A celebration of prose and poetry

Larger Scale

The second edition of the Bangalore Literature Festival (BLF) will be bigger, better and more inclusive this year.

Around 125 authors will participate in the festival. This edition of the festival will focus on Germany and the highlight will be commemorating 100 years of Indian cinema. The festival will be held from September 27 to 29 at Crowne Plaza in Electronics City.

A discussion on the adaptation of biographies to biopics, featuring actor Farhan Akhtar, director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra as well as Prasoon Joshi, will be held at the festival. Other highlights include discussion with authors like Ramachandra Guha, William Dalrymple, Gulzar, UR Ananthamurthy, Rajmohan Gandhi, Ramkant Rath and Nissar Ahmed among others. Veterans in the field of cinema like Sharmishtha Gooptu, Kishwar Desai, Bhawana Somaaya will be also be present. Authors from Germany — such as slam poet Bas Botcher, Tilman Rammstedt, Christopher Kloebel, Saskya Jain and Abbas Khider, an author who has been born and brought up in Baghdad — are going to be attending this year.

Some of them will launch their books at the festival. Like last year, the festival will also highlight Kannada literature, featuring authors such as Chandrashekhara Kambara, HS Venkatesh, Jayant Kaikini and Mamta Sagar.

Vikram Sampath, the co-founder of the fest, says that this edition will have two parallel panel discussions as against just one last year. “Along with the discussions, there will be a separate area for children and a structured discussion on children’s literature. We will also have cultural programmes like a folk performance and a violin recital in the evening. We are in talks with the BMTC and the government to provide special shuttle as well as car-pooling options to people who want to visit the festival. We chose Electronics City as it is an integral part of Bangalore now,” he says.

“The festival also attempts to create awareness regarding Tulu, Konkani, Beary and Kodava literature. In fact, many authors who have written in these languages will be there at the festival. A special panel on the village of Mathoor, which has made Sanskrit all pervasive in it

“This year, the BLF has tied up with Sahitya Akademi  to bring Indian language authors from various parts of the country, like Nabaneeta Dev Sen, Ashokmitran, Ashok Vajpeyi, Govind Mishra, Farooq Shaheen, Arindam Borkataki and others, to the fest,” informs Srikrishna Ramamurthy, the co-founder of the fest.