New Delhi: The Kalachuvadu publishing house – best known for discovering writers like Salma and Perumal Murugan – bagged a top prize at the prestigious Publishing Next Industry Awards (PNIA).
At the fifth edition of the awards, presented in New Delhi on January 12, the Nagercoil-based Kalachuvadu was recognised as “a publisher that prioritises books of the highest quality and tries to reinvent them so as to be relevant to the reader.”
The jury said that the publishing house’s effort at “the exchange of ideas with foreign publishers at various fora, the rights sales of their books and their purchase of rights to translate and publish in Tamil, communicates a sense of them working towards a larger vision of publishing.”
The annual awards, launched in 2014 as part of the Publishing Next Conference, gives prizes in ten categories.
Some of the other winners for 2018 are – Sonal Zohra (Illustrator of the Year), Trilogy Bookstore in Mumbai (The Bookstore of the Year), and Premanka Goswami (Editor of the Year).
M. Rohini has won the Indian languages category award for her design of the cover of Peruvali, published by Kalachuvadu Publications, and Pooja Saxena for her design of the cover of Centrepiece, published by Zubaan, in the English category. The Konyaks: Last of the Tattooed Headhunters, published by Roli Books, has won the award in the Best Illustrated Books category. The Best Children’s Book award has gone jointly to A Book for Puchku, published by Pratham Books, and Salim Mamoo and Me, published by Tulika Publishers, Chennai.
While Sair-ul-Manazil, published by Tulika Books, Delhi, has bagged the Best Printed Book of the Year (English), Janamaru Marana, published by Dhauli Books, has won it in the Indian Languages category.
It also gave away 10 runner-up awards in each category.
The awards presentation ceremony, which till last year was held in Goa during the annual Publishing Next Conference, was organised at the India International Centre in Delhi this year to coincide with the ongoing New Delhi World Book Fair.
The event also saw a panel discussion on ‘Truth and Morality: What’s Publishing got to do with it,’ with speakers from the publishing industry like Vivek Mehra, Karthika V.K., Arpita Das and Raman Shreshta taking part in it. Ravikant, associate professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies delivered a keynote address on the future of Indian languages adopting digital technologies.