Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih is the winner of the Shakti Bhatt Prize 2024. He was born and brought up in Sohra, Meghalaya, and writes poetry, drama and fiction in Khasi and English. His latest works are "The Distaste of the Earth" (Penguin India, longlisted for the JCB Prize 2024 and shortlisted for the Kerala Literature Festival Book of the Year Award 2024) and the 1024-page debut novel, "Funeral Nights" (Context/Westland Amazon for India; And Other Stories for the UK-US). He is the author of "The Yearning of Seeds" (HarperCollins), "Time’s Barter: Haiku and Senryu" (HarperCollins), "Around the Hearth: Khasi Legends" (Penguin) and the co-editor of "Late-Blooming Cherries: Haiku Poetry from India" (HarperCollins), Lapbah: Stories from the Northeast (Penguin) and "Dancing Earth: An Anthology of Poetry from Northeast India" (Penguin).

He has published poems and stories in Planet: The Welsh Internationalist, Wasafiri, The New Welsh Review, PEN International, The Literary Review, Karavan, The Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Cordite Poetry Review, Poetry International Web, The Indian Quarterly, Down to Earth, The Hindu Business Line, Indian Literature, The Oxford Anthology of Writings from North-East India, Pilgrim’s India, Day’s End Stories and others.

His other awards include the first North-East Poetry Award (Tripura, 2004), the first Veer Shankar Shah-Raghunath Shah National Award for tribal literature (Madhya Pradesh, 2008), a Tagore Fellowship (IIAS, Shimla, 2018), the Bangalore Review June Jazz Award (2021) and the Sparrow Literary Award (2022). He teaches literature at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong.

From http://keralaliteraturefestival.com/s...