If you are looking only at the upcoming BLF you might be tempted to think so, but this is generally not true. The composition of littlest speakers depends a lot upon who the organisers know well, reach out to etc. and there might indeed be a bit of a journalistic bias here because Shinie Antony is a former business journalist and has friends among popular Indian journos.
Having said that, I also think that the Indian literary novel in English is going through a very low phase, and most IWE novels are either written with the college crowd in mind and are of iffy quality or are genre works (and genre writers do feature prominently at most events). OTOH, there’s a surge in non-fiction writing, both in terms of quantity and quality. Hence it’s natural that more non-fiction authors (many are journalists) will find themselves at lit-fests than novelists. Also, the Indian literary novel has sunk into a rut and there’s not much to discuss — even around books that do sort of perform well — whereas current non-fic books are usually topical, interesting and makes for lively discussions. On Wed, 18 Oct 2017 at 8:41 AM Meera < Meera ( Meera <[email protected]> ) > 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 > > > > > > > > > > > > >
