Bangalore Lit fest speaker list <http://bangaloreliteraturefestival.org/year-2017/speakers%E2%80%8B/>
On Wed, Oct 18, 2017 at 4:00 PM, Sidin Vadukut <sidin.vadu...@gmail.com> wrote: > I have attended several in various capacities. And there are a few reasons > for this perhaps: > > 1. Most big fests have a media partner. And one of the quid pro quo > arrangements is that some senior editors will moderate panels, talk to > writers and so on. > 2. Some senior journos are mini celebs in their own right, and are also > useful for higher profile, reaching out to foreign writers and journalists > and so on. > 3. Journalists also write a lot of non-fiction books in India. I am not > sure what proportion of the whole corpus of non-fic. But my sense is that > they do tend to serve as a sort of public intellectual in India subsuming > the roles that academics, teachers and other may do overseas. So they are > more than journalists in that sense. > 4. Many fests have politicians. And usually you set off a journalist > (usually TV) against politicians on stage. This creates a kind of staged > tension on stage. Or real tension. > 5. And besides authors, and perhaps more so than authors, the largest > supply of articulate firangs free to do the fest kind of thing are foreign > correspondents working on India. So that is them. (Unlike the UK, for > instance, India does not have a large number of foreign students or > professors who can be summoned to do sessions.) > 6. Litfests are also a kind of entertainment jamboree for anybody who > writes. In some sense I have often felt the literature is incidental to > these fests. They are good fun. But I don't think I have really come away > from these with any substantial insight into the craft of writing. (Except > for one session with Lawrence Wright in Jaipur which was very useful from a > journalistic perspective.) > > So, in summary, I think a bunch of factors come together. > > On Wed, Oct 18, 2017 at 4:12 AM Meera <meerak...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Why are literary festivals in India less about literature and more about > > journalism? That gets them the popularity of course, but where do writers > > congregate? What do you all think? > > > > -Meera > > > -- Jayadevan +91 98865 51061 Writer & Head of Product FactorDaily <http://factordaily.com/> Follow me on: Twitter <http://twitter.com/therealjpk>/ Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/jayadevanpk>/ LinkedIn <https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayadevanpk> "FactorDaily: Signals that help you read the future"
