Lahore Literary Festival to start from Feb 22

Three-day festival aims to celebrate diverse literary traditions of Lahore

LAHORE: The seventh edition of the annual Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) will start from February 22 at the Alhamra Arts Centre. The three-day event will conclude on February 24.

This year’s lineup of thinkers and opinion makers from Pakistan and abroad includes Leila Aboulela, Eugene Rogan, Ayesha Jalal, Spiro Pollalis, Katherine Schofield, Francesca Orsini, Anissa Helou, Harriet Sandys, Rick Stroud, Mirza Waheed, Emily Hannam, Jamal Mahjoub, and many more.

The festival’s programme will be unveiled closer to the event. Last year’s home edition featured Booker winner Ben Okri, Pulitzer winner Paul Salopek, Lucknow-based Urdu novelist Anis Ashfaq, Emmy winner Riz Ahmed, Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh, author and presenter Reza Aslan.
The first-ever edition of LLF kicked off in February 2013 with the return of author and activist Tariq Ali to the Pakistani stage.

LLF has also taken Pakistani voices and perspectives to audiences abroad. It has held three editions in New York, most recently in May, in association with Asia Society and its Creative Voices of Muslim Asia initiative. It has hosted three editions in London, most recently in October, in collaboration with the British Library.
LLF explores the dialogue and interface between literature and the arts that shape our cultural, social, economic, and political frameworks. The festival aims to bring together, discuss, and celebrate the diverse and pluralistic literary traditions of Lahore—a city of the arts, activism, and big ideas. The event features discussions on a variety of subjects—fiction and nonfiction writing, music, painting, filmmaking, architecture, politics—to reclaim and employ Lahore’s rich and varied literary traditions.