Hay festival to be held in Kerala

After wowing literary audiences around the globe, one of the world’s largest literary festivals — the Hay Festival — is coming to India. This November the festival will be held in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. While it was earlier reported that the organisers were interested in places like Bangalore, Chennai and Pondicherry to hold the festival, authors, publishers and representatives of the event tell After Hrs why Kerala won hands down.

Charlie Walker, director, programmes, India and Sri Lanka from the British Council, who are partnering with the Hay Festival to bring it down to India, says, “Kerala was the obvious choice. The idea behind the location was to make sure it had a strong Indian audience along with a strong international presence. It also has to do with the fact that Kerala has the highest literacy rate, which makes it an apt choice for an international literary festival.”

VK Karthika, chief editor of publishing house HarperCollins, says, “Kerala is a terrific choice of location. You get such a different audience there. You also have so many good South Indian writers to focus on. Thiruvananthapuram has a great reading culture and it hasn’t seen a local literary festival yet.”

Sanjoy K Roy, MD, Teamwork Productions, the organiser of several literary events around the world including the Jaipur Literary Festival, says, “After the success of the Jaipur Literary Festival, we wanted to do something down South. Kerala has so much green to sell to an international audience. It will be a beautiful location, on a hill top. In Jaipur, we have seen the palaces and romance, in Kerala, there will be the beaches and Ayurveda.”

Author Advaita Kala ends saying, “It is a great opportunity for regional language authors to come to the forefront. Kerala will have a very different flavour from Jaipur.”