Muttathu Varkey (28 April 1913 – 28 May 1989) was an Indian novelist, short story writer, and poet of Malayalam.
[4] He along with Kanam EJ was prominent in popularizing a genre of sentiment-filled pulp fiction known as painkili novel in Malayalam literature.
The winner is selected by popular vote with final decisions made by prominent judges.
[7] The prominent winners of the award include, O. V. Vijayan (1992), Vaikom Muhammad Basheer (1993), M. T. Vasudevan Nair (1994), Kovilan (1995), Kakkanadan (1996), VKN (1997), M. Mukundan (1998), Punathil Kunhabdulla (1999), Anand (2000), N. P. Mohammed (2001), Ponkunnam Varkey (2002), Sethu (2003), C. Radhakrishnan (2004), Zacharia (2005), Kamala Surayya (2006), T. Padmanabhan (2007), M. Sukumaran (2008), N.S.
Madhavan (2009), P. Valsala (2010), Sarah Joseph (2011), N Prabhakaran (2012) C. V. Balakrishnan (2013), Asokan Charuvil (2014), K. Satchidanandan (2015), K. G. George (2016), T. V. Chandran (2017) and K. R. Meera (2018)[8]