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Journalism of Courage
The list of speakers is out for Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF), one of the most celebrated literary festivals in India, now in its 13th edition. To take place at Diggi Palace Hotel from January 23-27, the festival will witness 250 speakers that include writers, thinkers, politicians, journalists and popular cultural icons from India and abroad. Recipients of various awards like the Man Booker, the Pulitzer, the Sahitya Akademi, the Ramon Magsaysay, the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature will also be present.
Some of the speakers include Nobel laureate Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab and co-author of Good Economics for Hard Times, with co-awardee Nobel Laureate Professor Esther Duflo; Man-Booker-winner Howard Jacobson; The New Yorker journalist Dexter Filkins, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009; Forrest Gander, translator and author of the Pulitzer-winning collection of poems Be With.
Also on the list are Ashok Vajpeyi, Hindi poet and critic, author Chitra Mudgal, poet and lyricist Javed Akhtar, among others. This year, a new initiative iWrite will serve as a platform for unpublished manuscripts, from which one will be chosen to receive feedback from experts. Any entry that makes it to the top 10 shortlists will get an opportunity to be shared with international publishers, literary agents, translators and other industry experts in a face-to-face pitching session for a potential book deal.
Namita Gokhale, author and Festival Co-Director, said, “Our vision for Jaipur Literature Festival 2020 is one of inclusiveness, bringing together literary excellence and interdisciplinary conversations from around the planet. We are plural, diverse and multilingual, representing over 35 languages including 14 from India. We are each other’s stories, and Jaipur in January will once again share the joy of narratives, of music and poetry, dialogue and debate.”
