The Gratiaen Prize for 2006 was jointly awarded to Senaka Abeyratne for his play Three Star K and Isankya Kodituwakku for her collection of short stories titled The Banana Tree Crisis on Saturday. The Gratiaen prize is awarded annually to the best work of literary writing in English by a resident Sri Lankan writer. It has been an annual event since 1993.

Seneka Abeyratne
The judges make their selection from any work of fiction, poetry or literary memoir either published during the previous year or in manuscript. Senaka Abeyratne's Three Star K, Ashok Ferrey's Good Little Ceylonese Girl, Isankya Kodituwakku 's Banana Tree Crisis, Rita Perera's Coalescing with Omega and Vihanga Perera's The (IR) (AU) Topsy made this year's shortlist.

The panel of judges consisted of an academic, writer and reader. Vivimarie Vanderpooten holds a degree from the University of Colombo, a Master's degree in linguistics from the University of Ulster and is currently reading for her PhD in the same institution. She is a senior lecturer at the Open University Department of Language Studies.

The writer amongst the judges was none other than Dr. Neil Fernandopulle. Although a molecular biologist by profession he has received a top accolade in being awarded the Gratiaen Prize in 1999 for his work titled Shrapnel and was short listed in 2004 for This Side of Serendipity. The reader chosen to judge was Priyanthi Fernando, Executive Director of the Centre for Poverty Alleviation. She holds a degree in sociology from the University o f Peradeniya and a Masters degree in Mass Communication from the University of Leicester.

"The issues dealt with this year ranged from domestic violence to death, from the dilemmas of refugees returning home to youthful angst, from the issues of life to those of the afterlife. Writers are exploring new issues and new styles of writing and this can only be good for Sri Lankan writing in English," chairperson of the judges Vivimarie Vanderpooten said.

This year's 25 entries are relatively few, Vivamarie said. In 2005, the Gratiaen Prize received 52 entries. In selecting a shortlist the judges had looked for the concept behind the work and whether it was authentically and credibly conveyed for impact and insight and had style, creativity and boldness, sharp and fresh imagery and originality, she further said. Of the five shortlisted works, four have already been published.

In selecting a winner the above criteria was applied more intensely and they had focused on sensitivity and authenticity of the experience shared, she said. Vivamarie asked for more awards or the separation of the awards into prose, poetry and drama as the judges were faced with a challenging task of choosing a winner among the writers in different genres.

"Even though a broad criteria had been applied each genre has its own dynamics, and it is extremely difficult to apply these criteria evenly to fiction, drama and poetry," she said.

Seneka Abeyratne, an Economist/ International Consultant by profession says that he was stunned when the winners were announced as Three Star K is "not everyone' cup of tea". The play has a Colombo 7 setting where the themes of domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, gun running, political chicanery and murder are closely intertwined.

"Perhaps the reason I won is because the play is daring and unconventional and dispenses with gender and language stereotypes," Seneka said.

Two of his works, "Fragments of a Fugue" and "Mad People" were shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize in 1992 and 2005 respectively. His first play "Por la Libertad" was inspired by the abduction and murder of journalist Richard de Zoysa. He had written a dozen plays of which ten have been staged in Sri Lanka whilst two have been staged in India by the Madras Players.

Isankya Kodituwakku, the other joint winner of the Gratiaen prize was unable to attend the ceremony and her sister Manikya accepted the award on her behalf.

In an e-mail interview, Isankya said that she feels very honoured to be recognised in this manner for her pioneering venture and she feels humbled at being short-listed alongside writers such as Ashok Ferry and Rita Perera. She feels that it is a great encouragement for an aspiring writer such as herself.

Isankya is at present studying for her Master of Fine Arts at the University of Columbia, New York. She says that inspiration to write The Banana Tree Crisis, which she calls BTC, was not garnered by one particular subject or event but several characters, stories and places which were just a clutter in her mind bursting to be expressed. Most of the stories were written during a short span working for Sarvodaya back in Sri Lanka after her undergraduate days.

"During my undergraduate time, I wrote a 300-page novel, and it was fiction, but the fiction came out of a lot of my own story. It was very self obsessed, very inward looking. In a way, it was writing this that inspired these stories in BTC… I really wanted to do something that had nothing about me in it, that looked at other people rather than concentrated on me, me, me," Isankya wrote.

Her unpublished novel received special mention at the 2005 Gratiaen awards. At present she is working on a family memoir and says that it is a tough task as it involves a non fictional and personal subject. Isankya is daughter of MP Karunasena Kodituwakku.

Through her new project, she is attempting to fulfil a long felt desire to write a non-fiction work on Sri Lanka's recent history.

"I'm trying to connect things that happened in my family's personal story to the general history of recent Sri Lanka, and through this, talk about what's been going on in Sri Lanka in the past years."

For this, she believes that a personalised story of one character or one set of characters would work best rather than a generalised one. "Since the story I know best is my own family's I decided to write it."

Math had been a major part of her academic career until she found herself in writing. At Kenyon College, Ohio, where she had received a scholarship for undergraduate studies, author Courney Brkic had taken to her.

"I got into her writing workshop, and she really believed in me. It was that extra belief in me that really got me totally into writing. I ended up dropping math after I'd even handed in the first draft of my thesis," Isankya said.

The awards ceremony was held last Saturday in true literary style which included readings from the entries short-listed for the Gratiaen Prize and from the winning entry for the H. A. I. Goonetileke Prize for Translation that was awarded to Kumari Goonesekere for her translation of Liyanage Amarakeerthi's "The Hour When The Moon Weeps."