry undergraduate, he won the prize for the best short story in Malayalam at World Short Story Competition conducted by The New York Herald Tribune. His first major novel Naalukettu, written at the age of 23, won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award in 1958. His other novels include Manju (Mist), Kaalam (Time), Asuravithu and Randamoozham. The deep emotional experiences of his early days have gone into the making of MT's novels. Most of his works are oriented towards the basic Malayalam family structure and culture and many of them were path-breaking in the history of Malayalam literature. His three seminal novels on life in the matriarchal family in Kerala are Naalukettu, Asuravithu, and Kaalam. Randamoozham, which retells the story of the Mahabharatha from the point of view of Bhimasena, is widely credited as his masterpiece.
Maniyambath Mukundan is an Indian author of Malayalam literature and former diplomat. He worked as a cultural attaché at the Embassy of France in Delhi from 1961 to 2004, while concurrently working as an author. Many of his early works are set in Mahé (Mayyazhi), his homeland, which earned him the moniker Mayyazhiyude Kathakaaran. He is known to be one of the pioneers of modernity in Malayalam literature. Some of his best known works include Mayyazhippuzhayude Theerangalil, Daivathinte Vikrithikal, Kesavante Vilapangal, and Pravasam.
Sankarankutty Kunjiraman Pottekkatt was an Indian writer of Malayalam literature, traveller, and politician from Kerala. Best known for his travelogues, he has authored nearly 60 books, which include 10 novels, 24 collections of short stories, three anthologies of poems, 18 travelogues, four plays, a collection of essays and a couple of books based on personal reminiscences.
Sugathakumari was an Indian poet and activist, who was at the forefront of environmental and feminist movements in Kerala, South India.
Dr. K. Ayyappa Paniker, sometimes spelt "Ayyappa Panicker", was a Malayalam poet, literary critic, and an academic and a scholar in modern and post-modern literary theories as well as ancient Indian aesthetics and literary traditions. He was one of the pioneers of modernism in Malayalam poetry, where his seminal works like Kurukshethram (1960), is considered a turning point in Malayalam poetry. Many of Ayyappa Paniker's poems and his several essays were an important influence on later generations of Malayalam writers.
D. Vinayachandran was an Indian Malayalam poet. He is one of the proponents of modern style of prose in Malayalam poetry. He was born in West Kallada, Kollam district and has worked as a Malayalam professor in various colleges for more than thirty years. He had his early education in schools in and around Kallada. After completing his master's in Malayalam literature from Government Sanskrit College, Pattambi, he entered the collegiate education service as a lecture and worked in various government colleges across Kerala. He joined the faculty of Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, in 1991 and retired from University's School of Letters in 2006.
Punathil Kunjabdulla was an Indian writer from Kerala. A medical doctor by profession, Kunjabdulla was a practitioner of the avant-garde in Malayalam literature. His work includes more than 45 books, including 7 novels, 15 short story collections, memoirs, an autobiography and travelogues. His work Smarakasilakal won the Central and State Akademi Awards.
N. P. Mohammed, popularly known by his initials N. P., was an Indian novelist, short story writer and screenwriter of Malayalam language. Along with his contemporaries like M. T. Vasudevan Nair, O. V. Vijayan, Kakkanadan, and Madhavikutty, he was known to have been one of the pioneers of modernist movement in Malayalam fiction. He was the president of Kerala Sahitya Akademi and a recipient of several awards including Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award, Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Story, Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Novel, Lalithambika Antharjanam Award, Padmaprabha Literary Award and the Muttathu Varkey Award.
Subhash Chandran is a Malayalam novelist, short story writer and journalist from Kerala, India. His work includes the 2010 novel Manushyanu Oru Aamukham and the stories "Vadhakramam", "Sanmargam", "Parudeesa Nashtam" and "Gotham", which have been adapted into films. Chandran is the only writer to receive Kerala Sahitya Akademi Awards for both his debut story collection (2001) and debut novel (2011).
K. R. Meera is an Indian author and journalist, who writes in Malayalam. She was born in Sasthamkotta, Kollam district in Kerala. She worked as a journalist in Malayala Manorama but later resigned to concentrate more on writing. She started writing fiction in 2001 and her first short story collection Ormayude Njarambu was published in 2002. Since then she has published five collections of short stories, two novellas, five novels and two children's books. She won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award in 2009 for her short-story, Ave Maria. Her novel Aarachaar (2012) is widely regarded as one of the best literary works produced in Malayalam language. It received several awards including the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award (2013), Odakkuzhal Award (2013), Vayalar Award (2014) and Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award (2015). It was also shortlisted for the 2016 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.
Khadija Mumtaz is a Malayalam author from Kerala state, India. She is a medical doctor by profession and is probably best known in the Kerala literary circles for her second novel Barsa which won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award in 2010.
K. G. Sankara Pillai is an Indian poet. He came into prominence in the 1970s with the publication of the poem "Bengal" and is now one of the most popular among the modernist poets of Kerala. A recipient of the state and central Sahitya Akademi Awards in 1998 and 2002 respectively, his writings in Malayalam have been translated into many Indian languages, as well as Chinese, French, German, English and Sinhala.
Smarakasilaka is a Malayalam novel written by Punathil Kunjabdulla in 1977. The story of the novel is woven around a mosque and its surroundings. The key figure is Khan Bahadur Pookkoya Thangal of the rich Arakkal family whose character is a rare mixture of dignity, benevolence and insatiable lust.
Aarachaar is a Malayalam novel written by K. R. Meera. Originally serialised in Madhyamam Weekly in continuous 53 volumes, the novel was published as a book by DC Books in 2012. It was translated by J. Devika into English under the title Hangwoman: Everyone Loves a Good Hanging.
The Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Story is an award given every year by the Kerala Sahitya Akademi to Malayalam writers for writing a story of literary merit. It is one of the twelve categories of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award.
The Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Scholarly Literature is an award given every year by the Kerala Sahitya Akademi to Malayalam writers for writing scholarly literature of literary merit. It is one of the twelve categories of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award.
Priya A. S. is an Indian writer of Malayalam literature. She writes short stories, children's literature, translations and memoirs. She has translated Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things into Malayalam under the title Kunju Karyangalude Odeythampuran of which Roy herself has said that although there have been translations in several languages, no other translation is as important to her as this, as it is the language of the novel's central characters. She is a three-time recipient of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award.
Susmesh Chandroth is an Indian writer, who writes in Malayalam. He won the first Yuva Puraskar for Malayalam in 2011 instituted by the Sahitya Akademi, Government of India. Susmesh Chandroth is also involved in the Malayalam film industry. He scripted and directed the feature film Padmini (film) based on the life story of the painter T. K. Padmini in the year 2018.
