The second edition of the 10-day Krithi International Book Festival organised by the Sahithya Pravarthaka Cooperative Society (SPCS) will be held from February 8, 2019 at Marine Drive in the city.
Tourism Minister Kadakampally Surendran said here on Sunday that Kochi had been made the permanent venue for holding the book festival, following the huge success of the first edition held in the city last year.
He said besides giving a fillip to the book publishing sector and reinvigorating the cultural field, the festival would provide intellectual inputs for rebuilding the State.
The theme of the festival, ‘Back to the future’, was selected in the context of the floods that ravaged the State in August this year. Workshops, discussions and deliberations at the festival will focus on the theme. Experts and thinkers in the field of disaster management and nation building will be invited to speak.
Libraries
With a view to rebuild libraries that lost books in the flood, a scheme will be formulated with the participation of private and public sectors. Books part of homes and educational institutions were also lost or damaged in the floodwaters.
The floods affected the business of publishers as well. The festival would come up with proposals to deal with those problems, said the Minister.
The project of donating a book to a child will be implemented in flood-ravages areas. As many as 40,000 books were distributed to children under the project last year, said the Minister.
250 stalls
Mr. Surendran said as many as 250 stalls of 100 publishers would be put up at the festival venue. Small-time publishers affected by the floods would be allotted stalls free of cost. The organisers proposed to conduct an exhibition of photos of the deluge, titled ‘Athijeevanam’, with the support of the Kerala State Archives Department and amateur photographers’ associations.
