A Slice of Night’, an English translation of an anthology of Odia poems by author and poet Dr Gayatribala Panda, was unveiled at the sixth Odisha Art and Literature Festival here recently.
The book was released by eminent English and Bengali author Kunal Basu. Another English translation of Dr Panda’s Odia poems titled ‘Grandma and Other Poems’ had been released earlier.
The poems of Dr Panda, presently Head of the Centre for Preservation, Propagation and Restoration of Ancient Culture and Heritage of India (PPRACHIN), run by Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA), were translated into English by poet Manua Das.
Dr Panda has 18 collections of poems, two collections of short stories, four novels and a collection of essays to her credit till now. She had won the Youth Award of the Kendriya Sahitya Akademi in 2011. She had also been presented with many other awards.
Dr Panda was also the first Odia writer to be invited as a ‘Guest Writer’ to the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi where she spent 17 days