Gratiaen Prize 2017 shortlist to be announced on 2 April

The shortlist for the Gratiaen Prize 2017 will be announced at an event on Monday 2 April, 6 p.m. at the British Council Library, Colombo. All are invited to attend the announcement and listen to the reading of excerpts from the shortlisted entries.

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.  This year the Gratiaen Prize celebrates a 25-year unbroken history of rewarding and recognising Sri Lankan writing in English. 

Keeping with the theme for this year ‘A 25-year journey with Lankan literature’ a number of events have been organised to both celebrate Sri Lanka’s longest-standing English literary prize and also to contribute to the fostering of creative writing talent in the country. 

Partnering with Commonwealth Writers, the Gratiaen Trust which manages the prize, is offering a series of intensive creative writing workshops which will allow aspiring writers to hone and refine their craft. The writing workshops will feature highly experienced overseas and Sri Lankan resource persons. 

In addition, the  Department of English, University of Colombo, is hosting an international seminar entitled ‘The Gratiaen Archive: Truant Readings,’ which will see a range of local and overseas scholars critically evaluating various themes related to the Gratiaen Prize including critical discussions of works that have won or have been shortlisted for the Prize in the past. 

The British Council, which has been hosting the Gratiaen shortlist event from its inception, is also organising a series of readings by authors shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize 2017 at its centres in Colombo, Jaffna and Kandy.

The Gratiaen Prize 2017 is the third to be presented under the Gratiaen Trust’s new partnership with Sarasavi Bookshops who will be sponsoring the main prize awarding event to be held in May.  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  Both published works and unpublished manuscripts are accepted as submissions.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 judges for the Gratiaen Prize 2017 are: Prof. Carmen Wickramagamage, Professor in English at the University of Peradeniya (chair); Andrew Fowler-Watt, Principal of Trinity College Kandy and highly-experienced educationist; and Michelle de Kretser, renowned Australian author of Sri Lankan origin.

The shortlisted writers for 2017 will learn of their selection for the first time at the event on Monday 2 April. Until this time, the decisions of the judges will be kept a closely-guarded secret.  At the event, excerpts of the shortlisted works will be read out and the judges will speak about how they chose the shortlist.  This event, which is free and open to all, precedes the awarding of the prize to a final winner in May this year.

The collection of manuscripts for the Gratiaen Prize and many administrative activities of the Gratiaen Trust, which administers the prizes, are facilitated by the MARGA Institute which has been supporting the Trust for about 20 years. 

For more information please contact Gratiaen Trust Secretary Minoli Malawana at [email protected].