AutHer Awards 2025, Season 6
AutHer Awards, Season 6, was held on Friday, 21 March 2025, Taj Palace Hotel, New Delhi. I am reproducing my speech of the evening. It opened the proceedings.
Good evening!
As the Literary Director, AutHer Awards, I am delighted to welcome you all to the sixth season of the Times of India AutHer awards.
We live at a time of great churn in the world of books with AI disrupting how we consume knowledge and the written word. Despite these tectonic tech changes, the book publishing market is expected to surpass- USD 224.14 Billion by 2034. The rising usage of digital devices like smartphones and tablets is driving the market growth for book publishing. Consequently, e-books, audiobooks, and other digital forms are becoming more popular.
Women writers have a critical role to play in this evolution. In fact, the first author to be successful using newly developed digital options in 2011 was E. L. James. Her self-published Fifty Shades of Grey went viral as an ebook. At that time, the emergence of Kindles and iPads ensured that people could read erotic literature written by a woman without being judged by others, particularly when reading in public. It was such a roaring success that when Random House bought it (2012) their employees were given a Christmas bonus of $5000 each from sales to editorial to distribution. So yeah, women writers are fantabulous!
During the first industrial revolution in the nineteenth century, women left their homes to enter the workforce for the first time. In the twenty-first century, during the second industrial revolution, as men dominate the tech world and persuade the global industrial complex to use their social media platforms and AI chat generators, women are fulfilling the role of the thought leaders and more. Women observe, think, reflect, analyse, and write. They offer different and nuanced ways of seeing. Share ideas whether in fiction or non-fiction.
In 1992, Prof. G N Devy — who sits on this year’s AutHer awards jury — made the observation that print technology had diminished the existing oral traditions. Folk singers, actors and authors such as the legendary singer Ila Arun – our guest of honour today – are pivotal in bridging oral traditions and the performing arts with the print form. This human connect between various contact zones is significant in cultural mixing and in the evolution of a society. Now we have AI. It is here to stay. But writers write. They ideate. They comment. They capture the zeitgeist.
I am a techno-optimist but I am also a firm believer in writing, using pen and paper, so that the neural synapses are rewired. However much neural technologies may try and ape the human brain, they simply cannot. Books will endure because creativity powers machine, and not the other way round.
The books shortlisted at the AutHer awards tonight give reading pleasure and are thought-provoking. At the same time, they, hopefully, provoke readers to think differently and for themselves. The wonderful authors who have written them range from teenagers to those on the higher side of fifty. They have written across a breathtaking array of diverse genres — from picture books, to nonfiction, YA novels, stories across faiths, folktales, climate fiction, literary fiction, historical fiction, memoirs, biographies, histories, short stories, multi-generational sagas and mythologies.
The AutHer Awards would not be possible without our eminent jury — all distinguished writers who understand the power of storytelling; whether in the book form, theatre or even in cinema. So, a special thank you to our jurors: for their time and for their appreciation of the nuances of writing.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are really proud that the AutHer awards is the first and biggest award for women writers in India. and I hope you enjoy reading and discovering the AutHer awards literature as much as we have.
Thank you.
It was carried as a full page spread in the Times of India, across all editions in the country.
The YouTube link to the evening is:
9 May 2025
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