Jaipur Literature Festival expands its presence in the US

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Houston,   The Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) will be hosting a series of events – with headline authors as participants – in three cities across the United States, starting September 14 and ending on September 23.

The annual festival with its home in Jaipur will be hosting smaller editions in Houston and New York, apart from Boulder, where it has a presence for the last three year.

“With internationally acclaimed authors and thinkers taking part in a range of provocative panels and debates, at the core of programming are thoughts and issues that resonate with our times,” the organisers, Teamwork Arts, said about the Houston leg of the festival that opens on Friday evening, with events concluding on Saturday.

After a gap of five days, the festival will be held in New York on September 20.

The highlights include a musical performance by Indian Sufi singer Zila Khan; vigorous panel discussions revolving around the history, culture, religion, foreign policy and the great passion for cricket in India; talks around the Bard of Avon and Shakespearea�s greatest and most evocative work and a session engaging with bilingual writers, mother languages, and the joy of communicating the “Babylonian bedlama of New York City.

On September 21, the festival will return for its fourth edition at Boulder. It will feature more than 60 authors “to explore today’s hot topics while engaging the community in essential dialogue”.

It will feature 40 sessions on indigenous cultures worldwide; global warming, water and climate change; the geopolitical jigsaws, culture and identity of the trans-Himalayan belt; immigration, ethno-cultural politics and race; biographies and biographers; feminism, poetry, and the craft of storytelling, among others – across three days, the organisers said.

Participating writers, apart from organisers, Sanjoy Roy of Teamwork Arts, authors Namita Gokhale and William Dalrymple, includes Shashi Tharoor, Kiran Desai, Sonal Mansingh, Sharmila Sen, Margo Jefferson, Navtej Sarna, Preti Taneja, Kurt Heinzelman, Lacy M. Johnson, McKenna Jordan, Rich Levy and Ruben Martinez, among others.

Jaipur Literature Festival is an annual literary event held in Jaipur in January and is widely attended.