Bio
Jayant Kaikini is a Kannada poet, short-story writer, columnist and playwright, as well as a lyricist and script writer for films. He won the Karnataka Sahitya Akademi award for his debut poetry collection in 1974, at the age of nineteen, followed by three more (1982, 1989, 1996) for his short-story collections.
Born in the coastal temple-town of Gokarna, Kaikini is a biochemist by training and worked in the pharmaceutical industry in Mumbai for two decades before moving to Bengaluru, where he currently resides with his family.
He has received the Katha Award for Creative Fiction (1996) and the Kusumagraj National Literary Award (2010). He is the recipient of the Karnataka State Award for Best Dialogue (2003) and Best Lyrics (2006), and the Filmfare Award for Best Lyrics (2008, 2009, 2016, 2017,
2022).
He has published seven short story collections, six poetry collections, four essay collections and three plays so far. His latest works in Kannada are “Anarkaliya Safety Pin” (short stories 2021), “Vichitra Senana Vaikhari” (poems 2021), and “Taari Dande” (essays 2024). “No Presents Please”, his volume of selected Mumbai stories translated by Tejaswini Niranjana to English, is the first book in translation to have won the DSC South Asian Literature Prize in 2018. “Mithun Number Two”, his second book of selected Mumbai stories translated by Tejaswini Niranjana to English, was released this year.