New Kavya Prize announces shortlist

Clockwise top left - Katie Goh, David Onamade, Hannah Lavery, Uma Nada-Rajah, Sean Wai Keung and Lorraine Wilson The shortlist for a new Scottish literary prize celebrating published work by Scottish writers of colour has been announced today. The Kavya Prize, in association with the University of Glasgow and founded by Indian-born Scottish author Leela Soma, seeks to recognise, and encourage writers of colour who are Scottish by birth, residence or formation. The inaugural prize for full-length published works of fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry or short story collections will be awarded at Aye Write on Saturday 21 May 2022 and is worth £1000. Kavya is a popular and well recognised word in Sanskrit and refers to a literary style or a completed body of literature that was used in Indian courts of the Maharajahs who nurtured the cultural arts in India. The shortlist for the Kavya Prize 2022 is: - Katie Goh, writer and journalist - The End: Surviving the World Through Imagined Disasters (404 Ink) Hannah Lavery, poet and playwright - Lament for Sheku Bayoh (Salamander Street) Uma Nada-Rajah, playwright - Toy Plastic Chicken (Salamander Street) David Onamade, a writer of poetry and prose, who sadly passed away in 2021 - Sorrow, Tears and Blood (Arkbound Publishing) Sean Wai Keung, writer and performance maker - Sikfan Glaschu (Verve Poetry Press) Lorraine Wilson, writer - This is Our Undoing (Luna Press) - The Kavya Prize 2022 Judges are: - Leila Aboulela, a fiction writer of Sudanese origin who now lives in Scotland.