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– NEW YORK
Well established authors, first time novelists and experienced publishers mingled with each other, shared stories about their writing careers and gained knowledge about honing their skills at a three-day literature gathering here earlier this month. Held Nov. 7 to 9, the First Annual IAAC Literary Festival included enlightening panels, book readings, lit crawls and networking events.
Hosted by the Indo American Arts Council in collaboration with Columbia University’s South Asia Institute and India Abroad, the festival featured work by authors whose heritage lies in the Indian subcontinent, as well as those who have written about a subject connected to any aspect of that part of the world.
The festival was conceived to provide a platform to South Asian writers of all genres, Aroon Shivdasani, executive director of IAAC said in a press release. “We got an immense variety of writings when we opened registrations and it was quite a challenge to decide what books to take, what sessions to organize and which authors to put on panels,” she said in an interview posted on the IAAC website. “What we ended up with was a mix of debut and established authors and interesting panel topics. From writing about the cities that inspired them, to the colonial influences in their writing to immigrant issues that find resonance with them, there is rich literature in all these topics,” she added.
The Nov. 7 opening ceremony, held at Columbia University’s Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, featured acclaimed author Salman Rushdie as the guest speaker in conversation with Prof. Akeel Bilgrami, director of Columbia University’s South Asia Institute. The two discussed Rushdie’s work and his life in Mumbai, London and New York.
Panels at the festival traversed a wide range of topics like screenwriting with filmmaker Mira Nair and actress and social activist Nandita Das; comedy writing with Aasif Mandvi and Rakesh Satyal; playwriting with Bangladeshi-American actor and playwright actor Aladdin Ullah. Panels also dealt of sensitive and specific topics like writing for the South Asian LGBT community and crafting modern South Asian tales for children as well as panels on poetry, short stories and debut authors.
A panel moderated by Paul Knox on Writing for the South Asian LGBT Community, included Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla, Rakesh Satyal, and Mashuq Deen and emphasized the diversity of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender writing across genres and discussed issues that continue to be taboo on the Indian subcontinent – as well how being labeled as LGBT authors may influence their work and marketability.
A panel titled “Unpacking the Empire: Colonial Histories and Modern Interpretations,” hosted by Berkeley’s Angana Chatterji, featured fiction and nonfiction that draws upon the sub-continent’s colonial history, yet situated it within the context of a contemporary and modern region; “Hot off the Press: Recent History in South Asia,” featured internationally recognized humanitarian and social activist Jaya Kamlani, as well as sociologist Mahmood Mamdani, Princeton professor Gary Bass, and foreign affairs columnist Neil Padukone.
Pertinent topics like social platforms, digital journalism and the internet were also discussed. Sree Sreenivasan, digital director at the Metropolitan Museum, along with Rashmee Roshan Lall, Preeti Singh, Mitra Kalita, Ajit Balakrishnan, headlined the panel titled “Finding your Digital Voices, Changing the Landscape of Publishing,” moderated by and Lakshmi Gandhi.
Other workshops focused on “Writing the City: Tales from the Metropolis, from New York to Kolkata”, “Writing Between Worlds: Immigrant Issues,” “Poetic License: Writing Contemporary Poetry”, “Short Stories”, “Cooking up Tales: the Hot New Genre of Food Writings”, “Modern South Asian Tales for Children”, “The Serious Business of Comedy Writing” and “Playwriting and Dramas.”
The festival ended Nov. 9 with a conversation between play-wright Ayad Akhtar with New York Times journalist Patrick Healey. Their tête-à-tête was interspersed with clips from Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize winning play “Disgraced,” as he reminisced his Pakistani upbringing, and his journey of becoming a writer.
IAAC officially kicked off the literary festival on Nov. 3 with Mandvi’s book launch,“No Land’s Man.” In his debut book, Mandvi shares stories about his family, ambition, desire, and culture that range from dealing with his brunch-obsessed father, to being a high-school-age Michael Jackson impersonator, to joining a Bible study group in order to seduce a nice Christian girl, to improbably becoming America’s favorite Muslim/Indian/Arab/Brown/Doctor correspondent on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”
Mandvi was born in India and moved to England when he was very young. There, he went to a British boarding school where students went to church every Sunday. When Mandvi was 16, he and his family moved to Florida. “I thought my days were just going to be spent hanging out on a beach and my girlfriend was going to be Miss Teen USA and my best friend will be a dolphin,” Mandvi told NPR. “So I had this completely unrealistic idea of what America was — but I wanted to be there.”