Sepali Mayadunne’s novel, “Maha Sami” and Rizwina Morseth De Alwis’ novel, “It’s not in the stars” and Ayathurai Santhan’s novel, “Rails run Parallel”, were announced the winners of the first ever Fairway National Literary Award in the Sinhala and English categories respectively at an award ceremony, held on the 15th of January 2016 during the Fairway Galle Literary Festival. Fairway Holdings is also the title sponsor of the Fairway Galle Literary Festival, which is being held after a lapse of time in a grander style, with events spread over three weeks and covering not only Galle but also Kandy and Jaffna this year.

The Fairway National Literary Award was initiated to compliment the sponsorship and activities of the Fairway Galle Literary Festival. It is the only award in the country that includes and rewards novelist of all three languages: Sinhala, Tamil and English. It aims not only to applaud the efforts of writers, but also to inspire and encourage upcoming novelists. In this inaugural year of the award, four Sinhala novels and five English novels were shortlisted for the award. These entries were rewarded with a cash award of Rupees Hundred Thousand each and stood a chance to earn a reward of Rupees Five Hundred Thousand if selected as the winner of one of the three language categories. With each of the shortlisted authors being offered a cash reward of Rupees 100,000 and the winners Rupees 500,000 each, this award offers a total of Rupees 3 Million just in cash awards.

The winners were selected based on a set of criteria developed by the judges in each of the categories. A total of 89 novels were submitted for the award, 69 Sinhala, 5 Tamil novels and 16 English. The shortlisted contenders for the award this year for the Sinhala category were, Batuwangela Rahula’s “Ran Karanduwa”, Sepali Mayadunne’s “Maha Sami”, Kaushalya Kumarasinghe’s “Mey Rahas Kaluwen Ebbenna” and Visakesa Chandrasekaram’s “Raja Saha Gathakaya”. The shortlist for the English category were as follows, Afdhel Aziz’s “Strange Fruit”, Rizvina Morseth de Alwis’ “It’s Not in the Stars”, Visakesa Chandrasekaram’s “The King and the Assassin” and Manuka Wijesinghe’s “Sinhala Only”. As per a unanimous decision by the Tamil panel of judges, none of the Tamil submissions met the criteria to be shortlisted; hence there was no shortlist or winner in the Tamil category this year. The independent panels of judges involved in the selection process included Shyamalee Tudawe, Lal Medawattegedara, Tissa Jayatilaka, Harshana Rambukwella, Dr. Sunil Wijesiriwardena, Dr. Nirmal Devasiri, Saminathan Wimal, Prof. Nuhman and Dr. Suren Raghavan.

Speaking of the future of the Fairway National Literary Award, the Chairman of Fairway Holdings said that he hopes that there will be a lot more submissions next year for the award. “We will also be looking into conducting a series of workshops and activities that will help support and develop the literary standards of our country in all three languages” said Hemaka de Alwis. He went on to say that, “We not only want to reward exceptional literary creations but also to support and develop the skills and standards of Sri Lanka’s literary landscape.” Hemaka believes in the ideology that riches in material things do not make a person complete. Its only riches in arts and culture that make a complete person and the best part about it, is that anyone can achieve such cultural riches irrespective of social and monitory status. This he says is the reason why Fairway Holdings is behind so many sponsorships of the arts and culture in this country.

In addition to the winners of the language categories of the Fairway National Literary Awards, Fairway Holdings was very excited to also present the “Fairway Literary Encouragement Award”, where a candidate will be chosen to be the recipient of this award at the discretion of the Chairman of Fairway Holdings in recognition of their efforts and potential in the literary field.

“Fairway Holdings will continue to support the development of arts and culture in Sri Lanka and we are already involved in sponsorships to further develop and support such programs. We currently support the Colombo Chamber Music Society, Soundarie David’s Soul Sounds in addition to the Fairway Galle Literary Festival and now the Fairway National Literary Awards among others” said Shivanka De Zoysa a Group Director and COO of the Fairway Holdings Group.

Photos;

1 - Prof. Maithree Wickramasinghe and Mr. Hemaka de Alwis - the chairman of Fairway Holdings, handing over the Fairway National Literary Award 2015 in the Sinhala category to Ms. Sepali Mayadunne for her book "Maha sami"

2 - Prof. Maithree Wickramasinghe and Mr. Hemaka de Alwis the chairman of Fairway Holdings, handing over the Fairway National Literary Award 2015 in the English category to the joint winner Mr. Ayathurai Santhan for his book " Rails run parallel"