The 16th edition of the iconic Jaipur Literature Festival is all set to take place from 19th to 23rd January 2023, at Hotel Clarks Amer, Jaipur. The festival will feature some of the greatest literary minds this season, including Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah; International Booker Prize recipient Geetanjali Shree; author and translator Daisy Rockwell; popular author Deepti Kapoor; Booker Prize winning author Bernardine Evaristo; celebrated author Siddharth Mukherjee, Booker Prize winning Srilankan author Shehan Karunatilaka, celebrated poet, lyricist and author Gulzar; filmmaker and producer Onir; winners of 2022 JCB Prize for Literature Khalid Jawed & BaranFarooqi; and one of India’s most respected classical musicians Padma Vibhushan Hariprasad Chaurasia to name a few.
21 Indian and 14 international languages
The literary extravaganza will see a spectacular range of language diversity in the programme, displaying 21 Indian and 14 international languages. The speaker list includes a large number of Rajasthan based speakers namely CP Deval, Nand Bhardwaj, Rima Hooja, Malchand Tiwari, Sandeep Purohit, Tripti Pandey, Devraj Singh, AmbikaDutt, Lakshyaraj Singh Mewar, Anshu Harsh, Era Tak, Anukriti Upadhyay, Princess Diya Kumari, and CP Joshi amongst others.
Today at a press conference, hosted at the Clarks Hotel, Amer addressing the media, Sanjoy K Roy, Managing Director, Teamwork Arts the producer of the annual Jaipur Literature Festival said, “Jaipur Literature Festival spreads and proliferates discerning debate and knowledge, presenting different perspectives on complex issues of our times.
In 2023, the Festival will focus on themes such as climate crisis, geopolitics, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Indo-China relations, agriculture, and energy.
Sanjoy Roy
The 16th edition of the Festival will be hosting the world’s greatest writers, including Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah; International Booker Prize winner Geetanjali Shree; Booker Prize winners Shehan Karunatilaka, Marlon James, Bernardine Evaristo, Howard Jacobson, Booker Prize finalist NoViolet Bulawayo & Women’s Prize winner Ruth Ozeki. As we embark on a new year, we bring to you a stellar line-up that celebrates the power of words!”
The Festival will continue to remain committed to its core values: to serve as a democratic, non-aligned platform ensuring inclusivity and freedom of speech. The past 15 years have seen the iconic Festival transform into a global literary phenomenon having hosted nearly 5000 speakers and artistes reaching out to over 200 million people globally.
JLF 2023 will host 400 speakers from world
For its 2023 edition, the Festival will host about 400 speakers from across a vast array of nationalities, as well as recipients of major awards such as the Nobel, the Booker, International Booker, the Pulitzer, the Sahitya Akademi, Baillie Gifford, PEN America Literary Awards, the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, the JCB Prize for Literature and many more. It will feature a range of themes including the ongoing climate justice debate under the urgency of borrowed time; great women writers and artists focusing on the female voice and identity, crime fiction, memoir, translation, poetry, economics, tech morality and Artificial Intelligence, the global crisis in agriculture, Russia-Ukraine conflict, violence of the British Empire, cutting-edge science, India at 75, remembering Partition, geopolitics, art and photography, health and medicine, amongst others.
School Outreach Programme in collaboration with Pratham Books
This year, the Festival has brought back the much-awaited School Outreach programme in collaboration with Pratham Books to ensure a wide variety of children and young people are involved in the ambit of the Festival. Today Teamwork Arts, the producer of the ‘greatest’ literary show on earth, hosted an exclusive press conference highlighting the significance of the school outreach programme.
This year, the Outreach Programme has reached out to over 50 institutions across Jaipur, impacting 5000+ children. The programme has focused on championing the spread of ideas among the next generation of students through a range of conversations, book readings, storytelling sessions and illustration workshops. With the aim of opening up a wealth of knowledge for children and in turn giving back to the city of Jaipur, the Festival’s annual outreach programme pushes forth its core philosophy of empowering young minds through various sessions across the Festival days and via this robust outreach programme that starts prior to the Festival. This year, the initiative will help readers bridge learning gaps left in students’ academic and emotional growth by online schooling and digital classrooms. With the Library-in-a-Classroom, children will enjoy invaluable physical proximity to printed books, which in turn will encourage them to read and grow emotionally and intellectually.
Festival pass for students at Rs 100
This season, the Festival pass for all the students will be available at only INR 100/- which is applicable for all Festival days. The literary show will also live-stream some key sessions which will be available on the Festival’s microsite. Audiences watching from across the globe will be able to access these sessions free of charge.