Bangalore Literature Festival (BLF) is just around the corner, and the two-day event will be held from December 17 at Royal Orchid Hotel, HAL Airport Road.
Writer Vikram Sampath — who was in the eye of the storm at the last edition of the BLF for his contrarian views on writers returning awards, leading to many writers backing out of the festival, — stepped down from the organising committee of the event earlier this year.
Mr. Sampath, who was among the group of individuals who have been organising the festival from 2012, will only participate as a writer at this year’s edition, sources in the organising committee confirmed to The Hindu .
Last year’s festival had seen a sharp polarisation into liberal and right-wing discourse on many panels. However, this year too, the organisers have not shied away from providing a platform to people with opposing points of view and those from different walks of life. The former president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union Kanhaiya Kumar, Magsaysay Award winner Bezwada Wilson, actor Anupam Kher, and writer of Academic Hinduphobia Rajiv Malhotra are among the guest speakers.
This year’s festival will also see new writers such as Manu Pillai and Kanishk Tharoor sharing the stage with Chetan Bhagat, Amish Tripathi and Anuja Chauhan. Leading commentators Ramchandra Guha, Shiv Visvanathan, Siddharth Varadarajan, and Gurcharan Das will also be be participating in the festival. The Kannada panels will be led by writers Vivek Shanbhag, M.S. Sriram, Prathibha Nandakumar, and S. Diwakar.
A new feature this year is a children’s literature festival. The festival will also include LitMart — a platform for unpublished writers to pitch their manuscripts to leading publishers, and Atta Galatta prize for fiction and non-fiction work for the year.
Registration begins
BLF started registrations on its website, http://bangaloreliteraturefestival.org/, from Sunday.
