Pune : Pune city’s first and the only free festival of English Literature; the Pune International Literary Festival (PILF) will take place from December 21st to 23rd. This is the 9th edition of the festival and it would be held online for the second consecutive year, due to COVID19 pandemic, informed Dr. Manjiri Prabhu, the city-based acclaimed novelist who is festival founder director. Access to the festival sessions is free.
“The basic objective of the festival is to celebrate the ‘Word’ in all forms, to facilitate a direct connect between authors and the readers and to create an inspirational platform for all creative people – at all levels of their careers, thereby promoting the culture of knowledge-based reading and learned appreciation of various arts and craft. Our partnership with Crossword Bookstores is now in its 9th year and the Salzburg Global Seminar has continued into its sixth year. Our other partners are Goethe Institute, US Consulate Mumbai with notable participation from publishers like HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Om Books International, Juggernaut, Speaking Tiger, Westland, Readomania, Amaryllis, Oxford Bookstores, Sage Publishing and others.
We are happy to announce that we have an impressive line-up of international Authors and Speakers from Ireland, Australia, Spain, Italy, UK, USA and around the world like: Cecelia Ahern, Alexandra Pringle, Carl A. Harte, Dr Mark Aldridge, Helen Smith, Liz Nugent, Mariah Fredericks, James Ziskin, Sam Blake, Stefano Pelle, Sujata Massey, Vicki Satlow, Ricardo Fayet, Elizabeth Kracht, Janet Rudolph and others.
The Indian Speakers include: Dr. Shashi Tharoor, Mira Nair, Remo Fernandes, Guru Thakur, Nayantara Sahgal, Shobhaa De, Bharat Dabholkar, Sidharth Jain, Ashwin Sanghi, Dr Alka Pande, Prof. Upinder Singh, Ashok Banker, Dr Manjiri Prabhu, Manu Pillai, Raju Parulekar, Lt. Gen Satish Dua, Sameer Soni, Ananth Mahadevan, Kulpreet Yadav, Shatrujeet Nath, Mona Verma, Dr. Mickey Mehta, Ravi Shankar Etteth, Kiran Manral, Rishi Sethi, Bevinda Collaço, Rashmi Joshi, Rishi Suri, Tuhin Sinha, Salil Desai, Akhilesh Mishra, Madhulika Liddle, Nitin Sethi, Dr. Ajay Gupta, Dr. R.Raj Rao, Vanita Kohli Khandekar and many more.
Some sessions are dedicated to this year’s Social Theme ‘The Golden Years’. We have structured a unique festival this year too, with a lot of variety and diversity in its schedule.