Amrita
Dec 15 2015.
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Fairway Galle Literary Festival 2016 Director Amrita Pieris speaks on her role as the Festival Director!
Amrita Pieris is on a mission to ensure that the biggest literary festival to take place on our shores in a resounding success. The largest literary festival to take place in Sri Lanka, the Fairway Galle Literary Festival will take place after a hiatus of a few years. Having worked in the advertising industry for many years and being the Festival Director in 2012 Amrita has a wealth of experience to see the next festival through. Keen to see increased participation the festival next year takes place in Jaffna and Kandy apart from its historical home of Galle. The perfect event for literary lovers the Festival has manifold uses as it contributes towards the economy in Galle and helps the tourism industry too.
What spurred your involvement with the Literary Festival?
In 2011, I had left my advertising job with the intention of spending more time with my children, when a friend persuaded me to meet the GLF team. I went for the interview mainly to meet Shyam (Selvadurai) as his book, “Funny Boy” is one of my favourites. The job seemed a challenge but I didn’t realise the amount of work it would entail, so the children actually ended up seeing less of me! The up side is that after the Festival there is some time to relax and take stock of what we’ve worked for. I decided to get involved again this year as the Festival had not happened for three years and I wanted to be part of the team to revive it. I believe that there’s truly a need for the Festival. The Festival is a unique event and was missed not only by our audiences but the economy of the Galle area. The Festival is Sri Lanka’s biggest event and draws much international attention, promotes event destination tourism and in 2016, we will become a national Festival with our mini events in Kandy and Jaffna.
What have been your most challenging moments leading up to the Festival?
Every moment seems challenging! We are a small team - our core group consists of Geoffrey Dobbs, our Founder, Shyam Selvaduari, Natasha Thompson, Shiromi Pieris and Rachel Dobbs so everyone has to be hard at work always to manage a Festival this size. I’m very grateful to them and other coordinators for their commitment and support. Although challenging, we do manage to have some fun as we go along. It has been interesting visiting Kandy and Jaffna and receiving such a positive and warm welcome - I do hope people of the area will support the events we have lined up, and both these mini Festivals will be a success.
How do you select which authors to invite?
Author selection is handled by our Curatorial Team. There is no rigid criteria but the team looks at popularity of the writer, contemporary books and selecting participants so that we are able to offer our audiences a cross section of writers. For the future, we are also looking to broaden our scope and look into South America / Central America / Middle East / Eastern Europe and Africa and more up and coming writers. We are also looking at working with independent publishing houses and strengthening these international ties.
What makes the Galle Literary Festival different to others in the region?
Our location and style of doing things. The Galle Fort is a beautiful backdrop to the four days of The Festival making it a quaint and an intimate experience. Our mini Festival will also have two wonderful historic venues, the Queens Hotel, Kandy and the Jaffna Public Library. The Festival is also unique in what it offers to our participants - we literally give them a working holiday - they don’t merely have to fly in to do a session at our Festival and leave - but get to stay at beautiful villas / hotels, be looked after by our famed Sri Lankan hospitality and enjoy the other Festival events.
What will the 2016 Festival offer to people?
The 2016 Festival is bigger than ever. We will have 92 participants from the UK, Germany, Australia, Switzerland, Kenya, France, the US and of course from around Sri Lanka. The line up includes writers, dramatists, poets, activists, chefs and artists. In Galle we will have 102 sessions between the 13th -17th January 2016 plus an exciting Children’s programme. New features are the Thinking Out Loud sessions, Fairway Celebration of Sri Lanka and the Fairway National Literary Award Prize Ceremony and also the The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2016. There will be several performances and exhibitions. There are a number of free events and performances so we do not restrict audiences. Students and teachers will be given attractive concessionary rates as usual. Our Outreach programme has been strengthened and will be managed by the Serendipity Trust: The Galle Children’s Festival will take place in the afternoon of 17th January 2016 at the Dharmapala Park and in Kandy and Jaffna we will conduct School Day’s programmes for 250 children and Teacher Training Programmes for 50 teachers in each city.
Interviewed by Tina Edward Gunawardhana
Photographs by Pradeep Dilrukshana
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