The Utkal literature Festival will be held in the city here on October 10 and 11. State Tourism Minister Ashok Chandra Panda will inaugurate the festival, which is organised by Odisha literature Festival Trust in collaboration with the Odisha State Council of Culture, State Tourism and Culture Department, Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC) and National Aluminum Company limited (Nalco).
The event will celebrate literature and performing arts and will be attended by eminent writers of fiction and non-fiction, poets, critics, academics, filmmakers and artists from various parts of India and South Asia (Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladesh) as well as renowned and promising writers and poets from Odisha.
The festival will cover sessions on translation and bilingual writing, cinema and literature, contemporary history and travel writing, South Asian fiction writing, the state of Indian poetry, art and craft of story writing, resurgence of epic in Indian novel, blurring border between fiction and non-fiction, authors in conversation, author speak and poetry reading etc. The festival will also have a number of open air programmes - ‘literature under the Tree’, a sand art display on the festival and an ‘Artists at work’ session along with a fine art and sculpture gallery at the venue. There will be two bookshops showcasing the works of the participating writers, poets, artists etc. Specific author-signing and interaction sessions will be held in the ‘Author’s Corner’.
The inaugural session will be attended by internationally acclaimed poet Jayanta Mahapatra as the Guest of Eminence. Eminent writer in English and Marathi Kiran Nagarkar will deliver the keynote address. The inaugural function will be presided over by the renowned writer Santanu Kumar Acharya.
The high point of the inaugural day’s programme will be a Conversation Session with the legendary filmmaker Adoor Gopalkrishnan conducted by noted novelist and film writer Anita Nair. The theme will be – ‘literature through the lens – Adapting literary works into Cinema’. This will be preceded by a preview of works of the master filmmaker.
On the concluding day of the festival, eminent poet and distinguished writer Hara Prasad Das will deliver the valedictory address. Eminent writer Bipin Bihari Mishra and Commissioner-cum-Secretary, Tourism and Culture, Dr Arabinda Padhee will be the guests on the occasion. Odisha Sahitya Academy president Satakadi Hota will preside.
Amongst the high points of the concluding day will be a conversation session on “Writers from Odisha writing in English” featuring two well acclaimed novelists from Odisha based at New Delhi namely Soma Das and Satyartha Nayak. They will be in conversation with Sujit Mohapatra of Bakula Foundation. Film journalist Alaka Sahani from Odisha based at Mumbai, who won the National Award for Film Critic in 2013, will deliver a talk on ‘Writings on Indian Cinema’. There will also be a Conversation Session featuring popular and critically acclaimed novelist Amandeep Sandhu in conversation with Professor of English at University of Hyderabad Sachidananda Mohanty. Sandhu was born in Rourkela and has a strong Odisha connection.