Experts from literature, arts, music and poetry will come together during the maiden edition of upcoming Koshala Literature Festival 2022. The three-day festival will be held from November 4 at the Uttar Pradesh Sangeet Natak Academy.

Prominent speakers during the festival include Shobha De, Devdutt Pattanaik, Saeed Naqvi, Pushpesh Pant, Mrinal Pande, Ashwin Sanghi, Manish Tewari, Anand Neelakantan and Sagarika Ghose. Stalwarts from art, film and culture will be present on the speakers’ panel, including Farhat Ehsas, Malini Awasthi, Tigmanshu Dhulia and Muzaffar Ali.

“Our effort is to showcase the unique culture of Awadh from cuisine to folk arts and music. We will have the final live performance by folk singer Malini Awasthi. On day two, we have dastangoi on Sahir Ludhianvi by Himanshu Bajpai and Pragya Sharma. Experts from Lucknow including Carlyle McFarland, Aashrita Das, Jayant Krishna, Chandra Shekar Verma, Runa Banerjee, Asma Hussain and others will be part of this unique event,” said founder Amitabh Singh Baghel in the presence of festival director Prashant Kumar Singh.

Kerala governor Arif Mohammad Khan will open the festival and deliver the keynote speech. It will be followed by a book launch ‘Bisre chulah, bisre swad’ by Urmila Singh.

“A lot of emphasis has been laid on exploring the history of Lucknow. We know a lot about the nawabs and British rule in Awadh but there is more to this region. The festival will explore that during the different sessions,” said festival consultant Diwakar Bhattacharya.

Entry to the festival is free.

Note: This news piece was originally published in HindustanTimes and used purely for non-profit/non-commercial purposes exclusively for Human Rights.