Mumbai’s celebrated Literature Festival, Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest will continue in full swing for its 11th year, in a virtual format due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. The Festival, which will also incorporate an entertaining Children’s Festival for two days, will be held for an entire week this time, following an overwhelming response from invitees.

As always, this edition of the Festival has  a formidable range of participants including this year’s Nobel Laureate Sir Roger Penrose; the father of modern linguistics Noam Chomsky; acclaimed authors Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, Lord Jeffrey Archer, Ruskin Bond, Amy Tan, Neil Gaiman, Howard Jacobson, Robert Harris, Sudha Murthy, Arun Shourie, Fareed Zakaria, Emma Donoghue, Peter May, Ashwin Sanghi, Amish, Shashi Tharoor,  Shobhaa De, Farrukh Dhondy, Craig Brown; internationally known thinkers Michael Sandel, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Robin Dunbar, Henry Marsh, Christophe Jaffrelot, Tom Friedman; former RBI Governor Dr. Raghuram Rajan; historian Ramachandra Guha; renowned cultural figures Javed Akhtar, T M Krishna,  Sir David Hare, Naseeruddin Shah, Miriam Margolyes.

The prestigious Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest literary awards will again be presented this year:  for the First Book and Book of the Year in the Fiction and Non-Fiction categories, and the Business Book of the Year.  The Lifetime Achievement Award to a distinguished literary personality, and the honouring of the annual Poet Laureate, will continue to be among the main highlights of the Festival.

Speaking about the new Tata Literature Live! 2020 format, Festival Founder-Director, Anil Dharker said, “We are delighted to be able to announce that our LitFest has not fallen victim to the pandemic. The silver lining in our  corona cloud has been that the necessity of holding a virtual festival has  resulted in us being able to host a higher number of really star participants from across India and the world, and has enabled us to give global visibility to the much loved and awaited Tata Mumbai LitFest. I would like to once again most sincerely commend the Tata Group for its commitment to this event, and for recognising that in hard times, food for the mind and soul is as important as physical nourishment. It is a huge challenge for us to mount what has become a world class Literary Festival, online for the first time but it’s also very exciting, and we hope that both our regular, and potentially many new, audiences will find it as stimulating and compelling as always”.

Harish Bhat, Brand Custodian, Tata Sons, said, “At the Tata Group, we are very happy to support Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest, which has evolved to become one of the most exciting literary festivals in the world.  We are committed to literature and art, which are essential to elevate the quality of life of the communities that we serve.  This year, in the times of the pandemic, the role of literature and authors is even more important, in lighting new lamps of hope, broadening our imagination, and sparking stimulating and meaningful conversations.  Therefore, I am delighted that this year’s event comes to all enthusiasts of literature worldwide, in a brand new digital format, which you can easily enjoy from the comforts of your home.  Please do join us, for this brilliant feast of ideas.”

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, Alan Hollinghust, Alexander McCall Smith, Amitabh Bachchan, Amitav Ghosh, Anne Enright, Anthony Horowitz, Atul Gawande, Ben Okri, Craig Brown, David Ebershoff, Eike Schmidt, Ferdinand Mount, Germaine Greer, Girish Karnad, Glenn Lowry, Homi Bhabha, Ian Jack, James Fallon, Jayant Narlikar, Juliet Mitchell, Keki Daruwala, Kumar Chitre, Lionel Shriver, Marcus du Sautoy, Margaret Drabble, Mark Tully, Martin Amis, Mary Robinson. Matt Ridley, Mattew Teitelbaum, Neal MacGregor, Nicholas Hytner, Nik Gowing, Peter Frankopan. Ruth Padel, Sebastian Faulks,  Shashi Tharoor, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Simon Armitage, Stephen Daldry, Sussannah Clapp, Tom Friedman, Tristram Hunt, V S Naipaul,  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 few other Tata companies. The festival is conceived by Anil Dharker, founder and festival director of Literature Live!, which organises the festival with the support of the Tata Group.

About the 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 2018-19, the revenue of Tata companies, taken together, was $113.0 billion (INR 792,710 crore). These companies collectively employ over 720,000 people. Each Tata company or enterprise operates independently under the guidance and supervision of its own board of directors. There are 28 publicly-listed Tata enterprises with a combined market capitalisation of over $160 billion (INR 11,10,308 crore) as on March 31, 2019.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.

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! founded by Anil Dharker in 2010, is dedicated to celebrating the written word in all its glorious forms. The Literature Live! Evenings held throughout the year – book launches, thought-provoking talks, literary evenings, author interactions, performances,  book swaps, fiction and haiku contests – have offered Mumbai a chance to participate in the many joys of literature, and undefeated by the pandemic, has digitally  extended this opportunity to a vast audience beyond the city.  It also holds regular talks at colleges, and events for underprivileged school children.

Literature Live! organises the Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest, Mumbai’s premier international literary festival, which has become immensely popular because it looks at literature in a way that complements the spirit of Mumbai: energetic, cosmopolitan and all-inclusive. Now gearing up for its 11th edition from 16th to 22nd November 2020, Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest, with  over a 100 writers, thinkers and performers from India and across the world, will be on a digital platform for the first time, offering “entry” to the Festival to a global audience along with its core attendees from Mumbai.

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