taking inspiration feon the resently concluded gateway literature festival in Mumbai the youth association in your locality conducted a Regional literature festival . write a report for your local newspaper outlining this event with the headline ' A chance to revel in native literature '
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While there has been a rapid growth in the sheer number of literary festivals around the country, most of them tend to focus on English literature. International authors are often the star attractions at these events and there is often little or almost no spotlight for regional authors, who are left confined to school textbooks. But two homegrown festivals in the city are slowly working their way towards shifting focus to regional literature. Lit O Fest and Gateway LitFest, both in their third year, have a burgeoning line-up of authors who will engage in talks, panel discussions and book Multicultural aspect
Lit O Fest is a not just a literature festival, it’s a multi-cultural event that will be held over two days. The usual panel discussions will be interspersed with dance and music performances. “It is a showcase of Indian culture focusing on arts, music and dance. This year, the festival has adopted a village in Maharashtra called Dahigaon and started a school in it as well. We plan to adopt other villages as well and make them self-sufficient. So it’s not just literature, it’s also literacy in rural India,” says festival director Smita Parikh.
Popular authors such as Anand Neelakantan, Shashi Tharoor, William Dalrymple, Ashwin Sanghi and Shatrujeet Nath will be in attendance. Renowned Hindi authors Kedarnath Singh and Uday Prakash will be felicitated this year at the festival. “Our focus is mostly on Hindi and Urdu writing. The idea is to give a wider platform to Hindi literature and provide it the international status that it deserves. We intend to take this festival abroad. In fact, Dr Mahesh Sharma, union tourism and culture minister, will be part of the event, and we intend to approach him. The idea is to show other countries what we have,” says Parikh.
The festival, which started with the aim to provide budding authors with a platform, now facilitates publishing contracts as well. “When we started the festival, I knew a couple of budding authors who were unable to be part of any literary events. Publishers refused to highlight them until they were really well known. So, we decided that we needed to create a platform where such authors can get noticed,” says Parikh.
Talking about the selection process, the festival director shares, “Once our jury selects the authors, we share their manuscript with the publishers, who later publish the work. This year, our jury consists of author Kiran Manral, actor Tannishtha Chatterjee, author Anjali Kriplani and publisher Akash Shah. In fact, there have been eight publishing contracts in 2015, and 20 manuscripts were identified for publishing in 2016.