Jury for the 2013 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature

The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature announced the jury for its 2013 edition. The five-member panel includes Eleanor O'Keeffe, K Satchidanandan, Muneeza Shamsie, Rick Simonson and Suvani Singh.

Eleanor O'Keeffe is an Irish/Canadian cultural entrepreneur. After living and working in Paris for a number of years, she was co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival for two of its earlier years as well as co-director of the Shakespeare and Company Festival in Paris from 2004-6. In 2007, she was one of the founders of the Palestine Festival of Literature (PalFest). Since moving to London to 2007, she has created and run 5×15 – a cultural events company that curates evenings of intellectual cabaret. Most recently she has helped curate the Borris House Hay Festival in Ireland. She holds a PhD in History from Cambridge University.

K Satchidanandan, a pioneering modern Indian poet, critic, editor, translator, academic and literary organizer, was the chief executive of India’s national Academy of Letters. He has authored twenty-one collections of poetry, sixteen books of translations of world poetry and twenty-one works of literary criticism in Malayalam and English besides plays and travelogues. He has won twenty- five awards for his literary contribution from diverse institutions in India and abroad and is a Fellow of the Kerala Academy of Literature. He has won the Knighthood of Merit from the government of Italy and an India-Poland Friendship Medal from the government of Poland. Representative collections of his poetry have appeared in eighteen languages. He has lectured and read and his work has appeared in anthologies of poetry in several countries across the world from USA to Australia.

The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature announced the jury for its 2013 edition.

Muneeza Shamsie is a Pakistani writer and critic. She has edited three anthologies of Pakistani English Literature including the award winning, And The World Changed: Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women. She is guest editor of The Journal of Postcolonial Writing 47.2: Beyond Geography: Literature, Politics and Violence in Pakistan (May 2011), and also the bibliographic representative (Pakistan) for The Journal of Commonwealth Literature. She is on the advisory board of Bengal Lights and the editorial board of Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies. She lives in Karachi, freelances for Dawn and Newsline and is Managing Editor of a work-in-progress, The Oxford Companion to the Literatures of Pakistan.

Rick Simonson has worked at Seattle’s Elliott Bay Book Company, one of the US’s leading independent bookstores, since 1976. He is senior buyer and also founded, and co-direct’s Elliott Bay’s internationally renowned author reading program, which annually presents over 400 authors from the US and other countries, including many from South Asia. He serves on the governing boards of Copper Canyon Press and the University of Washington Press, is an adviser with the Gardner Center for Asian Art & Ideas, which stages an Eye on India literary program, among other offerings.

Suvani Singh is the Festival Director of Kathmandu Literary Jatra, an international literature festival in Nepal. She runs a bookshop, Quixote’s Cove, through which she organizes and manages literary arts events in Kathmandu. The bookshop works closely with schools and colleges in Kathmandu to develop their libraries as well as conduct workshops with teachers and students to promote creative writing and the love for reading. She often finds herself taking on the role of a literary agent and is toying with the idea of formalizing it.

The prize brings South Asian writing to a new global audience through a celebration of the achievements of South Asian writers, and aims to raise awareness of South Asian culture around the world.

The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature is an extension of its existing sponsorship of the Jaipur Literature Festival.

The prize celebrates the rich and varied world of literature in this region and promote the achievements of South Asian writers as well as writers of any ethnicity writing about South Asia and its many diaspora.

The DSC Prize carries an award of US $ 50,000 and the first edition of the prize has generated tremendous response in international literary forums.

The first DSC Prize for South Asian Literature was awarded to H M Naqvi for his debut novel 'Home Boy' in January 2011. followed by Shehan Karunatilaka, Sri Lankan author of 'Chinaman' in 2012.

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