Zee Jaipur Literature Festival 2016 set to begin on January 21
The ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival also revealed its list of 165 acclaimed Indian and international authors set to appear in the festival.
Have a look at the Speakers of JLF-2016.
Headline names set to attend this year are Canadian poet and novelist Margaret Atwood, Indian author Ruskin Bond, American photographic Steve McCurry, Harvard historian Niall Ferguson and Stephen Fry from Britain.
French economist and global voice on wealth and income inequality Thomas Piketty, Bosnian-American fiction writer Aleksandar Hemon, Israeli author and peace activist David Grossman, and India's most celebrated psychoanalyst and author Sudhir Kakar take centre-stage alongside leading writers, from India.
These include prominent Hindi poet and author Uday Prakash, Sahitya Akademi award winners in Assamese literature Rita Chowdhury and Dhrubajyoti Bora besides Gujarati poet and scholar Sitanshu Yashaschandra, among others.
The 2016 edition explores globally vital issues such as migration, privacy and navigating change and attempts to bring together a range of expertise and perspectives on stage.
Homi Bhabha from the Mahindra Humanities Centre is set to curate a strand of sessions around the theme of privacy in the contemporary world. Contributors include British author and columnist Ben Macintyre.
Frontline reporters would discuss conflict and its effect on the modern world with American reporter Dexter Filkins, English foreign correspondent Christina Lamb and CNN's national security analyst Peter Bergen.
Science communicator, children's author, journalist and novelist Lucy Hawking the daughter of physicist Stephen Hawking would speak of her extraordinary journey in transmitting the awe, wonder, and understanding of the universe to young readers.
The festival also celebrates the rich diversity of languages in South Asia.
Leading Indian writers set to participate include Mridula Sinha, Alka Saraogi, Ashok Vajpeyi, Yatindra Mishra, Prabhat Ranjan, Harish Trivedi and Mridul Kirti in Hindi, Anita Agnihotri in Bangla, Vivek Shanbhag in Kannada, Ila Arab Mehta in Gujarati, Madhav Hada in Rajasthani, Makarand Sathe in Marathi, Sahil Maqbool in Kashmiri, and many others including the Santhali publisher Ruby Hembrom.
The languages given voice in the programme so far include Assamese, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Marathi, Pahadi, Punjabi, Sindhi, Santhali, Tamil and Urdu with more to be announced soon. A session on the Kaavad traditions of illustrated storytelling and performance is also scheduled.
The unique multi-lingual flavour of the festival is further enhanced by the presence of international languages such as French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Icelandic and Slovenian.
A two day Jaipur BookMark Jaipur BookMark conference is also lined up alongside the literature Festival at the Narain Niwas Palace Hotel from january 21.
From self-publishing to e-books, digital content to distribution, the business to business platform is set to host both international and Indian publishing communities. An important new focus this year is on translations and rights.
"The literature festival is propelled by ideas and the excitement of real-time conversations...The spreading Banyan tree of the Jaipur Literature Festival has found root and sustenance in its recent Southbank London and Boulder Colorado editions," Namita Gokhale, writer, publisher and co-director of ZEE JLF said.
Notable, JLF, which began in 2006, is now regarded as a cultural catalyst within India and around the world, exposing audiences to a constant flow of ideas. Featuring live music sessions and interactive workshops, the Festival provides a space to dare, dream and imagine.
