Bangalore Literature Festival begins on December 17 -18 at Hotel Royal Orchid. Building on the success of over the past four years, this year Bangalore Literature Festival will feature a host of distinguished speakers, authors and artistes including Ramachandra Guha, Shashi Tharoor, Chetan Bhagat, Amish Tripathi, Bezwda Wilson, Kanhaiya Kumar, Ramya, Gurcharan Das, Arup Kumar Dutta, Sanjeev Sanyal, Rajiv Malhotra, Bezwada Wilson, KR Meera, Vivek Shanbhag, Jerry Rao, Omkar Goswami, Prathibha Nandakumar, Salma, Margaret Alva and several others.
The Festival is all set to be inaugurated by Shashi Deshpande, Sudha Murty and KV Tirumalesh. The Bangalore Literature Festival has become the most sought after and must-attend event for readers and writers from Bangalore, India and the world, with its enriching and stimulating panel discussions, interviews and literary sessions. This year the Festival will witness authors engaging the audiences with diverse themes. Highlights include Shashi Tharoor discussing his latest book Inglorious Empire; filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan speaking about his life and times; Sudha Murty engaging Chetan Bhagat in a conversation about women wanting it all; actor Ashish Vidyarthi talking about his life with publisher Ashok Chopra. Sunday evening will see renowned actor politician Shatrughan Sinha make a rare appearance in the city, his wit at Bengaluru’s service.
This year too Bangalore Literature Festival sticks to its promise of something for every reader. This includes two full days of children’s programming called ‘Children|Literature|Fun (C|L|F)’ with workshops, storytelling sessions, creative games and more. Highlights include sessions by renowned authors Jeeva Raghunath, Roopa Pai and Shweta Taneja, workshops on hand puppet making, clowning, story writing, doll puppetry, illustrations and more, also an Amar Chitra Katha themed treasure hunt, literature quiz for school kids and a host of other literary activities for children. An interesting addition to the children’s programming this year is Open Mic, where kids are given a platform and 3 minutes to sing, speak, recite or tell a story of their choice. Another highlight of C|L|F is the focus on journalism for children with a workshop on journalism for young kids and a Q&A session with experienced journalists. Painstakingly curated by Vikram Sridhar, this promises to take not just children but adults too by storm.
Media experts in attendance at the Bangalore Literature Festival this year, include Shiv Visvanathan, Mini Menon, Siddharth Varadarajan, BV Rao, Josy Joseph, G Sampath, Prasanna Viswanathan, Narendar Pani, Aakar Patel, Mihir Sharma, Shradha Sharma, Neena Gopal and Anita Raghavan. Young authors will be represented by Kanishk Tharoor, Saikat Majumdar, Rosalyn D’Mello, Manu Pillai, Kiran Manral and others.
Leading talents from the world of publishing and lit fests like Ashok Chopra, Ananth Padmanabhan, Milee Ashwarya, Deepthi Talwar, Manjiri Prabhu, Sumant Batrra, Trisha De Niyogi, Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee, Ajitha GS, Rashmi Menon, Trisha Bora and Ajay Mago will be here in full force.
The Mythology Panel will bring you Anand Neelakantan, Madhavi Mahadevan, Anuja Chandramouli and Mani Rao. Foreign presence includes Paul Affeld, Sally Breen, Carlos Pizzati, Claus Heimes, Alan Johnson and Roswitha Joshi.
This fifth edition of the Festival showcases young talent in Kannada writing with eminent writers Vivek Shanbhag, Vasudhendra, Prathibha Nandakumar, Chandan Gowda, Prithvi Datta Chandra Shobhi, S. Diwakar, MS Sriram, Sridhar Gowda, Sabitha Koraga and others who will be speaking about their work and that of writers from our state.
True to the Festival’s moorings, several city authors are supporting the event and participating in the Festival. Leading names include Sudha Murty, Ramachandra Guha, Chandan Gowda, Jahnavi Barua, Preeti Shenoy, Anuja Chauhan, Ryan Lobo, Raghu Karnad and Niret Alva. Others from the city include Andaleeb Wajid, Nandita Bose, Jane De Suza, Rachna Singh and Sajita Nair.
Other key attractions that audiences can look forward to at the Festival this year include sessions on The Future of Indian Cooking with celebrity chef Sanjeev Kapoor and our own Manu Chandra; Getting a Good Night’s Sleep with renowned sleep expert Dr Manvir Bhatia; on erotica, on digital media, a talk by Magsaysay award winning activist Bezwada Wilson; a discussion on Reclaiming Our Civilization’s Heritage with T. V. Mohandas Pai and Rajiv Malhotra; A Discussion on UR Ananthamurthy’s Bara; conversations on Contrarian Views with Aakar Patel, Kanhaiya Kumar and Ramya.
The Festival has also lined up interesting music and dance performances including ballets by The Lewis Foundation of Classical Ballet, a blues and folk concert by Guru Rewben Mashangva, who will perform a tribute to the Nobel literature laureate, Bob Dylan and an evening performance by poet, actor and musician Piyush Misra.
The Bangalore Literature Festival and Atta Galatta, the city-based bookstore and art-literature space, will also give out the Atta Galatta – Bangalore Literature Festival | Book Prize to honour the best of English writing.
The Festival opens at 930am on both days. Entry is free and open to all via registration on the website www.bangaloreliteraturefestival.org or via Facebook/Twitter. http://Facebook.com/BlrLitFest. Pre-registration is highly recommended. Full list of events, schedule, participating author bios and other information is available on the website.
“This year the festival is completely out of the box. The ideologies of most speakers are passionate, they occupy the intellectual space on their own terms. The Bangalore Literature Festival belongs to the quiet thinker in actors, writers, artistes and readers in 2016. Interactive installations on reading/writing, the big, fat party for children of all ages, and the song and dance – from balle, to Dylan, from folk music to Krishna natya, it is all new, all you,” says festival director Shinie Antony.
The festival team comprises of Srikrishna Ramamoorthy, Subodh Sankar and Surya HK, apart from Vikram Sridhar and Shinie Antony. Festival advisors include V. Ravichandar and Harish Bijoor.
