Eminent author C S Lakshmi, (publishing fiction under her pseudonym Ambai) has been conferred the Tata Literature Live! Lifetime Achievement Award for 2023. One of India's leading writers and academicians, Lakshmi pioneered the writing that supported the idea of educating women in India. She is credited with transforming Tamil fiction, especially the short story genre, imaginatively experimenting with both form and language.
As a leading raconteur of women’s stories, Lakshmi's writings explore their loves, relationships, quests and journeys in the most incisive and nuanced way. A recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award for her novel Sivappu Kazhuthudan Oru Pachai Paravai (A Red-Necked Green Bird), most of her feminist work has been translated into English. And one of her best works Veetin Mulaiyil Oru Samayalarai was translated by Lakshmi Holmström as A Kitchen in the Corner of the House. The book is a riveting composition in which the lives of three generations of women in a Rajasthani household are portrayed through the gaze of a Tamil daughter-in-law.
“I am honoured to receive this award which has been received in the past by writers I admire. It is an honour to the Tamil language in which I write,” says C S Lakshmi.
Born in Coimbatore in 1944, Lakshmi earned post graduate degree in Arts from Madras Universities. She later recived PhD degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Lakshmi is also a co-founder of SPARROW (Sound and Picture Archives for Research on Women), which is touted to be India's first archive dedicated to only women offering a range of writings, and visual and oral records.
Past recipients of the Tata Literature Live! Lifetime Achievement Award include Mahesh Elkunchwar, Anita Desai, Ruskin Bond, Shanta Gokhale, Sir Mark Tully, Girish Karnad, Amitav Ghosh, Kiran Nagarkar, M T Vasudevan Nair, Khushwant Singh, Sir V S Naipaul, Mahashweta Devi.
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