Auroville Foundation announces Auroville Literature Festival to start with a diverse line-up of Indian and International authors from 25-27th August 2023
Auroville's
first Literature Festival to take place from 25-27th August 2023 across the
different pavilions in the International Zone of Auroville. It brings together
some of the best Indian, International and local writers and poets and a focus
on the works of Maharishi Sri Aurobindo: on his 150th year - and his immensely
inspiring and multifaceted legacy for India and the world.
Auroville,
was launched as a Universal Town of Culture by Sri Aurobindo's spiritual
collaborator, The Mother (Mirra Alfassa), in 1968. Auroville aspires one day to
have an international publishing house among other things as it grows into a
city and an the Ideal of Human Unity push the frontier of search and vision
further. Maharishi Sri Aurobindo's 150th birth anniversary is an ideal moment
to honor that legacy and bring it to life together with the writing and search
of writers and poets from India and the world today.
The
Ministry of Culture to make all this possible and the Governing Board of the
Auroville Foundation for their encouragement and support to take this forward.
Equally, we are fortunate to have the Valley of Words Festival and the Chennai
International Centre as our partners and advisors regarding the requirements of
organizing this event.
The
weekend promises to be a truly exceptional experience with celebrated authors
and poets like Namita Gokhale, Ranjit Hoskote, George Szirtes, Anne Weber,
Karen Jennings, Nandini Sengupta, Sanjeev Sanyal, S. Hareesh, Sudeep Sen and
Jennifer Down amongst others.
All
book lovers and cultural aficionados can look forward to a rich and immersive
weekend engagement. It will be a great opportunity for the youth and college
students taking a break after exams to encounter something different and be
part of the conversation. A warm welcome is extended to all. For those of you who
cannot make to Auroville, the festival sessions will be recorded and uploaded
on YouTube. You can catch them all on the festival website at your leisure: https://www.aurovillelitfest.org/.
To
get there, the field of culture, literature and enquiry need to be nurtured
with the spiritual and pragmatic vision that Sri Aurobindo carried for the
future of humanity. Maharishi Sri Aurobindo, after whom the city was named,
gave us a treasure of 36 volumes which include his articles as a revolutionary
journalist in the Bande Mataram, calling for freedom from British rule, his
evolutionary philosophy as in The Life Divine and the Synthesis of Yoga, his
path breaking explorations of the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Gita, a 24000
line epic poem, Savitri, along with a poetic treatise, The Future poetry. His
social and political thought encapsulated in the Human Cycle and
7
international authors will be participating, 17 from India, with works in
translation from Malayalam, Tamil, German & French. 3 brilliant PM Yuva
award winning authors are also invited and there will be a special session
dedicated to Sri Aurobindo "with about 12 speakers and a book launch. For
young and aspiring authors there is a session about publishing with one of
India's important literary agents. Poetry will find place in the festival, at
Unity Pavilion. Apart from 4 online sessions all the other authors will be
present.
The
authors include several prize winners, such as the International Booker Prize
for translation, the TS Eliot Prize, the Miles Franklin Award, Prix Francois Sagan,
German Book Prize, JCB Prize for Literature, Sahitya Akademi Awards, Matrubhumi
award, the Tagore Prize and the Sri Aurobindo Purushkar and more. The topics
are wide ranging, from history to sustainable planning to time and destiny.
Literature in Tamil and Malayalam will also be showcased in this packed
weekend.
Here
are some of the statements from writers coming to the Auroville Literature
Festival:
The
Auroville Literature Festival brings with it a deep legacy of ideas and intellectual
and creative engagement. My instinct says that it will make a distinct mark on
the literary landscape.
·
Namita
Gokhale, Co-founder and Co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival
We
all need to be reading, discussing and learning from each other... and help build
a sense of a local and global community
·
Karen
Jennings
Sri
Aurobindo was a pioneering thinker and a multifaceted writer and it is
appropriate that there should be a literary festival celebrating his works...
·
Shreya
Sen Handley
It
is a place which has all these associations of an attempt to start a new kind
of society.
·
Ranjit
Hoskote
Like
the logo, the festival celebrates the unity in diversity which Auroville stands
for, and the conscious coexistence of many different strands, many different
worlds.
The
two-and-a-half-day festival will be held across different pavilions of Auroville's
International Zone campus: Bharat Nivas, Unity Pavilion and Savitri Bhavan. The
campus will have stands for the festival and Auroville and Sri Aurobindo's
books, there are two exhibitions on Auroville and art exhibitions to explore
and he evenings will see a world class dance theatre production by the Surya Performance
Lab, an art animation film on Sri Aurobindo by Suresh Eriyat, with voice-overs
by Deepti Naval and Victor Banerjee, and a Fireside Chat with Gautham Vasudev
Menon.
Registration
is mandatory and this will happen at the SAWCHU building as one enters the
Bharat Nivas campus. The sessions will be held at the Sri Aurobindo Auditorium.
The Author Lounge at Bhumika is where the press can meet and interview the
writers and other delegates.
