City set for a literary weekend with Bangalore Lit Fest

Come Saturday and all the literature enthusiasts of the city will head to the most awaited literary fest of the year.

The seventh edition of the Bangalore Literature Festival, the city’s flagship literary event, will be held at The Lalit Ashok on October 27 and 28, 10 am onwards.

The two-day literary celebration will host some of the most distinguished speakers including Ramachandra Guha, Shashi Tharoor, Amitabha Bagchi, Shobhaa De, S Hussain Zaidi along with senior journalists like Bachi Karkaria, Barkha Dutt and Sreenivasan Jain. Pulitzer poet Vijay Seshadri, Sophie Hannah, futurist and design visionary Bruce Sterling will also be seen at the festival.

The theme for this year is ‘Young Voices, Relevant Noises’ wherein young speakers like Roanna Gonsalves and Snigdha Poonam will spark interesting discussions.

Read more: Bangalore Literature Festival: All you need to know!

The festival is expected to see the participation of over 150 international, Indian and city-based authors and speakers.

The festival intends to discuss the issues that took the country by storm this year including Section 377, the #MeToo movement among others.

It also seeks to trigger interesting conversations around fashion, fake news, feminism, crime, political cartooning and many others.

Shinie Antony, the festival director, said, “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 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.

The event will feature musical performances by sitar-cello duet Pandit Shubhendra Rao and Saskia Rao de Haas and an all-women band led by Saxophone Lavanya.

The entry to the event is free. For a complete schedule of the event, one can log on here.