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Bridging the Gap
Dhaka Hay Festival 2013 will start on November 14 at the premises of Bangla Academy. During the three-day event international authors, publishers and artists will engage in creative dialogue with myriads of Bangladeshi authors. In this article, Saddaf Saaz Siddiqi, co-producer of Hay, gives us the highlights of this year's Hay with a brief reflection on last year's achievement.
HAY Festival Dhaka, now in its third year, is emerging as the latest site of literary writing in English. Taking inspiration from our great tradition, while broadening the scope of literary activity in Bangladesh, we are again bringing in writers from this region and further afield to engage with our vibrant, argumentative and politically savvy audience. Hay Festival Dhaka will see some of the world's leading thinkers and writers of both English and global writing -Tariq Ali, Ahdaf Soueif, Pankaj Mishra - engage the readers and writers of this fresh, energetic literary scene.
One of the themes running through this year's festival is different forms of expression, and interconnectivity of words and images. Panels will address issues of how one defines world literature and its intersections with politics and faith, as well as highlighting various forms, such as graphic storytelling. We will have a great array of translators to see how to make our best works of Bangla literature available to the world beyond, and some of the brightest of South Asian
new talent will be with us. For the first time Hay Festival Dhaka will also have an array of exciting events for children. A special focus, as in previous years, will be on languages - over a dozen languages, including vulnerable ones from both Bangladesh and far corners of the globe will be celebrated.
This year the festival will also see the launching of about a dozen books, most of them fiction, and some of them translation.
Hay Festival Dhaka has now become one of 15 international Hay festivals across the five continents. Although requests for Hay festivals come from all over the world, Hay ensures that the country hosting it will organize it in a befitting manner. The idea behind International Hay Festivals is to enable international writers to come together to push the boundaries of thought and imagination beyond the limitations of culture and genre, in an effort to foster understanding, mutual respect and exchange of ideas.
Hay festival for literature and the Arts, was started in a small town in Wales Hay-on Wye around a kitchen table in 1987, and has now become one of the largest literary festivals of its kind in the world, set in spectacular Welsh countryside of the Brecon Beacons. Famously called 'the Woodstock of the mind' by Bill Clinton, Hay has brought together writers from around the world for 25 years, to debate and share stories. Hay Festival believes that the exchange of views and meeting of minds that their festivals create inspire revelations: personal, political and educational. It celebrates the power of great ideas to transform our way of thinking and pushes the boundaries of traditional literature, by gathering poets, writers, film-makers, scientists, lyricists, comedians, novelists, environmentalists, politicians and musicians together to inspire, delight and entertain.
Last year's Hay has already had a catalytic effect on the literary landscape of Dhaka encouraging writers and publishers alike, and we were honoured and thrilled to move the festival to the grounds of the Bangla Academy, where we were warmly welcomed by Director General Shamsuzzaman Khan. At the heart of the Dhaka University campus, and the historic centre of our cultural identity, it is the perfect venue to bring literatures from around the world to play under the Bengali sky. The festival, which ran for three days in 2012, kicked off with a spectacular homage to Bangla literary greats Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam, fibanananda Das and Lalon Shah, embodying the essence of Bengal in its intimate relationship with words, music and nature. Over the course of the next two days, we hosted 41 panels, almost half of which
were in Bangla, including various regional literary forms and languages, from Chakma recitations to Kobi Lorai, a form of poetry sparring in the oral tradition. Beauty, energy, generosity and inclusiveness were words that kept coming up among those who attended the sessions, book launches and performances.
This year too, the festival will be held at the spacious and serene grounds and facilities of the historic Bangla Academy.
We do invite you all to join this event and be part of a unique convergence of creative minds from all over the world.