Satya Dash,a 29-year old poet and independent artist based in Bangalore, has been chosen for the 12th Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize. Dash, who grew up in Cuttack, Odisha, was selected from a field of 180 contestants from all over the country by a jury consisting of the well-known poet and writer, Mamang Dai, and two faculty members from the Department of English, University of Hyderabad.  Huzaifa Pandit, Stuti Pachisia, and Pervin Saket are the other poets who made it to the jury’s shortlist.

Satya Dash’s poems have appeared in Waxwing, Wildness, Redivider, Passages North, The Journal, The Florida Review, Prelude, The Cortland Review, Hobart, Poetry@Sangam, among others. Apart from having a degree in electronics from BITS Pilani-Goa, he has also been a cricket commentator. He has been nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and Orison Anthology.

Recognised as a significant award for creative writing in India, the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize was instituted by the Hyderabad-based Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust to recognize excellence in poetry written in English by poets in the age group of 20-40 years.  The Prize is jointly administered by the Department of English, University of Hyderabad.

The inaugural prize was awarded in 2009 to Aditi Machado and, subsequently, to Hemant Mohapatra (2010), Aditi Rao (2011), Tushar Jain (2012), Mihir Vatsa (2013), and Ranjani Murali (2014), Aishwarya Iyer (2015), Goirick Brahmachari (2016), Debarshi Mitra (2017), Poorna Swami (2018), and Prashant Parvataneni (2019).  Eminent poets like Jeet Thayil, Sudeep Sen, Keki Daruwalla, Arundhati Subramanian, Manohar Shetty, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Ranjit Hoskote, E.V. Ramakrishnan, and Gieve Patel have been associated with the prize as jury members. The award, consisting of a citation and cash prize of Rs. 15,000 will be presented to the winner at a literary event to be held online.