Sivasankari

Sivasankari Biography

Sivasankari is a popular Tamil writer and activist from Chennai, Tamil Nadu. In the past four decades she has given some outstanding contributions to Tamil literature and has created a niche of her own. Known as a multi-faceted personality, she has won many prestigious awards including Kasturi Srinivasan Award, Raja Sir Annamalai Chettiyar Award, Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad Award, 'Woman of the year 1999-2000' by the International Women's Association, and so on. She is quite a popular novelist and eight of her novels have been adapted to silver screen, including the one by director K. Balachander for the movie, 47 Natkal (1981) starring Chiranjeevi and Jayaprada. She has also scripted a TV series for Doordarshan - Subah aired in 1987. Apart from it, many of her novels have been adapted for television serials as well.

She was born in Chennai on October 14, 1942. She was born into a family of 12 children. She and her siblings were educated in the Sri Ramakrishna Mission and Sarada Vidyalaya schools. She switched to writing from her career as a classical dancer. She writes on the different crisis existed in the society, mostly contemporary issues. Her novel Oru Manithanin Kathai about a drunkard made her a huge sensation overnight. Her ambitious project "Knit India Through Literature" gained nationwide attention. Oru Manithanin Kathai, Avan, Nandu, Verillatha Marangal, Amma Conna Kathaikal etc are among her best works.

As a writer, in a career spanning to more than 4 decades, she has contributed to Tamil literature in the form of novels, novellas, short stories, travelogues, articles and biographies. Many of her works have been translated to Indian and foreign languages including Japanese and Ukrainian. K. Balachander, SP Muthuraman and Mahendran are the leading Tamil directors who have adapted her novels for movies. Her novel 'Kutti' on girl child labour was made to a National award winning feature film by the director Janaki Viswanathan.

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Updated: February 06, 2016