The Kavya Prize 2024 shortlist announced
Published: 23 September 2024
The Kavya Prize seeks to recognise and encourage the literary achievement of Scottish writers of colour
The shortlist for The Kavya Prize – which seeks to recognise and encourage the literary achievement of Scottish writers of colour – has been announced.
This year’s prize has focused on traditionally published books, plays and poetry collections.
The Kavya Prize, in association with the University of Glasgow, was founded by the late Indian-born Scottish author Leela Soma, to recognise, and encourage writers of colour who are Scottish by birth, residence or formation. The prize is also supported by Aye Write, Glasgow’s Book Festival.
Shortlist for The Kavya Prize 2024 are:
- The Last to Drown – Lorraine Wilson. Publishers Luna Press Publishing.
- New Skin for the Old Ceremony – Arun Sood. Publishers 404 Ink.
- Tapping at Glass – Tim Tim Cheng. Publishers Verve Poetry Press.
- Belonging – Amanda Thomson. Publishers Canongate.
- At least this I know – Andrés N. Ordorica. Publishers 404 Ink.
The inaugural prize in 2022 was won by playwright Uma Nada-Rajah for Toy, Plastic Chicken! published by Salamander Street. In 2023, The Kavya Prize New Writers Award was awarded jointly to Q Manivannan for The Physics of It (Non-Fiction Excerpt) and Jinling Wu for Cocoon (Short Story Collection).
Author and University of Glasgow lecturer Professor Zoe Strachan said: “The Kavya Prize shortlist for 2024 showcases the vibrant diversity and exceptional talent within Scotland's literary landscape.
“As we honour these remarkable authors, we also celebrate the enduring legacy of Leela Soma, whose vision continues to illuminate and amplify voices that have been traditionally underrepresented. This prize is not just a recognition of literary excellence, but a beacon of inspiration for future generations of writers."
The inaugural prize in 2022, like this year, highlights the published works of fiction, creative fiction, poetry, script or short story collections. Last year in 2023, The Kavya Prize celebrated unpublished writers of colour writing across all genres. The Kavya Prize will continue this cycle – one year published and the following unpublished writers of colour – as it continues to develops and grows.
The Kavya Prize founder Leela Soma died in December 2022 and the prize is seen as a legacy of her passionate advocacy and support of writers of colour.
The winner of The Kavya Prize 2024 will receive a £1000 prize as well as several networking opportunities. The winner will be announced at a prize giving ceremony at the Mitchell Library, Glasgow on 10 October 2024.
Kavya is a popular and well recognised word in Sanskrit and refers to a literary style or a completed body of literature that was used in Indian courts of the Maharajahs who nurtured the cultural arts in India.
The Kavya Prize: Learn more about The Kavya Prize 2024
About Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow
The University of Glasgow’s Creative Writing postgraduate taught, and research-led writing courses are among the most challenging and popular in Britain. They have helped launch the career of a number of successful writers. Learn more here - https://www.gla.ac.uk/subjects/creativewriting/
Shortlist biographies
The Last to Drown – Lorraine Wilson
Lorraine Wilson is a third culture Scot, conservation scientist and award-winning author of speculative fiction influenced by folklore and the wilderness. She has published two novels with Luna Press – the dystopian thriller This Is Our Undoing, and the dark folkloric mystery, The Way The Light Bends. Her book, Mother Sea, is an exploration of motherhood, climate change and belonging. Her shortlisted novella with Luna Press, The Last to Drown, was released in February 2024. It follows Tinna who cannot remember the last words she said to her husband. Three whole months of her memories were stolen in the crash that killed him and left her scarred and suffering from chronic pain.
https://linktr.ee/raine_clouds
New Skin for the Old Ceremony – Arun Sood
Arun Sood is a Scottish-Indian writer, musician and academic working across multiple forms. He was born in Aberdeen to a West-Highland Mother and Punjabi
father, and has since lived in Glasgow, Amsterdam, Washington DC, and now Plymouth, South Devon. Arun’s critical and creative practice ranges from academic publications, editorials, poetry and fiction to ambient musical tapestries. Broadly, his varied outputs engage with diasporic identities, mixed-race heritage, ancestry, language and memory. New Skin For The Old Ceremony follows four estranged friends reunited for a motorcycle trip up the Isle of Skye in the hope of coming to terms with how their lives have splintered since a transformative ride in Northern India years earlier. @arunskisood
Tapping the Glass – Tim Tim Cheng
Tapping At Glass charts girlhood, multilingualism, and psychogeography from Hong Kong to Scotland. Myths, meditations on the arts and mass media, and migration stories entwine. Through protest-stricken urban spaces, love hotels, farming as activism, frog watching, alternative therapies, and seascapes where racial and social memories flow in all directions, the working-class subjects in Tim Tim Cheng’s poems reflect on what it means to exist in one locale and dream of elsewhere, where the past and future, interconnectedness and othering, are in perpetual negotiation. Tapping into various moods, Tim Tim Cheng’s poems question the making of a self and a city, and the languages one uses to translate microhistories. Tapping At Glass is Tim Tim Cheng’s debut pamphlet collection. https://www.timtimcheng.com/
Belonging – Amanda Thomson
Amanda Thomson is a Scottish writer and visual artist, and a lecturer at the Glasgow School of Art. Her first book, A Scots Dictionary of Nature, was published in 2018. She has spoken at many book festivals and had her work published in Antlers of Water, Willowherb Review, The Wild Isles, Gifts of Gravity and Light and the Guardian. She lives and works in Strathspey in the Scottish Highlands and Glasgow. Reflecting on family, identity and nature, Belonging is a personal memoir about what it is to have and make a home. It also features Amanda Thomson's artwork and photography throughout, it explores how place, language and family shape us and make us who we are. Passingplaces.com
At Least This I Know - Andrés N. Ordorica
Andrés N. Ordorica is a queer Latinx poet and writer based in Edinburgh, who creates worlds filled with characters who are from neither here nor there (ni de aquí,
ni de allá). The powerful debut collection - At Least This I Know - explores ancestry, racism, nationhood, activism and queerness in a journey through childhood to adulthood. He is passionate about advocating for increased opportunities for marginalised communities to engage with the creatives arts.
First published: 23 September 2024