Gayatri GaMarsh Memorial Award - 2019

Winners of Gayatri GaMarsh Memorial Awards for Literary Excellence (2019) _____________________________________________________________________

Keya Mukhopadhyay (San Antonio, TX) A cancer biologist by profession, Keya Mukhopadhyay is a prolific writer of short stories and critical essays. She has published in many well-known Bengali magazines, newspapers and webzines in India and the US, such as Desh, Ananda Bazar Patrika, Anandamela, Femina, DuKool, Adorer Nouko and Golpoguchho. Keya is the Associate-Editor of Abasar.net, a North America-based, one-of-a-kind, allBengali bi-weekly web-magazine. One of Keya’s short stories won the first prize in 2016 in a Bengali short story competition organized by Sristi Potrika. She is the author of two books (Thik Jeno Kaleidoscope and Parir Chhobi Chhobir Pari) and the co-editor/co-author of another book (Goyenda Hajir). Keya has also anchored several programs on Doodrdarshan TV and All India Radio’s FM channels.

Sneha Sundaram (Jersey City, NJ) Sneha Sundaram is an engineer, entrepreneur, photographer and poet. Her background is in Engineering and Business, but poetry has always been the voice of her conscience. Her poems have been published in Asahi Shimbun, Texas Poetry Calendar, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Noctua Review, Kigo, Whirlwind, JACLR by UC Madrid, Aaduna, Jaggery, Haibun Today, Contemporary Haibun, Sonic Boom, Tinywords, Qu Literary Magazine, and several other international publications.

Sneha has won prizes and received honorable mention in the British Council & Sampad ‘Inspired By Museum’contest and in Capoliveri International Haiku, the 20th Kusamakura International Haiku, Wordweavers and other contests. Her haiku have been translated to German, Italian, Polish, Bulgarian, Croatian and Japanese. Her haiku have been displayed on the streets of Washington, DC, as a part of the Golden Triangle DC Haiku Contest of 2016 and 2017. Sneha has recently published her first book of poems, Sunshine Blooms and Haiku.

Vishnupriya (North Brunswick, NJ) Vishnupriya is a bilingual writer specializing in poetry and short fiction. Growing up in a family of academicians devoted to the art of writing and performing, she naturally imbibed the inevitable: teaching and writing. She finds these the most rewarding form of expressing ideas, impulses, and interior mindscapes, and exchanging and analyzing viewpoints. With time, the entire writing process for her morphed into a cathartic practice to voice the unsaid, the unexplored, the uncharted realms of the everyday experiences around her.

Vishnupriya has published several poems, short stories and features in multiple North American and Indian magazines, periodicals, and blogs. She has dabbled in broadcasting, voice-overs for documentary films, and script writing for varied events. Vishnupriya continues to be impacted by writers of all affiliations and ideologies who choose to write in English, Bangla, Hindi or in translation.

She enjoys music, children's company, and daydreaming about becoming a better writer in the not so distant future. When she doesn't write she tries to cook, clean, and run a household as best as her free spirit allows her to.