JLF Houston Returns for Second Festival at Asia Society
- View more photos on Flickr
HOUSTON, September 17, 2019 — Following last year's debut, JLF Houston returned to Asia Society Texas Center for two days of speakers, music, and thought-provoking panels.
A partnership of Teamwork Arts, Asia Society Texas Center, Inprint, and the Consulate General of India in Houston, the festival featured a roster of local writers and internationally recognized authors, including Bapsi Sidhwa, Lawrence Wright, Manisha Koirala, and William Dalrymple, with topics ranging from the medical industry to Texas culture to poetry.
Founded in 2006 in the Indian city of Jaipur, the ZEEJaipur Literature Festival has hosted nearly 2,000 speakers in more than 40 cities globally in the past decade to fulfill its mission to serve as a beacon of free speech around the world. Other U.S. host cities include New York and Boulder, Colorado.
View more photos of JLF Houston on Flickr.
About the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival 2019
Described as the ‘greatest literary show on Earth’, the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival is a sumptuous feast of ideas. The past decade has seen it transform into a global literary phenomenon having hosted nearly 2000 speakers and welcoming over a million book lovers from across India and the globe. The Festival’s core values remain unchanged; to serve as a democratic, non-aligned platform offering free and fair access.
Every year, the Festival brings together a diverse mix of the world’s greatest writers, thinkers, humanitarians, politicians, business leaders, sports people and entertainers on one stage to champion the freedom to express and engage in thoughtful debate and dialogue. Writers and Festival Directors Namita Gokhale and William Dalrymple alongside producers Teamwork Arts invite speakers to take part in the five-day program set against the backdrop of Rajasthan’s stunning cultural heritage and the Diggi Palace in the state capital Jaipur. Past speakers have ranged from Nobel Laureates J.M. Coetzee, Orhan Pamuk and Muhammad Yunus, Man Booker Prize winners Ben Okri, Margaret Atwood and Paul Beatty, Sahitya Akademi winners Girish Karnad, Gulzar, Javed Akhtar, M.T. Vasudevan Nair, as well as the late Mahasweta Devi and U.R. Ananthamurthy, along with literary superstars including Amish Tripathy, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi, and Vikram Seth.
An annual event that goes beyond literature, the Festival has also hosted Amartya Sen, Amitabh Bachchan, the late A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Oprah Winfrey, Stephen Fry, Thomas Piketty and former president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai. The ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival is a flagship event of Teamwork Arts, which produces it along with over 25 highly acclaimed performing arts, visual arts and literary festivals across more than 40 cities globally. Over the years, Teamwork Arts has produced ZEE JLF at The British Library, Boulder, Houston, New York, Adelaide, and coming up in 2019 in Belfast and Toronto.
Website: www.jaipurliteraturefestival.org
About Inprint
Inprint, a nonprofit organization founded in 1983 with the mission of inspiring readers and writers, has helped to transform Houston into a diverse and thriving literary metropolis. Inprint directly serves more than 15,000 Houstonians annually with low-cost or free literary performances for adults and children featuring leading writers; writers workshops for the general public, senior citizens, K-12 teachers, veterans, healthcare providers, the incarcerated, and more; and support for some of the world’s top emerging creative writers, in the form of fellowships and prizes - more than $4 million, to date.
About Asia Society Texas Center
With 14 locations throughout the world, Asia Society is the leading educational organization promoting mutual understanding and strengthening partnerships among the peoples, leaders, and institutions of Asia and the rest of the world. Asia Society Texas Center executes the global mission with a local focus, enriching and engaging the vast diversity of Houston through innovative, relevant programs in arts and culture, business and policy, education, and community outreach.