Dubai: Young published authors from the Indian Peninsula, Middle East and the UK will be competing in the First International Young Author Awards in Dubai.
In an attempt to encourage young published authors, ‘The Write Scene’, an online portal to nurture the young talent, announced that it will be organising the First International Young Author Awards 2017 in Dubai on October 4 at a premium venue.
The awards are aimed at traditionally published authors under the age of 30 according to Fatima Butti Al Muhairi, Chairwoman of Dubai Quality Group and member of the Advisory Board, noting that this year’s awards will celebrate works in English.
"These awards have been designed to recognise the next generation authors and to encourage traditional publishers to give a chance to young authors,” said Mita Kapur, CEO Siyahi, a leading literary agency of India. Kapur is also on the advisory panel of the award.
Deeba Salim Irfan, Founder of the Awards and the Chairperson of the advisory board, said they were excited to announce a long list of nominations from top league publishers from India and also from UK.
“Our longlist has names like HarperCollins India for both fiction and non-fiction, Penguin Random House, Penguin Books, Hachette India, Bloomsbury India, Octopus Publishing Group (Hachette UK), Rupa Publishing, Niyogi Books and LiFi Publications. We are going to announce the shortlist by end of August 2017,” she said.
When asked established authors about the awards, Chitra Divakaruni, an award winning author said she thinks the award is an excellent idea. “It is bound to give writers encouragement and enthusiasm. I wish I had this kind of opportunity when I was younger.”
Another award winning author Tabish Khair said young writers need all the encouragement they can get.
