Bhubaneswar: Padma Shri Pratibha Ray, who won the Jnanpith Award in 2011, has been selected as the chairperson of Bharatiya Jnanpith Selection Board.
Earlier Pratibha was a member of the Jnanpith Award Selection Board. Jnanpith Award is presented annually by the Bharatiya Jnanpith to an author for his/her outstanding contribution towards literature.
Pratibha, born in Balikuda of Jagatsinghpur district, is the dauther of well known Gandhian and poet Parshuram Das. She published her first novel ‘Barsa Basanta Baishakha’ in 1974. Pratibha bagged the Bharatiya Jnanpith Trust’s Moorti Devi Award in 1991 for her magnum opus ‘Yajnaseni’.
Her other literary works are ‘Aranya’ (1977), ‘Nishidha Prithivi’ (1978) ‘Parichya’ (1979), ‘Aparichita’ 1979 (a film which won the Best Story award from the state government), Punyatoya (1979), Meghamedura, (1980), ‘Ashabari’ ( 1980), ‘Ayamarambha’ (1981), ‘Nilatrishna’ (1981) and ‘Samudrara Swara’ (1982).
Pratibha, who clinched the Orissa Sahitya Academy Award for Shilapadma in 1985, won the Sarala Award for ‘Yajnaseni’ in 1990.
She was the first Odia woman and fourth Odia writer to get the Jnanpith Award. The other winners were Gopinath Mohanty (1973), Sachidananda Routray (1986) and Sitakant Mohapatra (1993).
PNN