Bangalore Literature Festival (BLF), Bengaluru city’s flagship literary event, is all set for a spectacular 2018 seventh edition on October 27th and 28th at the breezy green lawns of Hotel LaLiT Ashok in Kumara Krupa High Grounds, Bengaluru.
The tentative schedule:
Day 1 | Sat | 27 Oct
| #blrlitfest Venues | ||||
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| Venue 1 | Venue 2 | The Red Couch | Malgudi | Narnia |
| 10:00 am Benares: Ancient Customs, Contemporary Politics Aatish Taseer with Manu Pillai |
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| 10:15 am Mythology, History, Science: Conspiracy Sells Ashwin Sanghi with Madhavi S Mahadevan |
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| 10:30 am Are Women Stories Only for Women? Andaleeb Wajid and Rhea Saran |
10:30 am Four Greystroke and Poile Sengupta |
10:30 am I Want to Pee: Designing a Character Meenal Singh and Erik Egerup |
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| 10:45 am Rules for Radicals: Setting Knowledge Free Carl Malamud with Supriya Sankaran |
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| 11:00 am Lest We Forget: Descendents of Indenture Athol WIlliams, Deirdre Jonklaas Cadiramen, Simit Bhagat with Janet Steele |
11:00 am All The Things I Do Vijay Seshadri |
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| 11:15 am The Chronicler of Crime S Hussain Zaidi with Sandeep Unnithan |
11:15 am Pitara: Storytelling Board Game |
11:15 am Into the Poetic World Santhini Govindan |
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| 11:30 am The Cows of Bangalore Shoba Narayan with Rashmi Menon |
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| 11:45 am Yellamma and Other Stories Urban Folk Project |
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| 12 noon Quo Vadis Pakistan: Decoding our Neighbour Alyssa Ayres, Farzana Shaikh, Srinath Raghavan with Neena Gopal |
12 noon The Aryavarta Chronicles Krishna Udayasankar |
12 noon Happy Fox: Illustration Time Aušra Kiudulaitė and Evelina Daciūte |
12 noon Teen Blues Poile Sengupta |
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| 12:30 pm How I Became a Hindu: My Discovery of Vedic Dharma David Frawley |
12:30 pm Ujjivan: Small Loans That Transformed Lives Samit Ghosh and Subir Roy |
12:30 pm Like A Girl: Changing the World Aparna Jain, Poorna Malavath and Sharda Ugra |
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| 12:45 pm Outback Tales: Stories from Oz Philip McLaren and Roanna Gonsalves with Rajith Savanadasa |
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| 1:00 pm Questioning the Foundations of the Indian Republic Anand Teltumbde with Chandan Gowda |
1:00 pm In Search of Wacky Female Characters Sujata Parashar with Nandita Bose |
1:00 pm Padma Goes to Space Swetha Ragunathan |
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| 1:15 pm Crime, Corruption, Cronyism & More James Crabtree and Milan Vaishnav with Ashutosh Varshney |
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| 1:30 pm Building Blocks from Life: On Narrative Non-Fiction Bachi Karkaria, Manu Pillai, Sandeep Unnithan, Shoba Narayan with VK Karthika |
1:30 pm Unfolding the Goddess Within Yogini Shambhavi Chopra |
1:30 pm Clowning with the clowner Harish Bhuvan |
1:30 pm Musical Notes Saskia Rao de Haas |
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| 2:00 pm The Business of Sex Nalini Jameela and Nora Bossong with Reshma Bharadwaj |
2:00 pm Translating Classics Velcheru Naryana Rao |
2:00 pm Fun with the Clouds Santhini Govindan |
2:00 pm Creating Comic Strips Cilre |
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| 2:15 pm State-of-the-Heart Novels: Heartbreak in Families Geetanjali Shree and KR Meera |
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| 2:30 pm The Female Gaze Haravu Spoorthy Gowda, Madhu Rani, Prathibha Nandakumar |
2:30 pm Malayalam Reading Benyamin and Sangeetha Sreenivasan |
2:30 pm Once upon a rhyme Meghna Singhee |
2:30 pm Wassup Bangalore Mirchi RJ Jimmy |
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| 2:45 pm Genes & Destiny: Are We Doomed to Be? Jahnavi Phalkey and Mukund Thattai |
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| 3:00 pm हिंदी is Cool – Presented by Kalam Divya Prakash Dubey and Nikhil Sachan |
3:00 pm A Fractured Life Shabnam Samuel with Prashant Sankaran |
3:00 pm Music Jingles for Popular Stories Debleena Majumdar |
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| 3:15 pm Pencils Drawn: Cartooning in Trying Times Ponnappa and Ravi Shankar Etteth with Bachi Karkaria |
3:15 pm The Cloudfarers: How to Run Away from School Stephen Alter |
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| 3:30 pm Cityscape: Transforming Public Spaces Appupen, Giulia Ambrogi, Rouble Nagi with Kamya Ramachandran |
3:30 pm Kama: The Riddle of Desire Gurcharan Das with Shoba Narayan |
3:30 pm Storygami Nithya J Rao |
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| 3:45 pm The Diary of a Political Idiot Jasmina Tesanovic with Shoma Chaudhury |
3:45 pm Legend of the Wolf: Writing Workshop Andaleeb Wajid |
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| 4:00 pm Populism, Liberalism et all Ashutosh Varshney with Narayan Ramachandran |
4:00 pm The Hunger Game Be The Miracle |
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| 4:15 pm Listen to Me: A Memoir Shashi Deshpande with Nancy Batty, Usha KR and Vivek Shanbhag |
4:15 pm The New India Foundation Awards Ramachandra Guha, Srinath Raghavan and Manish Sabharwal |
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| 4:30 pm Winning on #377 Anjali Gopalan with Alok Prasanna Kumar |
4:30 pm Viewing the Other Shikhandin RKB |
4:30 pm Busting Fake News: Developing a Scientific Temper CMCA |
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| 4:45 pm Fashion: The Seamly and the Unseemly Manjima Bhattacharjya and Shvetha Jaishankar with Susan Thomas |
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| 5:00 pm Tomorrow Now: Envisioning The Next Fifty Years Bruce Sterling with Samit Basu |
5:00 pm Hungry Gods Richa Lakhera |
5:00 pm A Very Naughty Bear: Mountain Adventures in Bhutan Paro Anand |
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| 5:15 pm The Descent of Man Vijay Seshadri with Ranjit Hoskote |
5:15 pm Calling all Sherlocks: Detective Writing Anushka Ravishankar |
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| 5:30 pm The Art of Fact Checking Pratik Sinha |
5:30 pm How to Tell a Story Stones2Milestones |
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| 5:45 pm Intrepid Travelers: Strangers in a Strange Land Dan Morrison and Rhea Saran with Aparna Raman |
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| 6:00 pm The Young and the Restless Rajith Savanadasa, Sangeetha Sreenivasan, Snigdha Poonam with Roanna Gonsalves |
6:00 pm Who Owns That Song AR Venkatachalapathy |
6:00 pm The Day the Crayons Quit Jugaad Theatre | Venue: Grand Ballroom |
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| 6:15 pm Is There an Indian Road to Equality? Ramachandra Guha |
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| 6:30 pm Is India Illiberal? Chidanand Rajghatta with Naresh Fernandes |
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| 6:45 pm Agatha Christie, Poirot and Me Sophie Hannah with Madhavi S Mahadevan |
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| 7:00 pm Editor’s Cut: Road to 2019 Mukund Padmanabhan, Nilanjan Mukhopadyay, R Sukumar, Saba Naqvi with Ashutosh Varshney |
7:00 pm Anthology of Asian Short Stories Monideepa Sahu and others |
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| 7:30 pm Naipaul’s Legacy Aatish Taseer |
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| 8:00 pm Alchemy of Sounds & Strings Saskia Rao de Haas (Cello) and Shubhendra Rao (Sitar) with Sapan Anjaria (Tabla) |
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Day 2 | Sun | 28 Oct
| #blrlitfest Venues | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Venue 1 | Venue 2 | The Red Couch | Malgudi | Narnia |
| 10:00 am The Paradoxical Prime Minister Shashi Tharoor |
10:00 am A Goddess for Today Amar Chitra Katha |
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| 10:15 am Seventy…And to Hell With It Shobhaa De with Robert Dessaix |
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| 10:30 am Jashn-e-Adab Divyaprakash Dubey |
10:30 am Rhyme Time : Poetry for the Young Anushka Ravishankar |
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| 10:45 am Speaking in Rhyme: Poetry Readings Easterine Kire and Ranjit Hoskote |
10:45 am Where’s the Body? Crime and Detection Bhaskar Chattopadhyay, Kiran Manral, Philip McLaren, Sophie Hannah with Nilanjan Choudhury |
10:45 am The Other: ‘Otherization’ of Young People Paro Anand |
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| 11:00 am The Sad State of Indology Today Francois Gautier and RP Jain |
11:00 am Happy Fox: Illustration Time Aušra Kiudulaitė and Evelina Daciūte |
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| 11:15 am Child Star to Her Own Woman Sarika with Sadhana Rao |
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| 11:30 am Crossing to Hampi: A Dramatic Exploration of the Vijayanagara Catastrophe Girish Karnad, CN Ramachandran with Deepa Ganesh |
11:30 am Polio: The Odyssey of Eradication Thomas Abraham with Dan Morrison |
11:30 am Ma, I Want to be a Journalist Barkha Dutt, Mukund Padmanabhan, R. Sukumar with Shruthi Mohan |
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| 12 noon Imran Khan: In the Hot Seat Farzana Shaikh and Max Rodenbeck |
12 noon The Brahmin Ravi Shankar Etteth with Ravi Joshi |
12 noon The Bard, The Baker and their Chemistry Trupti Kalamdani |
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| 12:15 pm An Equal World: Beyond 377 Aatish Taseer, Madhavi Menon, Robert Dessaix, Vasudhendra with Anjali Gopalan |
12:15 pm Green in My Dream Nagesh Hegde |
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| 12:30 pm Dreamers: How Young Indians are Changing the World Snigdha Poonam with Shaili Chopra |
12:30 pm Satyajit Ray Sci-Fi Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri |
12:30 pm A Story and A Song Amar Chitra Katha |
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| 12:45 pm Let’s Plot – Tips on Writing Mystery Stories Asha Nehemiah |
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| 1:00 pm The Snake and The Lotus: The Many Layers of Graphic Novels Appupen with VK Karthika |
1:00 pm Kashmir: Women in Conflict Zones Barkha Dutt, Paro Anand, Rashmi Saksena with Humra Quraishi |
1:00 pm Asia Reborn Prasenjit Basu with Alex Travelli |
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| 1:15 pm Tales the Traditional Way Lavanya Prasad |
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| 1:30 pm Life, the Universe and Everything: The Influence of SF on Society Bruce Sterling, Krishna Udayasankar, Samit Basu with Gautam Shenoy |
1:30 pm sahapedia.org Sudha Gopalakrishnan |
1:30 pm Moral of the Story: Epics for Children RP Jain |
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| 1:45 pm ಮೋಹನಸ್ವಾಮಿ – ಕಥನ ವಾಚಕಾಭಿನಯ Aata Maata |
1:45 pm Moonlight in the Sea Karthik Shanker |
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| 2:00 pm Shades of Saffron Saba Naqvi with Narendar Pani |
2:00 pm Curtains Up: Theatre Writing for Teens Anuja Ghosalkar |
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| 2:15 pm Trumpian Times Chidanand Rajghatta and Vijay Seshadri |
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| 2:30 pm Outside Looking In: Eyes on India Alex Traveli, Alyssa Ayres, James Crabtree, Max Rodenback, Prasenjit Basu with R Sukumar |
2:30 pm Catch a Tiger by the Tale Krithi Karanth and KK Raghava |
2:30 pm Oink Oink: How The Pig Became Dirty Rahul Kansal |
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| 2:45 pm AG-BLF Book Prize |
2:45 pm Illustrating Children Books Gujjarappa |
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| 3:00 pm The Escapists of J. Mullick Road Usha Ananda Krishna with Renuka Chatterjee |
3:00 pm Scribbling a Portrait Murali Krishna |
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| 3:15 pm Feminist Rani Shaili Chopra with Kiran Manral |
3:15 pm Adi Shankaracharya: Hinduism’s Greatest Thinker Pavan K Varma with Shoma Chaudhury |
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| 3:30 pm Women and War Jasmina Tesanovic and Rashmi Saksena |
3:30 pm Ha Ha Hour: Life of a Standup Comedian Karthik Kumar |
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| 3:45 pm Mard Ko Dard Hoga: #MeToo Sandhya Menon, Sister Jesme with Barkha Dutt |
3:45 pm The Sunshower Song Vinayak Varma |
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| 4:00 pm Ode to Southern Poets AR Venkatachalapathy, Mukunda Rao, Velcheru Narayan Rao with Prathibha Nandakumar |
4:00 pm ISRO: A Personal History Gita Aravamudan and S. Aravamudan |
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| 4:15 pm Hand Puppetry Poile Sengupta |
4:15 pm The Number Game: Vedic Maths Dr. Jini Gopinath |
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| 4:30 pm Telling a Story, Shaping the World Amitabha Bagchi, Easterine Kire, Nora Bossong with Renuka Chattejee |
4:30 pm Absence of the Rule of Law Harish Narsappa with Ashwin Mahesh |
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| 4:45 pm Lives of Girls and Women Janice Pariat and Preeti Shenoy with Kiran Manral |
4:45 pm Meet Petu Pumpkin and the Awesome Foursome Arundhati Venkatesh |
4:45 pm Fast-Forward: Bringing About Change Aparna Raman |
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| 5:00 pm Chit-Chat on Bofors and Rafale Chitra Subramaniam with Sreenivasan Jain |
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| 5:15 pm Survive or Sink Dan Morrison and Naina Lal Kidwai |
5:15 pm My Family and Other Animals Janaki Lenin, Krithi Karanth, Stephen Alter with Kartik Shanker |
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| 5:30 pm Nautanki Dairies Dominic Franks |
5:30 pm How BLF Made Me a Writer Arundhati Nithiyanandhan |
5:30 pm Cyber Hygiene Aashna Dasgupta |
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| 5:45 pm ‘ಬೊಳುವಾರು’ ಜೊತೆ ಮುಸ್ಸಂಜೆ ಮಾತು Bolwar Mahammed Kunhi with MS Sriram |
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| 6:00 pm Modern Family: Creative Dysfunction Amitabha Bagchi, Benyamin, Shubhangi Swarup with Geetanjali Shree |
6:00 pm Community Catalyst Nirmala Govindarajan |
6:00 pm Abracadabra: Time for Some Jadoo K.S Ramesh with an Opening Musical Act |
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| 6:15 pm Love and Longing in Hindustan Madhavi Menon and Pavan K Varma |
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| 6:30 pm How to Hold a Grudge Sophie Hannah |
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| 6:45 pm Whose Lie is it Anyway: #Fakenews Chitra Subramaniam, Francois Gautier, Mukund Padmanabhan, Naresh Fernandes, Pratik Sinha, Sreenivasan Jain with Nitin Pai |
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| 8:00 pm An Odyssey of Seven Notes Saxophone Lavanya with Rageshri Dhumal (Keyboard), Shalini Mohan (Bass Guitar), Siddhi Shah (Drums), Soumya Sanathanan (Percussion) |
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The two-day event will feature a host of distinguished speakers, authors and artistes including Ramachandra Guha, Shashi Tharoor, William Dalrymple, Aatish Taseer, Girish Karnad, Farzana Shaikh, James Crabtree, Ashwin Sanghi, Easterine Kire, Carl Malamud, Amitabha Bagchi, Pavan K Varma, Shobhaa De, S Hussain Zaidi, Shashi Deshpande, Francois Gautier, Ranjit Hoskote, N. Ponnappa, Naina Lal Kidwai, Arundhati Nag, Pratik Sinha, Shweta Bachchan-Nanda, Sister Jesme, Sarika, Anand Teltumbde, Sandhya Menon, Prasenjit Basu and many others.
Along with senior journalists Bachi Karkaria, Barkha Dutt, Chidanand Rajghatta, Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, Mukund Padmanabhan, Max Rodenbeck, Neena Gopal, R. Sukumar, Sandeep Unnithan, Naresh Fernandes, Chitra Subramaniam, Ravi Shankar Etteth, Alex Travelli, Sreenivasan Jain and Saba Naqvi.
Bhasha writers include Bolwar Mahamad Kunhi, AR Venkatachalapathy, K R Meera, Geetanjali Shree, Velcheru Narayana Rao, Vasudhendra, Nalini Jameela, Nagesh Hedge, Prathibha Nandakumar and Benyamin.
International authors Alyssa Ayres, Robert Dessaix, Athol Williams, Deirdre Jonklaas Cadiramen and top names in publishing like VK Karthika, Renuka Chatterjee, Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri will be at LitMart – the pitch session for aspiring authors.
Voices from young India are Manu Pillai, Janice Pariat, Appupen, Preeti Shenoy, Prayaag Akbar, Snigdha Poonam, Amitabha Bagchi, Shubhangi Swarup, Rajith Savanadasa, Roanna Gonsalves, Samit Basu and Krishna Udayasankar.
The Bangalore Literature Festival (BLF) remains among the most sought after and must-attend event for readers and writers from Bangalore, India and the world, with its stimulating panel discussions, interviews and literary sessions. As in the past, this year too the Festival will witness authors engaging the audiences with diverse themes.
Highlights include “The Indian Road to Equality”, “Love and Longing in Hindustan”, #MeToo Comes to Town, “Telling a Story, Shaping the World”, “Editor’s Cut: Road to 2019”, “Ode to Southern Poets”, Looking Beyond 377 “Outside Looking In: Eyes on India”, “Questioning the Foundations of the Indian Republic”, “Crossing to Hampi: A Dramatic Exploration of the Vijayanagara Catastrophe” along with conversations on fashion, fake news, feminism, crime, political cartooning, popular science, wildlife, graphic novels, literary fiction, narrative non-fiction, memoirs, poetry and a lot more.
A few firsts that the Bangalore Literature Festival is proud to offer to our city at this edition of the Festival are:
- Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years with Bruce Sterling – Science fiction writer, net critic, and internationally recognized cyberspace theorist known for his novels that defined the cyberpunk genre.
- Agatha Christie, Poirot and Me with Sophie Hannah – Internationally bestselling writer of psychological crime fiction and who writes new Hercule Poirot novels with the blessings of Agatha Christie’s family and estate.
- Descent of Man with Vijay Seshadri – Pulitzer Prize winning poet and has been an editor at The New Yorker, as well as an essayist and book reviewer in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review and various literary quarterlies.
- Child Star to Her Own Woman with Sarika – An acclaimed actor, she started her career at the age of four and has acted in films spanning diverse genres and chosen to go beyond into costume design, sound design and film production, winning critical acclaim and National Awards.
This year the Bangalore Literature Festival has doubled the children’s programming to include two forums – for children (4-10) and young adults (11-15) – on both days of the Festival and an exclusive bookstore for children. Titled ‘Children|Literature|Fun – C|L|F’ this includes writing workshops, RJ’ing, illustration, storytelling, creative games, magic shows all in a carnival atmosphere. Some of the exciting elements of C|L|F this year are sessions with authors including Anushka Ravishankar, Paro Anand, Aparna Jain, Poile Sengupta, Santhini Govindan, Stephen Alter, Anita Vachcharajani, Asha Nehemiah, Kartik Shanker, RJ Jimmy Xavier, music education sessions with Saskia Rao de Haas, Lithuanian illustrator and storyteller duo Evelina Daciūtė and Aušra Kiudulaitė, on being a stand-up comedian with Karthik and a whole host of other fun and exciting programming. Painstakingly curated by Vikram Sridhar, this promises to take not just children but the little kid in every adult too by storm.
The Festival features stellar evening music performances – a sitar-cello duet with Pt. Shubhendra Rao and Saskia Rao de Haas and an all women band led by Saxophone Lavanya.
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 and Kannada writing. There will also be a session in partnership with the The New India Foundation for the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize for the best non-fiction book on modern / contemporary India.
Festival Director Shinie Antony says, “Bringing you writers from everywhere, the Festival addresses burning issues like #MeToo, fake news, gender equality, Sec 377 this year. Young voices, in particular, are in focus, along with beloved ones we never tire of hearing.”
The Festival will be anchored by the city’s much-loved radio personalities Sriram Sullia and Darius Sunawala.
The Literature Festival is brought to you by Friends of BLF – a group of eminent citizens of Bengaluru, who firmly believe that the city comes alive in its public spaces, in its arts and culture events that foster meaningful dialogue, enriching discussions and healthy debates; a group whose support has laid the foundation for an independent, community-funded literary event that the city can be proud of. Friends of BLF help create – with their generosity, energy and time – this world of words.
The Festival opens at 10 am on October 27 and October 28. Entry is free, open to all and registration is recommended to get festival updates.
For registration, complete schedule of events, participating author bios and other information check www.bangaloreliteraturefestival.org or follow #blrlitfest on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
About Bangalore Literature Festival
The Bangalore Literature Festival celebrates the creative spirit of Bengaluru and commemorates the literary diversity it offers, bringing it in conversation with the best minds in the world of literature. The 2018 edition of the Bangalore Literature Festival is a two-day literary extravaganza that will bring together some of the biggest names in literature – within and outside India.
The objective of the Bangalore Literature Festival is to put together a literary experience that brings writers – both established and aspiring, readers, publishers, students and young professionals and other stakeholders of the city together on a common platform and create a compelling space for engaging and thought-provoking discussions on literature and life.
The Bangalore Literature Festival is a non-profit run by eclectic pro bono team of Shinie Antony, V. Ravichandar, Srikrishna Ramamoorthy, Subodh Sankar, Vikram Sridhar, Shrabonti Bagchi, Sadhana Rao and supported by advisors and volunteers.
More information at: www.bangaloreliteraturefestival.org
This is a press note sent by Sridevi Rao, PRO for Bangalore Literature Festival (BLF), and published with minimal editing.