We are very happy to share that we received an overwhelming response for the inaugural edition of the Mozhi Prize. We received 91 entries overall from India and other parts of the world, including Sri Lanka, Canada and the United States.
We had opened the contest to anyone aged 15 or more; the youngest participant was 13, and the oldest was 73. We accepted entries from individuals as well as teams of two. 10 of our entries were from teams of two – either friends or colleagues who had paired up, or married couples, or parent and child. In a bid to encourage participants to translate younger, more contemporary authors, we had asked them to submit translations of stories written after 1972. We received translations of works by a wide range of writers, including Vaasanthi, Chandra, Ambai, Uma Maheshwari; Su. Venugopal, Shoba Shakti, Perumal Murugan; Jeyakanthan, La. Sa. Ra, Prapanjan, Ki. Ra, Sujatha, A. Madhavan; Pa. Thiruchendhazhai, Senthil Jegannathan; A. Muttulingam, Vannadasan, Vannanilavan, Aadhavan, S. Ramakrishnan and Jeyamohan. We could not consider A. Muttulingam’s stories because he is a judge and this exclusion was mentioned in our rules.
We have made a few exceptions to the rules stated in the competition announcement. 1. Word limit – We had asked that stories be a minimum of 2,000 and a maximum of 7,000 words. While we have rejected stories that have crossed the maximum word limit, we chose to consider the shorter stories since all such submissions were true to the short story form and none of them had a flash-fiction quality to them. 2. We had asked that the stories should not have been published before in translation. However, we have accepted stories for whom a previous translation was published in journals that had little / no English editorial.
We thank all the participants who sent in their submissions. We were delighted to receive so many entries and we hope you continue your journey in translation.
The two of us (Priyamvada and Suchitra) read through the stack of 91 entries and longlisted 21 entries. These were sent to our panel of judges, who prepared the shortlist and decided on the prizes. We are deeply grateful to the judges, A Muttulingam, Deepa Bhasthi and N Kalyan Raman for their time and engagement with the competition. The submissions were judged on both the literary quality of the chosen story and the translation quality. At the end of the exercise, we are excited to announce the shortlist of 9 entries, viz.,
(in no particular order):
| Story | Author | Translator |
| Clarinet (காகளம்) | Senthil Jegannathan | Darun S |
| Beast (விலங்கு) | B. Jeyamohan | Megana Kumar |
| Resurrection (புத்துயிர்ப்பு) | Su. Venugopal | Vignesh Hariharan |
| Maadan Moksham (மாடன் மோட்சம்) | B. Jeyamohan | Sherwin Rodriguez |
| Cotton Fever (மழைக்கண்) | Senthil Jaganathan | Anjana Shekar |
| A Brief Strain Of Music (ஒரு சிறு இசை) | Vannadhasan | Mayuravarshini.M |
| Filfilee (வெறும் முள்) | B. Jeyamohan | Amruth Varshan |
| A House Without Cats (பூனைகள் இல்லாத வீடு) | Chandra | Padmaja Anant |
| Ammaiyappam (அம்மையப்பம்) | B. Jeyamohan | V. Iswarya |
The final results will be announced on Saturday, Dec 10 at 6.30pm IST over a virtual meet-up.
Topic: The Mozhi Prize – Results
Time: Dec 10, 2022 06:30 PM Mumbai, Kolkata, New Delhi
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85066520230?pwd=SGdwZEVXRjRINXQzRWN2eTdvRHhQUT09
Meeting ID: 850 6652 0230
Passcode: 992179
We would love to see you all there.
Team Mozhi
Mozhi 