Thiyagaraja Arasanayagam winner of Gratiaen Prize 2015

Thiyagaraja Arasanayagam receives the award from Gratiaen Trust Chairman Walter Perera – Pic by 

Indika Handuwala

‘White Lanterns: Wesak 2011’ by Thiyagaraja Arasanayagam is the winner of the Gratiaen Prize 2015, for the best work of creative writing in English by a Sri Lankan writer living in Sri Lanka. 

Arasanayagam’s writing was commended by the judges for the beguiling simplicity with which it speaks of “regret, rage, shame and impunity…of the darkest moments in our recent, shared history.”

Thiyagaraja Arasanaygam is a past winner of the State Literary Award for the best original play script in English for his play ‘The Intruder’. He has also previously been shortlisted for the Gratiaen for his poetry collection ‘The Singing of the Angels’. Arasanayagam is currently based in Kandy and belongs to a family of writers and artists.

The Gratiaen Prize was founded in 1993 by the Sri Lankan-born writer Michael Ondaatje after he won the Booker Prize for ‘The English Patient’. The prize is awarded each year to the best submitted creative work in English, written by a Sri Lankan writer resident in Sri Lanka. Both published works and unpublished manuscripts are accepted as submissions.

The judging panel for the Gratiaen Prize 2015 was made up of: Captain Elmo Jayawardena, retired airline captain, humanitarian and writer (chair); Tracy Holsinger, theatre practitioner and Dr. Dinali Devendra, an academic at the Open University of Sri Lanka. The judging panel commended the creativity and innovation of the work submitted for consideration this year and explained the multiple challenges it faces when judging across different genres of literature. They also stressed that writers need to subject their work to a rigorous editorial process and to opt for publishing through a professional publisher than self publish as that would raise the quality of the final product.

The Gratiaen Prize 2015 is the first to be presented under the Gratiaen Trust’s new partnership with Sarasavi Bookshops. Speaking at the event Sarasavi Group of Companies Chairman H.D. Premasiri said, “We have always been present at the Gratiaen Award through our book stall where the award winning and short listed books have been sold at the event. But from this year onwards, we come to the award ceremony as proud partners of the Gratiaen Trust. We have every hope that this collaboration will be a fruitful one and will last for many years to come.”