AUTHOR KAMILA SHAMSIE AT FEST

AUTHOR KAMILA SHAMSIE TO FEATURE AT FEST

ONE OF THE subcontinent’s best known and most feted writers, Kamila Shamsie, is to attend this year’s South Asian Literature Festival, it has been announced.

Shamsie who has been nominated on more than one occasion for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, will join early Dr Who TV director Waris Hussein, when they discuss  ‘Distant Traveller: The life and work of Attia Hosain’, who emigrated from India to Britain in 1947 and become one of the country’s first BBC broadcasters and was also a novelist, feminist, and post-war ethnic icon.

Organisers are waiting to confirm the attendance of other participants to the debate.

It takes place at the University of Westminster at 6pm on Saturday, October 26.

Several other well-known names have been added to the literary festival, which is the largest, showcasing and celebrating work from or about South Asian and South Asians.

Also set to appear are award-winning columnist and commentator Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, alongside one of the country’s foremost liberal political bloggers, Sunny Hundal, who also runs the ‘Liberal Conspiracy’ website.

The pair will be talking about ‘Ugandan Asian Exodus: Press from 1972’, with Pippa Virdee on Thursday (October 31).

One of the most eagerly anticipated of events taking place during the festival is ‘Speaking Out! Queer Desi Literature’, which will see Aleem Khan, Bobby Tiwana, Iman Qureshi and Sharmila Chauhan take to the floor to discuss gay issues and the ethnic perspective.  The debate will be moderated by Fiez Mughal. This takes place at the University of Westminster on the Saturday at 3pm.

The festival opens at 6.30pm on Wednesday (October 23) with ‘Asian Britain: A photographic History’ with the BBC’s Razia Iqbal discussing patterns of Asian migration to Britain with Susheila Nasta, the editor of cultural magazine Wasafiri and lecturer Florian Stadtler.

Closing the festival on the Friday (November 1) will be literary stars Amit Chaudhry and Jeet Thayil, novelists who have written about Kolkata and Mumbai, respectively and who will be discussing ‘Addictive Cities’.

For more on  the events, please see our earlier story… http://asianculturevulture.com/portfolios/star-names-to-light-up-lit-fest/

To see the full Saturday, October 26 programme at the University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W12UW. Doors open 11.30am, first event 12pm.

http://www.wegottickets.com/southasianlitfest/event/245371

For full programme and listings, http://www.southasianlitfest.com/