"Write Until You Feel Right": Savin Edirisinghe's Katakata Wins the 32nd Gratiaen Prize

When 25-year-old Savin Edirisinghe stepped onto the stage to receive the 32nd Gratiaen Prize for his debut short story collection Katakata, he brought with him more than just a book. He brought an entire generation of young Sri Lankans who write in English yet dream in multiple languages, who navigate everyday life with a poet's soul, and who find inspiration in the most unlikely places-buses, petticoats, whispered gossip, and quiet suffering.

- BY IFHAM NIZAM

For Edirisinghe, the win was not just personal triumph-it was, in many ways, a statement of cultural evolution. Speaking to The Sunday Island, he said: “If I can win the Gratiaen, anyone can,” he said with a smile that belied both humility and disbelief. “English is not my mother tongue. I didn’t grow up immersed in English literature. But I write in English because it’s one of the languages I feel most at home in.”

The Gratiaen Prize, Sri Lanka’s most prestigious literary award for writing in English, has over the years served as a springboard for some of the country’s most acclaimed voices. Yet this year’s winner represents something refreshingly new: a voice grounded in urban and semi-urban life, unapologetically local, but delivered with literary elegance and poetic flair.

The Power of Gossip and Story Telling

The title Katakata—a Sinhala word that loosely translates to “gossip” or “chatter”—was carefully chosen. “That was my marketing brain at work,” Edirisinghe smiles. “I work in advertising during the day, so I know how important a good title is. But it also fits the stories. These are tales stitched together from things I've overheard, stories shared in passing, or little dramatic moments I’ve imagined based on real people.”

Despite the gossipy premise, Katakata is not sensational. It is introspective and rich with emotional texture. “I think we gossip because we want to live, for a moment, inside someone else’s life,” he explains. “It’s a way to understand desire, frustration, dreams—everything we suppress in ourselves. Writing is like that too. It’s about living other people’s lives in a very intimate way.”

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