Author and Activist Arundhati Roy to Receive 2022 St. Louis Literary Award

Celebrated author and activist Arundhati Roy will receive the 2022 St. Louis Literary Award, the Saint Louis University Library Associates announced Sept. 21. Roy will accept the award in person, on April 28, 2022, at the Sheldon Concert Hall. A craft talk will take place the next day on the campus of Saint Louis University.

“First and foremost, Arundhati Roy is an exceptional writer whose work has made a profound impact culturally, socially, and politically. What resonates through her writings as an essayist, novelist, and screenwriter is a voice that is unwaveringly honest and compelling,” said Edward Ibur, Executive Director of the St. Louis Literary Award. “Ms. Roy has been a bright star in the literary universe for more than 30 years, and we are so fortunate to have her join our amazing roster of writers who have received the St. Louis Literary Award at SLU for more than 50 years.”

Roy was born in 1961 in Shillong, Meghalaya, and studied architecture in Delhi. Roy is the author of the novel “The God of Small Things,” a semi-autobiographical fiction about an Indian family with its own hardships and secrets. It received the 1997 Booker Prize and was listed as a New York Times notable book of the year. Her second novel “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness” was named to the Man Booker longlist in 2017 and was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Much of Roy’s writing has focused on social activism, including criticism of India’s nuclear policies and American imperialism and capitalism. 

Roy has been honored with Lannan Foundation’s Prize for Cultural Freedom (2002); the Sydney Peace Prize (2004); the George Orwell Award from the National Council of Teachers of English (2004); and the Norman Mailer Prize for Distinguished Writing (2011). 

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The St. Louis Literary Award is presented annually by the Saint Louis University Library Associates and has become one of the top literary prizes in the country. The award honors a writer who deepens our insight into the human condition and expands the scope of our compassion. Some of the most important writers of the 20th and 21st centuries have come to Saint Louis University to accept the honor, including Margaret Atwood, Salmon Rushdie, Eudora Welty, John Updike, Saul Bellow, August Wilson, Stephen Sondheim and Tom Wolfe.

(Top photo, courtesy of Mayak Austen)