Kanya gets a step closer to big prize
Kanya D’Almeida: A strong voice for women. Pic by Nejma Nefertiti
Sri Lankan writer Kanya D’Almeida has won the Asia Regional Prize in the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Competition. Now in its tenth year, the Commonwealth Short Story Prize is awarded annually for the best piece of unpublished short fiction from the Commonwealth. This year’s regional winners, announced on May 12, were chosen from a record 6423 entries from 50 Commonwealth countries.
“Even among Asia’s gratifyingly strong showing in this year’s Commonwealth short fiction sweepstakes, Kanya’s submission stood out. A life-affirming story of love among the rambutan and clove trees of Sri Lanka – love for a baby not one’s own, love for a high-spirited elderly woman. Love found not among the stars but in human excrement. Literally. And all the more glorious for it. Just as class differences are subtly shaded, so too the narrator is aptly, and exquisitely, named Ishwari (Sanskrit for Goddess, with a capital ‘G’). A tale powerfully realized,” said Judge, Khademul Islam.
Kanya’s fiction has appeared on ‘Jaggery’ and ‘The Bangalore Review’. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University’s School of the Arts and is working on a book of short stories about mad women. Kanya is the host of ‘The Darkest Light’, a podcast exploring birth and motherhood in Sri Lanka.
“Writing in the English language, in a former British colony, means you’re never quite at home in language. All around you a world is unfolding in other tongues; words must either be cramped or elongated to fit circumstances that are decidedly not English; and your characters themselves may be unfamiliar with the language of your own story! That’s why I believe the Commonwealth Short Story Prize is such a haven for writers across the world—it is perhaps the only forum large enough to accommodate the many expressions of language that thrive from region to region. To be in the company of such a diversity of voices, to have my story read by such a diversity of judges, and to see the story emerge as one of the regional winners, is one of the great honours of my life,” said Kanya in the announcement issued by Commonwealth Writers.
The winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize will be announced on June 30, 2021.
A.I.
To read The Sunday Times interview with Kanya, please visit sundaytimes.lk/ and view the May 9, 2021 edition,
Plus Section.