Shillonng: Meghalayan writer Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih has been honoured with the Shakti Bhatt Award 2024.
Known for writing about his tribe Khasi, Nongkynrih is a veteran poet, fictioneer, and critic. He writes poetry, drama and fiction in Khasi and English languages.
His latest novel The Distaste of the Earth was recently longlisted for the prestigious JCB Prize for Literature 2024.
His hometown Sohra was described in his novel Funeral Nights (2021) as “the wettest desert on earth”.
The Shakti Bhatt award, started in 2008, in memory of the late editor and writer Shakti Bhatt, is awarded for a writer’s body of work. The award carries a cash prize of Rs 2 lakh.
His latest works include The Distaste of the Earth: A Novel, The Yearning of Seeds: Poems, Time’s Barter: Haiku and Senryu and Around the Hearth: Khasi Legends.
Around the Hearth traces the lineage of stories – about gods, nature and humanity – that have animated Nongkynrih’s tribe long before Thomas Jones, a Christian missionary, brought in the Roman script in 1842 and began forming the Khasi script.
In Poetry International, Poet Arundhathi Subramaniam said, “He regards Khasi as the language of his tribe and English as the language that enables him to reject isolationism.”
Nongkynrih’s awards include the Northeast Poetry Award (2004), the Veer Shankar Shah-Raghunath Shah National Award (2008), a Tagore Fellowship (2018), The Bangalore Review June Jazz Award (2021) and the Sparrow Literary Award (2022).
ALSO READ: Meghalaya’s first private medical college gets National Medical Council’s nod
He teaches literature at Northeastern Hill University, Shillong.
His forthcoming books in Khasi include Ki Sawangka Shi Bynta (one-act plays), and Ka Shithi Sha Sahit (his fifth collection of poetry).
