Oxford Bookstore, Kolkata, recently organised a curtain raiser for the 10th annual Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival (AKLF), to be held from January 18 to 20, at four heritage sites of the city.
Directors of the AKLF, Maina Bhagat and Anjum Katyal, came together to unveil the logo of the festival and announced the launch of the #LetsCelebrate campaign, a month-long initiative, to commemorate the completion of ten glorious years of the literary festival.
The theme for the upcoming festival is Park Street, as the place from where the festival was born and the location where the Oxford bookstore resides- is symbolic of Kolkata’s cosmopolitanism.
Navneet Arora, from Calcutta Heritage Collective, added a touch of nostalgia to the evening with her presentation-‘Once Upon a Time in Park Street’. Arora revisited some of the most famous architectures situated in the vicinity of Park Street, with anecdotes about each one—from Asiatic Society, Stephen Court, St Xavier’s College, Queen’s Mansion, to North and South Park Street Cemetery, Masonic Lodge and the Grail Club
The three-day festival will also have book launches in the form of AKLF Premiere, a platform to recognise budding authors called AKLF- Juggernaut New Writers’ Competition, The Prabha Khaitan Woman’s Voice Award- a newly introduced award for new women writers and the fourth edition of the Bookstore Book Cover Prize, the winner of which will be announced at the Jaipur Literature Festival.
The AKLF will include discussion on topics, such as The Great Indian Paradox, Does Gandhi Still Matter? Crossing the Line-Perspectives on the ‘Me Too’ Crisis, The Sarkar and the Musalman and A New Gaze: Change and the Indian Notheast. It will include speakers ranging from Anuja Chauha and Jerry Pinto to Rajmohan Gandhi, Ramchandra Guha and Naseerudin Shah, among others.
Anjum Katyal, director of the AKLF said, “I hope that we draw in a wide variety of audience-youngsters, students, people who are seriously interested in literature, people who are interested in current affairs, so that we have different kinds of audiences for different kinds of events. And I hope that we broaden the reach of the festival. We are trying to keep it very current, very relevant and topical. I hope that all the discussions turn out really worthwhile and memorable.”
“The festival has reached an important landmark both in the city and the country. We were one the first to create such a national festival in eastern India and coming from a bookstore, we had a huge headstart, because we work here with authors and publishers, the year round. It is the best possible way to encourage reading,” said Maina Bhagat, co- director of AKLF.