The Deodar Prize is an annual literary award aimed at encouraging new voices in Indian fiction. Across three editions, over 1500 people have applied for the award. The fact that so many Indians are expressing themselves creatively is cause enough for celebration. Yet, discovering the right voice for the prize takes work. 

Finding writers in India who engage primarily in English writing is not difficult. What is hard, is finding writers who can deliver cultural rootedness, originality and lived experiences from all parts of India and our heritage, via this "inherited" tongue. 

Among writers too, there is a desire to express one's cultural uniqueness, and place-based schemas which are inherently vernacular. To write in English - then - is to exist in a state of contradiction with oneself. 

Furthermore, building yourself up as an English writer in India is difficult. Commonwealth writers do experience a kind of disadvantage when it comes to succeeding at the global scale and being able to produce writing that is considered universal and important. Our formal institutions of learning - schools, colleges - do not provide the soft infrastructure required for an education in the arts. Similarly, the “market” is not mature enough to provide writers with the communities, opportunities and platforms that exist in other parts of the English-speaking world. 

Deodar exists to help in all these practical ways. But deep down, it hopes to acquaint many people with the very joy of writing fiction, as the very process is deeply therapeutic. 

"We heal when we transmute the chaos of life into the structure of a novel, when we learn to walk through the world as observers and students rather than wounded, when we make choices about what parts of a story are important and what we can let go of." 

Might stories be the best mental health intervention? :)

To know more, write in to info@deodarprize.in

The Deodar Prize

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The Deodar Prize

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