The annual Katha Utsav had an international component this year. Facilitated by the Ministry of External Affairs, the three-day fest, held at New Delhi’s Sanskriti School as part of the I Love Reading CBSE-Katha Initiative, saw six writers and illustrators from different countries holding workshops with 400 students of CBSE schools from across India on story writing, poetry composition and illustration. The international list included Australian poet and writer Libby Hathorn, Japanese poet Eiko Yachimoto, Iranian illustrators Hassan Amekan and Negin Ehtasabian, Inuit writer from Greenland Canada Michael Kuchugak and Costa Rican illustrator Wen Hsu.
Expressing happiness that the initiative had international mentors in the second year of its inception, Geeta Dharmarajan, founder, Katha, said, “We held regional workshops wherein 600 students attended writers’ workshops in Delhi and Chennai. The selected children from these regional workshops — 400 of them — participated in the national utsav where 12 national and six international writers, storytellers and illustrators mentored them for three-days, at the end of which they came up with a variety of creative work based on which the young and emerging writers, poets and illustrators were given the annual Katha Awards.” Also, 200 teachers from across India took part in a national colloquium held simultaneously where there had deliberations with experts from different creative fields on how to inculcate the habit of reading, creative writing and critical thinking in students.
Dharmarajan said, “The I Love Reading initiative sponsored by CBSE is a search for excellence with our partnering schools which, since it began in 2013, has been bringing in excellent stories and poems from over 8000 students.” The initial selection of the students for the regional workshops were done based on their stories and poems. This year, a school from Oman too joined the workshops.
