Mubashira Patel, a 26-year-old student of Sociology at Mumbai University, is the winner of the 2025 Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize. She was selected from among 126 competitors this year by the poet and founder-editor of the literary journal, Almost Island, Sharmistha Mohanty and two faculty members of the Department of English at the University of Hyderabad who constituted the jury.  Abhilipsa Sahoo has received special mention from the jury.

Mubashira, who has been writing since she was eight years old, is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Sociology and calls herself “a literature aficionado, an amateur philosopher, and a newly published poet.”  Her academic work intersects with themes of marginal voices and cultural memory. Her writing often emerges alongside this inquiry, shaped by lyric form and a drive toward emotional excavation. Among her other passions are fanfiction and anime. 

Recognised as a significant award for creative writing in India, the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize was instituted by the Hyderabad-based Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust to recognize excellence in poetry written in English by poets in the age group of 20-40 years.  The Prize is jointly administered by the Department of English, University of Hyderabad.  

The inaugural prize was awarded in 2009 to Aditi Machado and, subsequently, to Hemant Mohapatra (2010), Aditi Rao (2011), Tushar Jain (2012), Mihir Vatsa (2013), Ranjani Murali (2014), Aishwarya Iyer (2015), Goirick Brahmachari (2016), Debarshi Mitra (2017), Poorna Swami (2018), Prashant Parvataneni (2019), Satya Dash (2020), Pervin Saket (2021), Syam Sudhakar (2022), Nikita Deshpande (2023), and Ajay Kumar (2024).  Eminent poets like Jeet Thayil, Sudeep Sen, Keki Daruwalla, Arundhathi Subramanian, Manohar Shetty, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Ranjit Hoskote, E.V. Ramakrishnan, Gieve Patel, Mamang Dai, Vinay Dharwadker, Mani Rao, Sridala Swami, and Menka Shivdasani have previously been associated with the prize as jury members.

This 17^th Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize, consisting of a citation and cash prize of Rs. 15,000, will be presented to the winner on October 25, 2025 on the occasion of Srinivas Rayaprol’s 100^th Birth Anniversary.

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Ajay Kumar, a 23-year old student of English Literature, is the winner of the 2024 Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize. He was selected from among 66 competitors this year by the Mumbai-based poet, Menka Shivdasani and two faculty members of the Department of English at the University of Hyderabad who constituted the jury. Neethu Krishnan, Aparna Chivukula, and Nikita Parikh have been shortlisted and received special mention from the jury.

Ajay Kumar, a Chennai-based poet, is the author of the e-chapbook, ‘balancing acts’ (Yavanika Press, 2023) and has published his poems in The Bombay Literary Magazine, Rattle, The Bombay Review, Usawa, ASAP Art, gulmohur, The Alipore Post, nether, The Bangalore Review, Muse India, The Chakkar, and The Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English, among others. He was longlisted for the Toto Funds the Arts Creative Writing Award in 2023. He has a Masters in Literary and Cultural Studies from EFLU, Hyderabad, and is currently working on the manuscript of his first poetry collection.

Recognised as a significant award for creative writing in India, the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize was instituted by the Hyderabad-based Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust to recognize excellence in poetry written in English by poets in the age group of 20-40 years.  The Prize is jointly administered by the Department of English, University of Hyderabad.  

The inaugural prize was awarded in 2009 to Aditi Machado and, subsequently, to Hemant Mohapatra (2010), Aditi Rao (2011), Tushar Jain (2012), Mihir Vatsa (2013), Ranjani Murali (2014), Aishwarya Iyer (2015), Goirick Brahmachari (2016), Debarshi Mitra (2017), Poorna Swami (2018), Prashant Parvataneni (2019), Satya Dash (2020), Pervin Saket (2021), Syam Sudhakar (2022) and Nikita Deshpande (2023).  Eminent poets like Jeet Thayil, Sudeep Sen, Keki Daruwalla, Arundhathi Subramanian, Manohar Shetty, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Ranjit Hoskote, E.V. Ramakrishnan, Gieve Patel, Mamang Dai, Vinay Dharwadker, Mani Rao and Sridala Swami have previously been associated with the prize as jury members.

This 16^th Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize, consisting of a citation and cash prize of Rs. 15,000, will be presented to the winner at the Hyderabad Literary Festival in January 2025.

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Nikita Deshpande, a Mumbai-based writer, has emerged as the winner of the 15^th Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize. She has been selected from a pool of about 120 entries for this year’s prize by a jury consisting of poet, Sridala Swami and two faculty members of the Department of English, University of Hyderabad. The Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust also announced the name of Shalim Hussain of Assam as being on the prize shortlist this year.

With a B.A. in English Literature from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, Nikita Deshpande writes poetry, fiction and screenplays. She is the author of the novel, It Must’ve Been Something He Wrote (Hachette, 2016), has short stories in the anthologies, A Case of Indian Marvels (Aleph, 2022), and Magical Women (Hachette, 2019), and included in the poetry anthology, The World That Belongs to Us (Harper Collins, 2020). Her writing has also been published in The Deadlands, The Rumpus, Grazia, Scroll, Buzzfeed, and Firstpost, among others. She was awarded a 2015 Vermont Studio Center fellowship to work on her fiction. Nikita assisted directors on feature films like Fukrey and Mirzya before going on to write for Chai Chai, an animated series streaming on Amazon Prime in the US. She was also a writer on The Big Day, a documentary series on Netflix. She says, she ‘devours romance novels and stone fruit, and has rarely met a Jane Hirshfield poem she did not instantly fall in love with’.

Recognised as a significant award for creative writing in India, the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize was instituted by the Hyderabad-based Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust to recognize excellence in poetry written in English by poets in the age group of 20-40 years.  The Prize is jointly administered by the Department of English, University of Hyderabad.  

The inaugural prize was awarded in 2009 to Aditi Machado and, subsequently, to Hemant Mohapatra (2010), Aditi Rao (2011), Tushar Jain (2012), Mihir Vatsa (2013), and Ranjani Murali (2014), Aishwarya Iyer (2015), Goirick Brahmachari (2016), Debarshi Mitra (2017), Poorna Swami (2018), Prashant Parvataneni (2019), Satya Dash (2020), Pervin Saket (2021), and Syam Sudhakar (2022).  Eminent poets like Jeet Thayil, Sudeep Sen, Keki Daruwalla, Arundhati Subramanian, Manohar Shetty, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Ranjit Hoskote, E.V. Ramakrishnan, Gieve Patel, Mamang Dai, Vinay Dharwadker, and Mani Rao have previously been associated with the prize as jury members. The award, consisting of a citation and cash prize of Rs. 15,000 will be presented to the winner at a literary event to be held soon.

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