The Bangalore Literature Festival (BLF) is all set for its second edition from September 27 to 29 at the Crowne Plaza at Velankani Park in Electronics City.
The festival, according to one of the co-founder of the festival Vikram Sampath, will be attended by over 125 authors and speakers.
Addressing the media here on Wednesday, Mr. Sampath said that guests include William Dalrymple, Gulzar, Ramachandra Guha, U.R. Ananthamurthy, Rajmohan Gandhi, Chandrashekara Kambara, Nabaneeta Deve Sen, Shashi Deshpande, David Davidar, Wendell Rodricks, Ashwin Sanghi, Ravi Subramanian, Nissar Ahmed, Madhu Kishwar, H.S. Venkateshamurthy, Ramakanth Rath, Ashoka Mitran, K. Satchidanandan, Nilanjan Roy, Kishwar Desai, Anitha Nair, Ian Jack, Shobha De, Karthika V.K., Kapish Mehra, Meena Kandaswamy Prasad Bidapa and others.
Apart from sessions in Kannada and English, the festival would showcase more Indian languages, which are on the verge of extinction, according to a survey conducted by Peoples’ Linguistic Survey of India, including South Indian languages.
Foreign languages too will be given the pride of place. “We are highlighting German this year, as we are working the Goethe Institute to bring authors from Germany,” he added. Authors from Germany ,including the celebrated slam poet Bas Botcher, Tilman Rammstedt, Christopher Kloebel, Sasya Jain and Abbas Khidar, would be participating.
A panel discussion on writings in South Asia would be an important part of the three-day event. Writers including Babar Ayaz, Mira Hashmi, Kanak Mani Dixit, Farah Ghuznawi and Ashok Ferry would participate.
“We are also planning to introduce sessions for other languages and dialects from Karnataka, such as Tulu, Kodava, Beary, Konkani, Arebhaashe, some of which may not even have a script, but can yet boast of a lot of literature. There would be a feature on Mattur village, where Sanskrit is a vibrant, living language,” said Mr. Sampath.
On cinema, politics
There will be sessions on other topics, including politics and cinema.
To mark the centenary of Indian Cinema, there would be a session on the adaption of biographies to biopics featuring Farhan Akthar, Rakyesh Omprakash Mehra and Prasoon Joshi. Besides them, cinema writers such as Bardwaj Rangan, Siddarth Bhatia, Sharmishta Gooptu, M.K. Raghavendra, Kishwar Desai, Bhawana Somaaya, Jayanth Kaikini and others were taking part, he detailed.
“There will be an exhibition of posters and memorabilia on India cinema on the occasion,” Mr. Sampath said.
The second edition, organised with the support of Kendra Sahitya Academy, promises something for children, young adults, as children sessions were planned with Pratham Books, Bookalore and Amar Chitra Katha, said Mr. Sampath..
