'Stories' by Charulatha Abeysekara Thewarathanthri - a manuscript inspired by her own childhood, bagged the coveted Gratiaen Prize this year.

The Gratiaen Prize is an annual literary prize awarded for the best work of literature done by a citizen who resides in Sri Lanka. This initiative was founded by Michael Ondaatje in memory of his mother, Doris Gratiaen with the money he received as a joint-winner of the Booker Prize for his novel 'The English Patient'. 

On the same day, the H.A.I Goonetileke Award for translation was awarded to Aditha Dissanayake's translation of Batuwangala Rahula Thera's 'Ran Karanduwa'. This prize is awarded once in two years and is intended to recognize those who provide access to pieces of Sinhala and Tamil literature via translations in to English. 

The judges for this year's Gratiaen Prize were Prof. Sasanka Perera (chair of the judging panel), cultural anthropologist, academic and bilingual cultural commentator; Chandana Dissanayake, academic and creative writer; and Ruhanie Perera, performer, performance maker and lecturer. 

In his comments at the ceremony Prof. Sasanka emphasized on the need to produce internationally acclaimed creative writers from Sri Lanka. "Why haven't we produced anybody of Salman Rushdie's calibre? Why does our creative writing lag far behind those of other countries? We have to focus on the use of language and the limitation of imagination. We need to tie up with fiction with unanswered questions from the past. There haven't been many pieces on the right kind of fiction and this is quite sad. Dealings with creative writings have been found at a bare minimum." 

Sharing her views with us, Charulatha said that she was completely overwhelmed. "Everyone who was on the shortlist with me are giants in the literary field and I write for pleasure. I write when a story insists on being written in my mind. I haven't studied English as a subject and this is actually a surprise for me. I have been working for more than four years. It takes me a long time to write because I write in between my duties at home. It's not like I sit and write the whole day. I spent three and a half years writing it and the next bit I went back and did some finetuning to make it look good. I was inspired by my own childhood to write this novel." 

PHOTOGRAPHS by Waruna Wanniarachchi