A quick guide to some of the must-attend sessions at Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest this weekend
Bittu Sahgal
Trail Mix: Marvelous stories from the natural world: (The Little Festival)
Conservationist and editor Bittu Sahgal, founder of Sanctuary Nature Foundation, along with children’s authors, Shabnam Minwalla and Bijal Vachharajani will dive into the magical world of mountains, trees, animals, and birds. How do they come alive in fiction, and what do some of the stories written for young readers have to say? The session is open to all nature lovers aged 11 to 13.
ON November 8; 10.30 am to 12.30 pm
AT Godrej Theatre
Queer Directions: Writing Indian LGBTQiA+ nonfiction
At this writing workshop, cultural curator and author Parmesh Shahani and journalists Dhamini Ratnam and Dhrubo Jyoti will explore queer memoirs with participants. Some key elements of the session include an introduction to queerness in non-fiction writing, finding the ‘Other’ in the ‘Self’, storyboarding ideas, and structuring and organising non-fiction writing.
ON November 7; 5 pm to 6.30 pm
AT West Room
Booked!: My experiments with form and fantasy
Jerry Pinto and Shehan Karunatilaka
Booker Prize winner and Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka will speak to poet-novelist Jerry Pinto about the novel as a form. His debut novel, Chinaman, set against the backdrop of a cricket world cup victory and the civil war, won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature in 2012; his second novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, featuring a dead photographer who sets out to solve the mystery of his own death, won the 2022
Booker Prize.
ON: Nov 7; 6.30 pm to 7.30 pm
AT Tata Theatre
Left Brain, Right Brain: From the empirical to the novel
K Sridhar
Two Mumbai-based authors, scientist-novelist K Sridhar and engineer-writer Amrita Mahale, will be in conversation with Dilip D’Souza to speak about the intersections of science and fiction. Where does logic end and imagination begin? How does an analytical mind find poetic expression? How do reason and wonder find a common ground in writing?
ON November 8; 12 pm to 1 pm
AT Little Theatre
A Wish Upon the Sky: Rising voices in original performance poetry
Twelve performance poets — Apeksha Jadhav, Arpit Yadav, Ashay Kadam, Ashu Bhoir, Faiza Shaikh, Jhankar Bhowate, Kalpesh Suroshe, Sagina Shaikh, Sheema Farheen, Shraddha Matal, Shraddha Mishra, Tahura Mulla — will take the stage. The group consists of youth, women, and the transgender community, writing in English, Hindi, and Marathi, who participated in workshops by Word Travels, Sydney. The poems will range from rap
to ghazal.
ON November 9; 2 pm
AT Little Theatre
REGISTER www.litlive.in/fest2025/register
Other cool things to do
>> Read a book
ON November 8, 9; 8 am to 10 am
AT Tata Garden
>> Attend workshops by literary stalwarts
ON November 7, 8, and 9
AT West Room 1
>> Discuss The Great Gatsby
ON November 8; 2 to 3 pm
AT Little Theatre
>> Participate in the open mic
On November 8 & 9; 6 pm
AT Experimental Garden
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