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From left: Fairway Galle Literary Festival’s Festival Manager Natasha Thompson, Jetwing Hotels Chairman Hiran Cooray, Fairway Galle Literary Festival’s Festival Founder Geoffrey Dobbs, Fairway Holdings Group Chief Executive Officer and Director Imal Fonseka, Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau Chairman Paddy Withana, SriLankan Airlines Chief Executive Officer Captain Suren Ratwatte and Fairway Galle Literary Festival’s Festival Director Amrita Pieris
GLF, an acronym that has come to be synonymous with world class literature, is around the corner again, with the festival for the year 2017 having the Colombo literati all abuzz with news of what promises to be an exceptionally gifted lineup of authors both local and international.
The Galle Literary Festival 2017, the eighth in the series, is scheduled to be held from 11 to 15 January next year, with organisers hoping to raise the bar in terms of scale, scope and content, featuring a multitude of celebrated authors including Philippa Gregory, Katherine Boo and Christina Lamb.
GLF has for years had a somewhat unfounded reputation of being inaccessible to the masses, what with a majority of its target demographics consisting of the English-speaking elite. The 2017 festival however promises to change this for the better and, for the first time ever, will have an entire day devoted to free Sinhala programming.
On 14 January, sessions at the Maritime Museum in the Galle Fort will feature shortlisted Sinhala language authors of the Fairway National Literary Award, in addition to sessions by noted Sinhala authors on poetry, short stories and novels. These sessions will feature Amarakeerthi Liyanage and Sunethra Rajakarunanayake’s session on the translation of Shehan Karunatilaka’s award winning Chinaman into Sinhala.
Below is a brief introduction to the three headliners:
Philippa Gregory
An established historian and #1 New York Times bestselling author, Philippa Gregory, gained international acclaim for her novel, “The Other Boleyn Girl,” which was later adapted into a major motion picture starring Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson. Gregory has written many popular historical novels including “The White Queen” and “The Taming of the Queen,” both The Sunday Times #1 Bestsellers. Her most recent novel is “Three Sisters, Three Queens,” published in 2016, which is also an international bestseller.
Katherine Boo
A Pulitzer Prize-winning staff writer for The New Yorker, reporting on poverty related issues for the past 25 years, Katherine Boo is the author of the New York Times Bestseller “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity,” which was also recognised with the 2012 National Book Award in the United States and has since been published in more than 30 languages. In 2015, the book was adapted into a play by David Hare for the National Theatre U.K.
Christina Lamb
A leading foreign correspondent and bestselling author, Christina Lamb has been named Foreign Correspondent of the Year five times and has also won Europe’s top war reporting prize, the Prix Bayeux. She is currently a roving Foreign Correspondent for the Sunday Times, with her postings having included South Africa, Pakistan, Brazil and Washington and her recent reports highlighting the refugee crisis across Europe, and Boko Haram camps for women in Nigeria. She is author of the highly acclaimed “I am Malala.” Her latest endeavour is “Nujeen.”
Other luminaries attending the festival include: Colm Toibin multi award winning writer and author of ‘Brooklyn’, which was adapted into an Oscar Nominated Film; Dame Margaret Drabble, recipient of the ‘Golden Pen Award’ in 2011; Lesley Hazleton, recipient of the ‘Strangers Genius Award in Literature’; Amish Tripati, author of ‘The Shiva Trilogy’, fastest selling book series in Indian history; Sunjeev Sahota, shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize and Miguel Syjuco 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize winner. The Festival also features the participation of Sophie Hannah, David MacDonald, Roma Tearne, Luke Wright & noted local authors Nayomi Munaweera, Anuk Arudpragasam, Sunila Gallappatti and Ashok Ferrey, amongst others.
A full list of festival participants numbering more than 60 notable personalities is available at www.galleliteraryfestival.com. The organisers said that the highlighted authors and artists represent a wide spectrum of specialities, from fiction and nonfiction, to history, biography and poetry, as well as conservation, award winning journalism, architecture, cookery, film, playwriting, acting and theatre.
“A mandate of the Festival is to continue its outreach activities aimed at working with selected schools and universities in Sri Lanka. The Festival’s Schools Day this year features programming with famed storyteller Jeeva Raghunath and illusionist and TV personality Neel Madhav. It will take place in four selected schools in Galle and two in Jaffna, reaching over 600 kids. The Festival will also provide a Teacher Training Programme for over 150 teachers in Galle and Jaffna. The popular North South University Collaboration will also take place for the fourth time. Through this initiative, the Festival will be hosting 50 students, and their teachers, from universities across the country, who will participate in a residential programme for the four days of the Festival, with a focus on reconciliation and bridge building,” the organisers said in a press communique.
Pix by Ruwan Palpola
