Ranjani Murali, a poet and educator currently living in Chicago, USA, is the winner of the 6th Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize to be presented on October 18 at University of Hyderabad (UoH). She was chosen from a field of 175 contestants this year by a jury consisting of the eminent poet and art critic, Ranjit Hoskote and professors, Mohan G. Ramanan and Sachidananda Mohanty of University of Hyderabad.
Ranjani received her MFA in poetry from George Mason University in Virginia, where she taught creative writing workshops and introductory writing courses. In 2011, she received the Vermont Studio Center’s Kay Evans Poetry fellowship and a nonfiction fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her poetry, nonfiction, and translations have appeared in nthposition, CURA, Cricket Online Review, Phoebe, Kartika Review and elsewhere. Her collaborative poetry projects were exhibited at George Mason University’s Fall for the Book festival in 2010 and 2012. She is currently working on her first book-length poetry collection.
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 Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust was started in the year 2000 to perpetuate the memory of the poet, Srinivas Rayaprol (a.k.a. R.S. Marthandam, 1925-1998), who was one of the significant personalities of the early Indian English Poetry in India. The inaugural prize was awarded in 2009 to Aditi Machado and, subsequently, to Hemant Mohapatra (2010), Aditi Rao (2011), Tushar Jain (2012), and Mihir Vatsa (2013).
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 on the campus of University of Hyderabad in Gachibowli on October 18 at 6.00 pm. The award winner and Ranjit Hoskote will read from their works.