Online from 18- 21 November
Mumbai, 20 October 2021: Mumbai’s acclaimed Literature Festival, Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest will continue its tradition of presenting leading personalities from among the world’s best authors, thinkers, writers, and artists for its 12th edition. The Festival, to be held from 18-21 November, will be conducted in a virtual format for the second year running, due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. This year’s Festival has been tightly curated to bring participants and audiences online for exceptional quality time.
As in previous years, there will be an international stellar line up across literature, poetry, philosophy, science, business and the arts, including Amitav Ghosh, Salman Rushdie, Anne Enright, Steven Pinker, Nick Hornby, Shashi Tharoor, Indra Nooyi, David Baldacci, Ashis Nandy, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, Vidya Dehejia, Martin Kemp, Rebecca Solnit, Ruskin Bond, Amish, Neena Gupta, Ashwin Sanghi, Matthew Weiner, Marlon James, Shobhaa De, Rutger Bregman, Amy Blakemore, Matt Haig, Heather Morris, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Dolly Thakore, Jonathan Drori, Hilary Leichter, Daniel Lieberman, Farah Bashir, Sanjena Sathian.
Viewers can also look forward to the traditional highlights of the Festival: the Lifetime Achievement Award to a distinguished literary personality; the presentation to the annual Poet Laureate; the Great Debate; daily performances including for children, and the prestigious Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest Literary Awards for the First Book and Book of the Year in the Fiction and Non-Fiction categories, Business Book of the Year, and Publisher of the Year.
The popular Little Festival for children, the first such of which was begun alongside the Litfest two years ago, will also take place simultaneously, as will a Campus Festival – a series of talks by participating writers for college students.
Tata Literature Live! Mumbai Litfest has always had a tradition of regularly introducing a new element. This year will see the Introduction to Indian Languages with a session each on Marathi prose and poetry, along with a performance in Marathi.
The 2021 Festival will be an act of tribute to its Founder & Founder-Director Anil Dharker who passed away in March 2021. He pioneered the concept of a Literary Festival for Mumbai and made it into an internationally known and respected forum through the depth and range of his knowledge and access, and his extraordinary efforts. The Festival will also salute the memory of Shashi Baliga, its Executive Director, who sadly lost the battle to COVID-19 in May 2021. She was its supporting frame and exemplary advisor.
Speaking about the Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest 2021, Director of the Festival, Amy Fernandes said, “The Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai Litfest is a much-awaited annual event. Despite the enormous challenges of the past 18 months, we have been able to maintain an unbroken series to announce its 12th avatar this year. This Litfest will be a poignant event for us, our associates, and our regular audiences, who will miss Anil Dharker and Shashi Baliga, but it will also be a matter of pride to mount a Festival that will meet the exceptional standards that they set. As we once again host world leaders in thought and word across a range of subjects, we would like to most sincerely thank the Tata group for their continued support and their belief in the enduring value of the Litfest.”
Harish Bhat, Brand Custodian, Tata Sons, said, “After the highly successful digital edition last year, we are ready to welcome everyone to the 12th edition of Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest, which will also be held in a digital format due to the current pandemic and will be accessible across the country and the globe. Literature and art have always stood as two strong pillars of elevating our community, and we believe that they will be even more important as we slowly regain normalcy from an unprecedented past 18 months. Once again, this year, the festival will bring together some of the most accomplished writers, artistes and intellectuals for meaningful conversations and debates, along with some stellar performances as well. We invite everyone to be a part of this brilliant line-up of events and hope to take forward the remarkable legacy left behind by Anil Dharker and Shashi Baliga.”
Website: https://2021.tatalitlive.in/
Speakers: https://2021.tatalitlive.in/speakers
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tatalitlive/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/litlivemumbai
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TataLitLive/
Some past participants: A C Grayling, Alexander McCall Smith, Amish, Amitabh Bachchan, Amitav Ghosh, Amy Tan, Anne Enright, Anthony Horowitz, Ashwin Sanghi, Atul Gawande, Ben Okri, Craig Brown, Christophe Jaffrelot, Emma Donahue, Faroukh Dhondy, Ferdinand Mount, Germaine Greer, Gulzar, Ian Jack, Javed Akhtar, Jayant Narlikar, Jeffrey Archer, Keki Daruwala, Lionel Shriver, Marcus du Sautoy, Margaret Drabble, Mark Tully, Martin Amis, Miriam Margoyles, Naseeruddin Shah, Neal MacGregor, Neil Gaiman, Raghuram Rajan, Ramachandra Guha, Roger Penrose, Ruskin Bond, Sebastian Faulks, Shanta Gokhale, Shashi Tharoor, Shobhaa De, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Stephen Daldry, T M Krishna, Tom Friedman, Tristram Hunt, Vikram Seth, William Dalrymple.
The Tata Group is the title sponsor of Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest and the festival will also be supported by other Tata companies. The festival was conceived by Anil Dharker (1947-2021) founder and festival director of Literature Live!, which organises the festival with the support of the Tata Group.
About Tata Group:
Founded by Jamsetji Tata in 1868, the Tata group is a global enterprise, headquartered in India, comprising 30 companies across ten verticals. The group operates in more than 100 countries across six continents, with a mission ‘To improve the quality of life of the communities we serve globally, through long-term stakeholder value creation based on Leadership with Trust’. Tata Sons is the principal investment holding company and promoter of Tata companies. Sixty-six percent of the equity share capital of Tata Sons is held by philanthropic trusts, which support education, health, livelihood generation and art and culture. In 2020-21, the revenue of Tata companies, taken together, was $103 billion (INR 7.7 trillion). These companies collectively employ over 800,000 people. Each Tata company or enterprise operates independently under the guidance and supervision of its own board of directors. There are 29 publicly-listed Tata enterprises with a combined market capitalisation of $242 billion (INR 17.8 trillion) as on March 31, 2021. Companies include Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Motors, Tata Steel, Tata Chemicals, Tata Consumer Products, Titan, Tata Capital, Tata Power, Tata Advanced Systems, Indian Hotels and Tata Communications. For more details visit www.tata.com
You can follow the Tata group on:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TataCompanies
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/TataCompanies
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tata-companies
About Literature Live!
Literature Live! is dedicated to celebrating the written word in all its glorious forms. From book launches, thought-provoking talks, literary evenings and author interactions, all of which have continued online since 2020, it offers a chance to participate in the many joys of literature. It also organizes Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest, Mumbai’s premier international literary festival. Now gearing up for its 12th edition (and the second to be held online) from 18-21 November 2021, Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest has become immensely popular because it looks at literature in a way that complements the spirit of Mumbai: energetic, cosmopolitan and all-inclusive.