Ready, set, read. Jaipur Literature Festival returns to Seattle with diverse offerings

The Jaipur Literature Festival is returning to Seattle this month.

The festival, based in India, attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. Since its humble start in 2006, it has expanded to cities all over the world. Last year, for the first time, Seattle was among them.

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"Seattle is a city of readers. It's a city of thinkers. It's a city of storytellers," said Alka Kurian, executive director of JLF Seattle. "Bringing JLF to this city felt absolutely natural, because it connects our community with global conversations about literature, about democracy, the environment, history, politics, food, culture, and what have you, and all of that resonates deeply in this region."

Kurian is preparing for the festival's second year in Seattle, which will be held from Sept. 18 to 21. But the opening festival event on Sept. 18 is by invitation only.

The Seattle Asian Art Museum will host a kickoff event on Sept. 19. Tickets for that evening are free, but attendees must register in advance. Tickets to the rest of the festival are available through Town Hall Seattle.

The mission of JLF has been to spotlight the multilingual literary traditions of not only India but also all of South Asia.

Kurian said writers from the region, especially young and emerging writers, are exploring questions of identity, migration, democracy, gender, sexuality, class, and more.

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"All of these themes are being written about with incredible nuance," she said. "There's also a bold feminist wave across South Asian literature, where writers are challenging patriarchy in a way that is totally unprecedented and that's resonating globally."

As examples, Kurian noted books like "Exquisite Cadavers" by Meena Kandasamy, which blends fiction with memoir to tell the story of a young couple navigating their relationship as the author navigates her own inspirations, and "Too Good To Be True," the first novel by Indian influencer Prajakta Koli, who has millions of followers in India and abroad.

Koli will be at this year's JLF Seattle, speaking with Neha Krishna on Sept. 21.

"The young techies and the young people in Seattle, they're so excited to meet her," Kurian said.

Kurian had dozens of recommendations out of South Asia, for both those young techie types and readers seeking global voices. (Find a list of recommendations in the show notes of a bonus episode with Kurian on "Meet Me Here.")

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This year's program also includes talks with Pulitzer Prize–winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen, who will discuss his new book, "To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other"; Kiran Desai, whose novel "The Inheritance of Loss" won the 2006 Booker Prize and who will be discussing her much anticipated new novel, "The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny"; and John Valiant, author of the award-winning nonfiction bestsellers "The Golden Spruce" and "The Tiger," who will be on a panel about climate change.

The full schedule is available here.

Get more recommendations and hear more from Alka Kurian on KUOW's "Meet Me Here," or by playing the interview embedded above.