Imayam and Lakshmi Holmstrom

Imayam is the pen name of V. Annamalai (born 1964), a Tamil novelist whose debut novel Koveru Kazhuthaigal — published in English as Beasts of Burden — is set in a 1970s village and centres on a washerwoman serving a Dalit community of agricultural labourers. The novel won the Agni Aksara Award and the Amudhan Adigal Ilakkiya Award. Lakshmi Holmstrom (1935–2016), MBE, was an Indian-British translator of Tamil fiction into English whose work earned her the Crossword Book Award and the Iyal Award from the Tamil Literary Garden.