The Prize
Instituted in 2015, the annual awards are presented under 8 categories of Fiction (English), Non-Fiction (English), Popular Choice, Best Cover Design, Best Children’s Picture Book Story, Best Children’s Picture Book Illustrations, Best Children’s Book Fiction and Best Children’s Book Non-Fiction. The awards this year will carry a total purse of Rs. 3,50,000 (Rupees Three Lakhs and Fifty Thousand) to be shared by the winners of the various categories.
The Atta Galatta–Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize is probably the only major literary prize that considers translations, short-story anthologies, e-books and self-published works. The prize is dedicated to the brilliant voices of the year, and in an attempt to make it as inclusive as possible, entries are open to everyone.
The prize highlights the ethos of Atta Galatta and Bangalore Literature Festival: a connection to community. Each year the longlist of books considered for the prize is selected by a jury of readers.
The prize committee appoints a jury of prominent individuals from various areas of Indian literature. The members of the jury read every work of Fiction, Non-Fiction, Children’s Books and will judge the Best Cover Design longlisted for the Prize. The jury will be the final authority on the shortlist and the winner.
The winner of the Popular Choice award is selected on the basis of an online poll, open to readers from all across the world.
The Trophy
Winners of the Atta Galatta-Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize take home an original trophy – Thought Beyond Words – cast in a custom alloy and coated with brass. The trophy was designed by T.S Ramani Sankar, the celebrated architect, and executed by Sampath Appasamy of Artistick’s Art Forum.
Thought Beyond Words aims to showcase how creative insights precede their translation into language.
The sculpture depicts the mind as a tree and thoughts as birds; birds come and go to the branches of the tree. Some fleetingly, some with more persistence. Some birds will take up residence in the tree, build a nest in its branches, giving birth to more thoughts.
Atta Galatta
Atta Galatta is an independent bookstore in Bangalore. The bookstore aims to bring bhasha, poetry, translations, IWE classics and children’s literature back into reading currency. Working with experts for regional languages, for poetry, for children’s literature, for translations, the store carries a curated list of books in languages as varied as Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Hindi and Bengali, a collection spanning 12,000 titles across genre and language.
Bangalore Literature Festival
The Bangalore Literature Festival, founded in 2012, is the second largest literary conclave in India, with close to 200 global and Indian authors and speakers participating each year and footfalls of 25,000 across the two-day event.
The Festival has hosted several literary luminaries since 2012 and its uniqueness lies is the fact that it is entirely citizen/community-funded and run sans any corporate sponsorship or funding, making it a neutral platform with freedom and diversity in programming, with significant volunteer energy to execute the event each year.
