Promoting Literature : Pakokku Literary Awards winners awarded

32nd Edition of Pakokku U OhnPe Literary, Library and Academic Awards were presented at a ceremony held on Wednesday. Union Minister for Information U Htein Lin attended the ceremony and made a speech.

For this year, the Lifetime Literary Award was presented to U Pe Nyein (Kyaw Saw Han) and U Soe Win (Takkatho Soe Yin) in recognition of their outstanding contributions to Myanmar literature. Awards were also presented in several categories, including novels, short story collections, poetry collections, research works, and library books.

In addition, the Pakokku U Ohn Pe Scholarship was awarded to Ma Mary Phyu Sin, a first-year music student at the National University of Arts and Culture (Yangon), and Mg Tin Lin Naing, a first-year painting student at the National University of Arts and Culture (Mandalay). The Lifetime Literary Award carries a cash prize of 1.5 million kyat, while first, second and third prizes in the manuscript categories receive 1 million kyat, 700,000 kyat and 500,000 kyat, respectively.

Over three decades ago in 1992, U Ohn Pe donated over 7.6 million kyat to the government to establish a literary fund. With this fund, Lifelong Literary award and four literary categories have been presented initially in 1994, and later become five categories in total for long and short novels, poems, treatises and research literatures.