Pratibha Ray is an Indian academic and writer. She was born on 21 January 1943, at Alabol, a remote village in the Balikuda area of Jagatsinghpur district formerly part of Cuttack district of Orissa state.[2] She was the first woman to win the Moortidevi Award in 1991.[3]
She is an eminent fiction writer in contemporary India. She writes novels and short stories in her mother tongue Oriya. Her first novel Barsha Basanta Baishakha (1974) [4] proved itself as a best seller for its readability among rural female half literate readers. She attributed the boldness, the revolt and humanism in her literature, to the impact of Vaishnavism[who?], her family religion, which preaches no caste, no class, and also due to the influence of her Gandhian teacher-father, Parashuram Das.
Her search for a "social order based on equality, love, peace and integration", continues, since she first penned at the age of nine. When she wrote for a social order, based on equality without class, caste, religion or sex discriminations, some of her critics branded her as a communist, and some as feminist[verification needed]. But she says "I am a humanist. Men and women have been created differently for the healthy functioning of society. The specialities women have been endowed with should be nurtured further. As a human being however, woman is equal to man".
She continued her writing career even after her marriage and raising a family of three children, for which she credits her parents and her husband. She completed her Masters in Education, and Ph.D. in Educational Psychology while raising her children. Her post-doctoral research was on 'Tribalism and Criminology of Bondo Highlander', one of the most primitive tribes of Orissa, India.
Shilapadma, 1983. (Orissa Sahitya Academy Award, 1985; Tr. to Assamese, Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam,
Mahamoh, 1998 (To be published in Hindi, Bengali & Malayalam)
