Jaipur Literature Festival 2019 announces international editions with debut events in Belfast, Canada and Australia

The 2019 season of ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival’s (JLF) international editions has been announced by the festival producer Teamwork Arts. With new locations debuting this year, there will be a total of seven stops across three continents. The season starts with the Festival’s sixth edition at London’s British Library, from 14 to 16 June. It boasts 60 speakers from across a variety of disciplines, genres and cultures. These include Victoria and Albert museum director Tristram Hunt; Nobel Prize in Chemistry awardee Venki Ramakrishnan; author and journalist Christopher de Bellaigue and Bollywood actor Manisha Koirala, whose recently published memoir recounts her battle with cancer. [caption id=“attachment_6652371” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Photo credit: Facebook @JaipurLitFestOfficial[/caption] In a first, the Festival will also travel to Belfast – a second venue in the United Kingdom – across multiple locations including The Lyric Theatre and the Seamus Heaney Homeplace, from 21 to 23 June. Among those already confirmed on the line-up of the two-day event are travel writer and author Pico Iyer; esteemed writers Brian Keenan and Patrick Gale; and award-winning British poet Ruth Padel. In September the Festival will head to Houston, Texas where it will be organised in association with the Asia Society Texas Center from 13 to 14 September; New York on 18 September, which is set to be a joint venture with the Asia Society and Museum; and Colorado’s Boulder Public Library from 20 to 22 September for its fifth edition. After completing the three American editions, JLF will be in Toronto at the end of September. This is its debut in Canada, set to take place across two venues, the Distillery Historic District and the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, from 27 to 29 September. Also in a first, JLF will finally be in Australia from 1 to 3 November, collaborating with Adelaide’s three-day OzAsia Festival, an arts festival dedicated entirely to Asia. The goal behind JLF’s international editions is celebrating diversity, and sharing South Asian literary heritage and local narratives globally.