Thank you to everyone, especially to all our SPONSORS & PARTICIPANTS who assisted in making this inaugural festival a huge success.
The recent accolade bestowed by Harper's Bazaar UK, listing The Galle Literary Festival as "Number One Literary Festival" among six of the best festivals from around the world, was a remarkable achievement for a festival after only its first year!
Our 2008 Festival will take place from 16th – 20th January in & around the historic city of Galle, with its magnificent UN World Heritage site of Galle Fort. Galle offers the perfect location for a Literary Festival, providing a range of unique & memorable venues for individual events, as well as providing the perfect springboard from which visitors can explore the rich culture & history of the coastline & villages of the Southern Province.
We are currently developing the 2008 programme and welcome any suggestions for topics you would like to have discussed, and writers/participants you would like to see attend. Please email us at info@galleliteraryfestival.com.
To date the following authors have expressed an interest in attending: Shyam Selvadurai, Rohinton Mistry, Vikram Seth, Jung Chang, John Julius Norwich, Simon Winchester, Shobhaa De, and Anita and Kiran Desai.
Our key objectives are to raise awareness of the increasing depth and diversity of Sri Lankan writings in English, and to encourage and stimulate further writing in English within Sri Lanka and Asia. In addition to this we also wish to establish a healthy dialogue between participants and spectators, discussing topical issues & providing a platform for vigorous debate.
We hope this will encourage people to think laterally, to think outside the box.
Since Robert Knox's book first appeared in 1681 the English speaking world has been captivated by this resplendent island in the Indian Ocean. In recent decades Sri Lankan writers have further contributed to the development of English literature and are now regularly nominated for leading literary awards. In addition there have been many art & lifestyle books produced on Sri Lankan culture and way of life. As a result people have been eager to visit the island and see for themselves why it has attracted authors like Mark Twain, Pablo Neruda, D.H. Lawrence, Somerset Maugham and Anton Chekhov, and why Sir Arthur C Clarke has made it his home for the last 50 years.
We will be posting full details of our 2008 programme in early October of this year. In the meantime please take the time to see what we did in 2007 and bury yourself in books for what promises to be another exceptional event.
