Kolkata, 09th February 2023: The 46th International Kolkata Book Fair to organise the three-daylong events of the 9th edition of Kolkata Literature Festival 2023. This event will be held on the 9th, 10th, and 11th February 2023 at the SBI Auditorium, in the Boi Mela Prangon, Central Park, Salt Lake. The event will be inaugurated by His Excellency, the Governor of West Bengal, Dr. C. V. Ananda Bose, and the Hon’ble Education Minister, Government of West Bengal Shri Bratya Basu.
The sessions will witness insights from the esteemed delegates on fiction, history, biographies, cinema, the arts, culture, music, and politics. The key focus of the discussion will be on the evolving idea of India as the nation moves forward into its 76th year of independence. Many eminent thinkers, including Dr. Sanjaya Baru, Dr. Rudrangshu Mukherjee, and Sumantra Bose, will be participating in the discussion. David Davidar, author-publisher, will be talking about the trajectory of Indian literature over the last century. This year the festival will highlight two discussion panels on Indian literature from the East and North-East with powerful voices involving Manoranjan Byapari, Chuden Kabimo, Manaswinee Mahanta, and Raman Shrestha. Stalwarts involving Sanjib Chattopadhyay and Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay will also be present at dedicated sessions to delight readers of Bangla literature. Barry O’Brien, Nilanjana Bhowmick, and Lucy Hannah will be discussing the ever-burning question of identity. Dr. Samir Parikh, Akash Khurana, and Amit Nagpal will talk of matters of the mind. Authors such as Anupama Mohan, Bernhard Kammel, and Iffat Nawaz will talk about weaving words into stories, and writer-biographers Anirudha Bhattacharjee, Ram Kamal Mukherjee, and Sangeeta Datta will discuss writing about famous lives. The Annual Apeejay Jit Paul Memorial Lecture, the highlight of the Kolkata Literature Festival 2023, will be delivered by Dr Kunal Sarkar. There will be two-panel discussions on cinema with Rahul Bose, Arindam Sil, Dhrubo Banerjee, Ushasie Chakraborty, and Biswanath Basu sharing insights on the continuous fascination of the International Kolkata Book Fair with the silver screen. There will be regular, engaging Bangla sessions with distinguished delegates involving Pracheta Gupta, Ullas Mallick, Pabitra Sarkar, and Saikat Mukhopadhyay. The festival will be followed by concerts during the evenings. An Indo-Spanish concert will be led by Sahil Vasudeva, followed by Babul Supriyoon’s electric performance on day two. The concluding day will witness the music of the maestro, Pt. Ajoy Chakrabarty. Many eminent speakers like Shuvaprasanna, Arshiya Sethi, Sunil Bhandari, and Indrajit Lahiri will be part of this grand event. The entire three-day long sessions will be streamed live on the Kolkata Literature Festival Facebook page, YouTube channel, and Kolkata Book Fair website.
Commenting on the event, Director Kolkata Literature Festival, Ms. Sujata Sen, said, “The Kolkata Literature Festival has been at the forefront of celebrating the city’s rich literary and cultural heritage for almost a decade now. The 2022 edition witnessed the attendance of over 65 writers, both established and new. KLF is organised as an integral part of the Kolkata International Book Fair, which has, over the years, attracted almost 2.4 million visitors.”
