Meet the Wordsmiths

The third edition of the Literature Live! festival begins in Mumbai today.

3 min readOct 31, 2012 02:51 AM IST First published on: Oct 31, 2012 at 02:51 AM IST

The third edition of the Literature Live! festival begins in Mumbai today.

Home to Bollywood,glamour is certainly not new to Mumbai. But starting today,the city will be treated to stardust of the literary kind as curtains go up on the third edition of Tata Literature Live!. This five-day literary festival also called the Mumbai Litfest 2012 will be on till November 4. With National Centre for Performing Arts NCPA as the venue,it has over 100 participants,30 of who are from overseas. The events range from book launches and lectures to workshops and discussions with authors,publishers and literary agents. Festival director Anil Dharker points out that the fest has evolved in many ways. Parallel sessions will take place this year. The Godrej Theatre will screen live feed from the events at Tata Theatre so that attendees dont miss out, he says.

Nobel laureate Sir Vidia S Naipauls presence who will be honoured with Landmark Lifetime Achievement Award at the Tata Theatre today marks the highlight of this edition. That apart,the long list for this years Tata Literature Live! First Book Award includes Yasmeen Premji The King in Exile,Naresh Fernandes Taj Mahal Foxtrot,Aarthi Ramachandran Decoding Rahul Gandhi and Ruchir Sharma Breakout Nations. The winner will be announced on the last day of the fest.

A number of books will be launched,including India Grows at Night by Gurucharan Das,Sethji by Shobhaa De,Jinnah vs Gandhi by Roddy Matthews and the Hindi edition of Amish Tripathis Secret of the Nagas. Tripathi says that hes party to the cause of showcasing regional language books at the fest. Many literary fests do not give the respect and attention due to regional languages. Im glad that Lit Live! is an exception, he says.

The fest will put the spotlight on renowned literary works. While Naseeruddin Shah will helm the production Thurber and Seths Animals,Astad Deboos scheduled performance,Interpreting Tagore,is inspired by Rabindranath Tagores poems. Two plays will pay ode to Shakespeare Hip-hop Shakespeare,a medley of songs inspired by the Bards famous plays and sonnets,and Hayavadana,where Shakespeares works have been interwoven with Indian folklore. Other anticipated performances include An Instinct of Kindness,an award-winning play on euthanasia by Chris Larner; The Why-Why Girl,a musical adaptation of Mahashweta Devis story Kyun Kyun Ladki; and the performance of Martin Kiszkos poem Green Poems For A Blue Planet.

The event will play host to lectures by theatre personality Girish Karnad and investigative journalist Scott Carney. Fiction features prominently in the panel discussions be it cross cultural narratives,photo fiction or erotic fiction. Subjects such as biographies,Indian poetry over the last 2000 years and the future of Indian publishing ,will dominate the non-fiction section.

For the first time,the festival will host workshops,two of which are aimed at children. The idea was to cater to a wide spectrum of people and not just keen followers of literature, explains Dharker. Other workshops include creative writing,developing a play from scratch,travel writing,exploring the use of language in poetry and writing memoirs.