The annual Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival 2022 kicks off today and will go on till January 23 in its first virtual avatar. The festival also aims to kick off the centenary celebrations of one of India’s oldest heritage bookstore –– The Oxford Bookstore.
Inviting over 50 eminent speakers from around the world, the three-day festival hopes to be the perfect zeitgeist of all things literature. A wonderful of line-up of authors, journalists, influencers, thinkers, poets, and Bollywood actors await you at the festival that can be streamed live on Facebook and YouTube from AKLF and Oxford Bookstore pages.
The festival will also mark the announcement of the shortlist of the Oxford Bookstore Book Cover Prize 2022 by the esteemed jury that includes Shashi Tharoor, Kunal Basu, Priti Paul, Shobhaa De, Alka Pande and Emmanuel Lebrun-Damiens. Both festival director Maina Bhagat and director Apeejay Surrendra Group and Oxford Bookstores, Priti Paul, firmly believe that it was imperative to embrace the digital space and continue the festival, using books to unite people in these uncertain times.
The festival aims to cover multiple themes and topics — from mythology, politics, social issues, poetry, films, history, medical, and science — through 24 sessions spread over three days. Some of the sessions that we really look forward to include author, speaker and mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik who will speak about the myth in mythology; celebrity chefs Vikas Khanna who will be talking about his Feed India initiative; poet and author Tishani Doshi on her recently published book of poetry A God at the Door; Anupama Chopra and Aseem Chhabra who will speak on cinematic delights; Shobhaa De on love in the time of Covid; children’s author Andrew Griffiths on living a colourful life; poet, novelist and journalist Jeet Thayil on his new title Names of Women; author and prolific translator Arunava Sinha with Irene Frain on the future of translations; actor and director Aparna Sen, film-maker Goutam Ghose, and Kalyan Roy celebrating film historian Chidananda Dasgupta; actors Jugal Hansraj and Tusshar Kapoor on fatherhood; and Kabir Bedi in conversation with Advaita Kala.
The 13th edition of the Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival, one of the first literary festivals in the city, will try and bring you the same old flavour of our beloved winter haunt, the Allen Park grounds for three days of festivities. Log in today to your favour session and find the schedule on @aklf.in