Photo Courtesy: India Today Group
Shillong: Booker Prize winners Kiran Desai and Damon Galgut will headline the sixth Shillong Literary Festival. The event runs from November 12 to 14 at Ward’s Lake. Organizers confirmed these high-profile guests on Friday. It is the first major announcement for the three-day gathering.
Kiran Desai won the Booker Prize in 2006 for The Inheritance of Loss. She also penned Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard and reached the 2025 Booker shortlist for The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. Her work tackles migration and identity. South African writer Damon Galgut joins her. He won the 2021 Booker for The Promise. Galgut has been shortlisted three times and published his first book at 17. His writing deals with apartheid and history.
The festival includes a contest called First Bloom: Discovering New Writing from the Northeast. This initiative invites fiction and narrative non-fiction entries from emerging writers. The deadline is October 20. Organizers set a total prize pool of Rs 75,000, with Rs 50,000 for the winner and Rs 25,000 for the runner-up.
Pre-event workshops happen at the State Convention Centre. Kanishka Gupta leads a session on October 26 at 10:30 am. He will discuss career paths in publishing, editing, publicity, and literary agencies, alongside the influence of artificial intelligence. Mitra Phukan and Lalnunsanga Ralte host a creative writing workshop on October 26 at 3 pm. On November 11, Menty Jamir, Indrajit Khambe, and Bipin Aspatwar lead Ways of Visual Practice. This photography workshop covers visual storytelling and portfolio reviews. The festival intends to spotlight local traditions. It will celebrate the "literary heritage and storytelling traditions of the Khasi, Jaintia and Garo communities alongside wider national and international narratives." The Meghalaya Department of Tourism supports the entire event.
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