Awards: He has won Karnataka Sahitya Academy awards 3 times (1994, 2002, 2009) and Sahitya Shree Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement in 2017. He is also a recipient of Madhyama Academy Ambedkar Award and Lokanayaka Jayaprakash Narayan Award, G.S. Shivarudrappa Award for Criticism, Rammanohar Lohia Award, Ki. Ram. Nagaraj Samskruthi Award.
