ILFK: A CURATORIAL NOTE FROM THE PRESIDENT

Whether we like it or not, literature is fast becoming international, through translations, anthologies, private and public readings, interactions, literary festivals with international participation, mutual influences and the emergence of many global literary organisations. It is also taking into consideration this scenario that Kerala Sahitya Akademi is holding, for the first time in its history, an International Festival of Literature with financial support from the Department of Culture, Govt of Kerala. The festival will be held from January 28 to February 3, 2024 on four platforms simultaneously at the headquarters of the Akademi at Thrissur. A Book Festival will also be organised at the Town Hall, Thrissur with publishers participating from all over the state to coincide with the Festival.

The Festival will have, besides the inaugural session on the evening of 28 January, around one hundred sessions that will include readings and performances of poetry, presentations of and on short story, conversations around the state of various genres of literature and between writers on books and reading, lectures on the state of minorities today, art and democracy, the different dimensions of the idea of Maitri, Sree Narayana Guru and modern Kerala, Sri Lankan poetry today, contemporary Australian literature, Irish writing in our times, Palestinian poetry of resistance, poetry in Manipur, classical music and the common people,  democracy, neo-liberalism and fascism,  panel discussions on topics as diverse as literary journalism, media today, queer representations, little magazines, women and democracy, creativity and new technology, languages within languages, the government and the constitution , women and the legal system, Kerala’s folk and classical art traditions, contemporary dance,  avant-garde art, poetry and film songs, translating literature, new developments in cinema, travel literature, the art and politics of theatre, the relevance of Gandhi today, the meaning of progress in literature and in society , epics: texts and readings, novel and history, diasporic literature, children’s literature, literary criticism today, and climate change and the future of the human species, workshops on children’s writing, film script writing  and on performance poetry and  talks paying homage to some important Malayalam writers who are no more like Basheer, Ov Vijayan, Madhavikutty ( Kamala Das) Edassery, Vailoppilly  and Balamani Amma  besides performances of drama, classical music, popular music, dance  and folk arts on six days.

The speakers expected include besides a whole spectrum of   Malayalam writers from four generations, film makers, theatre artists, and social leaders,  Les Wicks from Australia, Gabriel Rosenstock from Ireland, Najwan Darwish and Asmaa Azize from Palestine, Francis Combes from France, Juana Adcock from Mexico/Britain, Adrian Fisher from U K, Luna Montenegro from Chile/ Britain ,  Mahmood Ammar Aziz from Pakistan, Abhi Subedi, RD Yuyutsu and Tulasi Diwasa from Nepal, Rubina Haq from Bangladesh, Cheran from Sri Lanka, and Indian writers, thinkers , critics and journalists like Ashok Vajpeyi, Ashis Nandy, Prabhat Patnaik, Prakash Raj, T M Krishna, Shabnam Hashmi, Gauhar Raza, Robin Ngangom, Sachin Ketkar, Hemang Desai, Jatin Naik, H S Shiva Prakash , Manu Chakravarty, Vivek Shanbhag, Mamata Sagar, Salma, Sukumaran, Perumal Murugan, S Kannan, Bava Chella Durai, Su Venkateshan, S Ramakrishnan, Rati Saxena, Anu Anamika , Tushar Gandhi, Justice Chalameshwar, Justice Chandru, Jeet Thayil, Arundhati Subramaniam,  Siddharth Varadarajan, Sagarika Ghose and others.

We hope that ILFK, as the first of its kind in the public sector, will grow in stature involving more nations and languages, and become an annual event in Kerala like our already established art biennale, international film festival and international theatre festival. We look forward to every kind of support for the festival  from the literature-lovers and literary organisations of Kerala who, we are confident, will make it an unprecedented event through mass-participation and whole-hearted cooperation.