‘Toy Plastic Chicken’ by Uma Nada-Rajah, A Play and a Pint (Salamander Street) was announced as the winner of the inaugural Kavya Prize on 21 May 2022.
Many congratulations to Uma Nada-Rajah (She/Her) who is a playwright based in Kirknewton, Scotland and is of Sri Lankan Tamil heritage. She is one of the BBC’s Scottish Voices 2020 and was most recently the Starter Female Political Comedy writer-in-residence at the National Theatre of Scotland. Uma is a graduate of École Philippe Gaulier and a previous participant of the Royal Court’s Young Writers’ Programme and the Traverse Theatre’s Young Writers’ Programme. In 2014 Uma won the New Playwrights Award from Playwrights’ Studio Scotland. She works as a staff nurse with NHS Scotland.
Five of the writers who were shortlisted are published by Publishing Scotland members. They were joined by a work published by Verve Poetry Press. Congratulations to them all:
The End: Surviving the World Through Imagined Disasters by Katie Goh (404 Ink)
Lament for Sheku Bayoh by Hannah Lavery (Salamander Street)
‘Toy Plastic Chicken’ by Uma Nada-Rajah, A Play and a Pint (Salamander Street)
Sorrow, Tears and Blood by David Onamade (Arkbound Publishing)
Sikfan Glaschu by Sean Wai Keung (Verve Poetry Press)
This is Our Undoing by Lorraine Wilson (Luna Press Publishing). This book is also shortlisted in the Debut category of the Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards 2022 and longlisted for Best Novel at the British Science Fiction Awards 2021.
The Kavya Prize aims to celebrate published work and new writing by Scotland’s ethnically diverse communities.
Founded by Indian-born Scottish author Leela Soma, the prize, in association with the Creative Writing Programme at the University of Glasgow, 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 was awarded in May 2022 and is worth £1000. The winner also receives a residency at Moniack Mhor, Scotland’s National Writing Centre. For more about the writers and the Prize, see the University of Glasgow website.
