Crossword Book Awards recognizes and felicitate Indian works that make important contributions to our society and celebrates the timeless culture of reading amidst our highly digitized lives. It reaffirms Crossword team’s vision to be dedicated to making Indian literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive.

While one would imagine rousing and relish speeches by Jury members and Authors, the objective was to keep it as a crisp affair with fanfare for only talent and merit.

The challenge for the team was to envisage and plan more spectacular show than the previous 15 editions not only meeting but beating the standards of excellence and benchmarks created by legacy.

It was a fascinating and rewarding experience for the team to join hands with Royal Opera House second year in a row. The excitement picked up from outdoor assembly area where audience could get books signed by the luminaries, get clicked on the Red Carpet and enjoy a chat between celebs about theirreading lists. The experience amped up with live band performance of Anand Bhasker Collective and peaked with the humbling speech by absolutely admirable Sudha Murthy.

On 20th December 2018, the 16th edition of Crossword Book Awards was a night where Mumbaikars celebrated the love for literature together with both Jury and Popular awards for categories: English Fiction &Non-Fiction, Regional Fiction & Children’s Literature Author, Lifetime achievement and Outstanding Debut Author.

It was an extraordinary evening. It almost seemed like this historic venue was back to its golden days with luminaries like Divya Dutta, Soha Ali Khan, Schauna Chauhan, Mallika Dua, Vithal Nadkarni in attendance. Jury members, eminent authors and visionary publishers made this year’s event a delight once again.

Hrishkesh Kannan played perfect charmer by sharing one anecdote after another about literary figures from various eras and the Highlight of course was lifetime achievement win by Shashi Tharoor which was handed over by none other than Lord Mehgnaad Desai.

Genesis for this epic evening was paved with rather loud brainstorming sessions and the candid and ferocious discussions, sometimes at odd hours which ultimately resulted into the fruitful decisions. Constantly pushing the perceived limitations of creativity, timelines and overcoming each challenge that arose, the team stopped at nothing. The result is for all to see and experience.