Unicorn, (MSME registered Enterprise, Government of India), a quarterly digital and print magazine endeavors to bring endless opportunities to avid artists of all kinds across the globe. Established in July 2020, Unicorn today celebrates 2 years of publishing poetry, short stories, interviews, column, book reviews, non fiction, artwork, and photography.
The magazine is founded by Dr. Romila Chitturi, who is the Editor in Chief and Ms. Smriti Malhotra – Design Head who paints the content and pictures with her pastels of creativity and outstanding ideas. The distribution of the magazine is worldwide, and their readership profiles include students, working professionals, business officials, home-makers, and teachers amongst others. In these 2 years, Unicorn has been awarded with “The pride of India” and “Rabindranath Tagore International Prize of Art and Literature”. Unicorn has marked its presence in the international market with writers and readership based in Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Germany, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Denmark, Islamic Republic of Iran, The United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States of America, Republic of Congo and Egypt. It is a matter of pride and honor as the Unicorn’s writer family stands strong with 330 writers in 24 months.
As the magazine turned two on 12 July 2022, during this time from September 2021 to June 2022, the magazine published some implausible work that really added value to the magazine. Unicorn Literary Awards 2022 have been organized to celebrate the outstanding and incredible work of the contributors who invested their time, effort and dedication in making Unicorn a great success.
The Awards were presented in 3 categories: Writer of the year, Poet of the year and Artist of the year.
2022 had a total of 82 nominations out of which 41 made it to the shortlist and 18 to the final list – 9 winners and 9 special mentions.
We present to you the 9 final winners of 3 categories respectively.
WRITER OF THE YEAR – WINNERS
Reshma Gowda
Reshma Gowda, an aerospace enthusiast who hails from Bengaluru is an Aerospace Engineer who is currently pursuing her Ph.D in Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. She has completed her B.E and MTech in Aerospace from reputed universities in Bengaluru. She has worked as Senior Analyst in Capgemini under various projects that includes Airbus, A400M and ATR for 2 years. Her favorite pastime is writing and reading novels. She is an ardent reader and a bibliophile. Classics has been her favorite till date as she stepped into this world of novels through reading Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, Sidney Sheldon and many more. Some of her other favorites are Khaled Hosseini, Aravind Adiga, Sudha Murthy, Kuvempu, APJ, RK Narayan.She has published a quotes book named “My Heart Whispers” on Your Quote platform. Her writing genre includes anecdotes, fictions, romance and erotic verses. Her favorite book of all time is “The Sands of Time” by Sidney sheldon. She loves dancing and is a professional belly dancer. Her favorite sport is basketball. She wants to see herself as a scientist if history permits and a well known author as well. She has also volunteered to do social service with Bengaluru based teams namely “Choti si Pahal” and “Soaring hands”.
Lalit Tank
Lalit Tank is a civil engineering professional with 18 years of experience in industrial projects. He started his career with top construction companies such as Tata and Ruchi group. Currently he works at Jindal Group, one of the famous corporate companies in India. He is an avid reader who likes traveling and sometimes prefers to cook on weekends as he loves food. He is also into financial markets as a Trader and Investor. He is a true fragrance lover, extremely self motivated, funny and easy going person.
Shaik Maqsood
Shaik Maqsood is a bookaholic and artist from Bangalore. He is a part-time coder and a full-time bibliophile. He doesn’t just love to hoard books and comics, but truly enjoys reading them too. Whether it be Novels, comics, graphic novels, or audiobooks he adores them all equally. You’d usually find him indoors enjoying a good book or binge-watching Netflix. If you do unusually find him it would probably be me on a book hunt. He paints, sketches and does digital art in spare time. He run’s a couple of small Instagram accounts dedicated to books and art. (@books_from_earth & @ink_from_earth). Thanks to Unicorn Magazine that he added the title of co-author to an anthology (Lavenders) to his tiny list of achievements. Some day he dreams of publishing a collection of sci-fi short stories.
POET OF THE YEAR – WINNERS
Nishant Duphare
Nishant Duphare, aged 43 years old is a resident of Nagpur. Due to health issues he could not continue his studies after 2nd year of graduation but that did not stop him from improving his knowledge. He has skills in different online activities such as blogging, website development, social media content writing and digital marketing. He found his passion in the financial market. Today he works as Chief Operation Officer at King Research Academy, a start-up in financial market services and education based in Hyderabad. He loves to read thriller fiction. He writes poetry mostly in Hindi. Ghazals are his escape from the daily routine of handling stocks and investment. He thanks Unicorn for giving him an opportunity to explore a new arena that helped him to reach many people. Getting published in Unicorn’s special edition dedicated to Hindi literature was no less than a dream come true for him which boosted his confidence as he received positive feedback for his work. He doesn’t have any physical achievements to show but he found many good people in these 43 years who are now a part of his life, one of them being Dr. Romila Chitturi – Founder and Editor of Unicorn Magazine whom he met on Twitter 5 years ago. Good wishes and respect from friends and well wishers for him are his biggest achievements. He’s looking forward to publishing his first independent poetry book.
Mehak Tikoo
Mehak Tikoo is a Veterinary Microbiologist by profession and a writer by passion. She lives in Jammu. She has been writing since her teen years and it has been a wonderful experience for her. Her grandfather was the first person to inspire her to write and guided her to express her emotions in a healthy way. Writing has become a healing therapy for her. Writing feels like a breath of fresh air in this chaotic world. Writing to her is like an oasis in this sandstorm-like universe. Through writing she feels it possible to express her suppressed emotions. She has written on topics like mental health, Fantasy, and motivational quotes. As far as her hobbies are concerned, she likes to paint, read novels and also loves gardening. As for her achievements, she has contributed in quite a few anthologies and participated in online writing events. She hopes her writings can bring peace and joy to people.
Preity Rashmi
Preity Rashmi refers to herself as a traveler, as she belongs to the aura of gypsy personality. A resident of Bihar, born and brought up in Rourkela (Orissa), pursued higher education from Chandigarh (UT), completed engineering degree from Ajmer (Rajasthan), started professional journey from Bangalore (Karnataka) and continuing in Pune (Maharashtra), she justifies her diversity of India. She is a software developer by profession, but bookishly-creative by heart. She loves to explore different genres in the world of reading, and enjoys writing poetry and articles. Though she used to write from her school days, but she has officially started her writing journey recently and contributed her work to few poetry anthologies, i.e. Your happy place, Escape etc. She has also written a few articles on Unicorn Blog and magazine, shiksha.com, organizational blogs, etc. She is quite active on instagram’s prompt challenges and wins too. Apart from that, she relishes her free time in painting and singing. She wants to become a renowned author some day, and to make an impact on society for a peaceful world.
ARTIST OF THE YEAR – WINNERS
Shavy Verma
Shavy Verma , born and raised in Delhi has her roots in Goa. Sketching is her passion and she loves recreating original art. Traveling is her all time interest. She works in the Embassy of the Republic of Congo. She cooks often and making reels on Instagram releases her stress.
Rahul Bheel
Rahul Bheel is Chief Photographer at NYRA’s CLICK. He lives in Faridabad, Haryana. He specializes in romantic and artistic wedding photography with a hint of modernity. Picking up a camera gives him an opportunity to capture a specific vision to share with others.
Praveen Krishnan
Praveen Krishnan lives in Palghat, Kerala. He is working in an IT company based in Bangalore. He belongs to a family of four members. He wants to be a well known artist. He does paintings in his leisure time and learns a lot of new techniques and trying new rules of painting. He believes he can achieve big titles on his own and create his own identity and make a mark in this world.
Unicorn Literary Awards 2022 had 2 brands as partners and 6 brands as co-sponsors.
PR partnership by Digital Golgappa– India’s leading and most trusted Marketing and PR Agency. A Champion of personal branding and brand promotions.
Digital partnership by IndiaCafe24– One of the trusted digital news and entertainment portals in India, owned and run by women Entrepreneur Samata Dey Bose. They hold expertise in book reviewing, author promotion, product promotion, talent promotion, movie reviews, entertainment and travel news.
Gifts sponsored by Am Power– Co-founded by Nandita Mittaland Narita Ahuja based in London and Gurugram. They conduct LIVE sessions with experts, organize contests and provide a platform to one and all to be aware, skilful, knowledgeable and empowered. Embark on your transformational journey with them and remove all your psychological barriers through their expertise – Follow them now on Instagram.
The MoonLit Co – Owned by Dr Dwijisha Katkar, Mumbai – makes home products, desk decor, outfits and specializes in tote bags and bookish items.
Susanna Celsia – A talented author and writer from Bengaluru who has published two books “Oasis of poetry ” and ” A silent war cry”. She has co – authored 50+ anthologies in various genres from poetry to fiction; she also writes articles in monthly magazines. She is also a role model to the woman society and won Asia’s top 100 influential woman award.
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