Jaipur Lit Festival goes hybrid in 2022

The iconic annual Jaipur Literature Festival will be back at its cherished home – Jaipur – in a hybrid avatar with both its on-ground magnificence as well as its nifty virtual presence. The hybrid version will enable a larger audience to access the Festival offerings, reaching out to book-lovers across continents. It will be a powerful feast of literature, discourse and camaraderie.
Teamwork Arts, the Festival producer, announced the dates for its landmark 15th edition, setting them between 28th January – 6th February 2022. The virtual sessions will go live from 28th January to 6th February with an extended online experience.
2022 heralds new beginnings when the Festival will combine the cautious optimism of a post-pandemic world along with the sheer joy that books can bring – both online and on-ground. The Festival will represent all Indian national languages and multiple foreign languages too with over 300 hours of programming with and over 250 speakers.
For over a decade, Jaipur has played host to the annual Jaipur Literature Festival, dubbed the ‘greatest literary show on Earth’, a haven for literature-lovers and festival-goers alike. After a much successful virtual edition of the Festival last year, with over 10 million views worldwide, the 2022 edition will introduce the audience to the brand new and ‘super’ hybrid version at a spanking new venue with an enhanced experience and facilities. The Festival will be organised at Hotel Clarks Amber, Jaipur with added facilities to accommodate footfalls and will follow COVID 19 safety protocols as per government guidelines.
This first-ever truly hybrid literary extravaganza will showcase a plethora of themes and writers curated specially for audiences across the world, offering an immersive experience of literature, discourse, musical performances, art installations, merchandise, local cuisine and more. In its milestone hybrid edition, the Festival aims to be even wider in its reach and longer in duration, covering 10 days.
A preliminary list of speakers includes Indian poet and author of the latest Women Who Wear Only Themselves Arundhathi Subramaniam; Delhi-based vascular and endovascular surgeon, writer and Director of the Vascular Cath Lab at Sir Ganga Ram hospital Dr. Ambarish Satwik; eminent art critic, art historian B.N. Goswamy; senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, former Portuguese politician and author Bruno Maeees; bio archaeologist and field archaeologist specialising in the Viking Age, Viking women and Rapa Nui Dr. Cat Jarman; 2021 Booker Prize winner for his novel The Promise Damon Galgut; Australian author and 2003 Booker Prize winner for his debut novel Vernon God Little DBC Pierre; Indian-born British writer, playwright and screenwriter Farrukh Dhondy.
The list continues with National Book Award-winning author and 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist Jonathan Franzen; author of acclaimed novels like The Miniaturist and Kalkatta and a collection of stories titled The Japanese Wife Kunal Basu; academic and author of Cultivating Democracy: Politics and Citizenship in Agrarian India Mukulika Banerjee; member of parliament and author Dr. Shashi Tharoor; debutant novelist of the latest Equations Shivani Sibal; historian and author of three acclaimed books, Sixteen Stormy Days, Imperial Sovereignty and Local Politics and the latest Nehru: The Debates that Defined India Tripurdaman Singh; historian and the author of four acclaimed books, with his latest being Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966 Vikram Sampath. (IANSlife)