Moortidevi Award

The Moortidevi Award is an Indian literary award annually presented by the Bharatiya Jnanpith, a literary and research organisation. The award is given only to Indian writers writing in Indian languages included in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India, and in English, with no posthumous conferral or self nomination.

From 2003, the award was given to the authors for their "contemplative and perceptive work" and consisted of a cash prize of ₹1 lakh (US$1,600), a citation plaque, a shawl, and a statue of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of knowledge and wisdom. The cash prize was raised to ₹2 lakh (US$2,400) in 2011 and to ₹4 lakh (US$4,700) in 2013. The first recipient of the award was the Kannada writer C. K. Nagaraja Rao who was honoured in 1983 for his novel, Pattamahadevi Shantala Devi, which was published in four volumes.

No awards were given in 1985 and between 1996 and 1999. The award has been conferred upon 31 writers including one female author: In 1991, Odia academic and writer Pratibha Ray became the first woman to win the award and was honoured for the 1985 novel Yajnasani. Ray and Nirmal Verma have won both the Moortidevi as well as the Jnanpith Award. As of 2019, Hindi writer and professor, Vishwanath Prasad Tiwari is the most recent recipient of the award.

Three recipients of Moortidevi Award -- Pratibha Ray (1991), Nirmal Verma (1995), and Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri (2009) -- went on to win the Jnanpith Award, considered the highest Indian literary honor, in 2011, 1999, and 2019, respectively.