The commencement of India’s first literary festival, Apeejay Bangla Sahitya Utsav (ABSU) curated by Oxford Bookstores is on 10^th December 2021.

The festival will be for three days starting from December 10 to December 12. The seventh edition of the festival will be held on a virtual platform for the first two days and will be streamed Live on Facebook. The third day will record the physical sessions at Oxford Bookstore, which is also accessible virtually on various digital platforms of the Apeejay Bangla Sahitya Utsav.

An array of topics will be taken up for discussions and debates to notice and explore the new trends and changes in Bengali literature. For example — literary fiction and non-fiction to history, society, translations, audiobooks, graphic novels, and poetry.

Lasting over three days, the literature festival with 16 enlightening discussion sessions will feature speakers from across the globe, containing writers, poets, playwrights, journalists, cultural icons, and recipients of major literary awards.

ABSU is the first Bangla Literature Festival of India created by a nearly 100-year-old Oxford Bookstore in 2015 that honors the rich tradition of literature of the Bangla language.

The goal of ABSU is to make the literature of Bangla accessible and visible, build an audience for Bangla books, and create a culture of reading and familiarising with the Bangla language among the youth.

An interactive platform that is bringing together voices of Bangla Literature from the international and national stage, ASBU shows all aspects of Bangla literature and literary expression with their impact on various art forms.

Talking about the occasion, ABSU Director & CEO Oxford Bookstores, Swagat Sengupta stated: “This is the second year that we have been successfully able to curate a festival of this stature in the online and physical format. The festival will feature special sessions paying tribute to the legendary authors Sankha Ghosh, Buddhadeb Guha, and Anish Deb. It will also have 16 specially curated sessions which range from graphic novels, audiobooks, cosmology, journalism, cinema and of course Bangla literature”.

ABSU, Executive Trustee – Prabha Khaitan Foundation, Anindita Chatterjee said: “This is the second year Prabha Khaitan Foundation got associated with Apeejay Bangla Sahitya Utsav. In our endeavor to promote regional language, we have the literary initiative ‘Aakhar’ which is present in more than 10 cities in India. Through this association, we wish to promote Bengali literature on various platforms. I sincerely hope that this association will help both organizations to reach their goals. I wish ABSU all success”.

The seventh edition of Apeejay Bangla Sahitya Utsav includes eminent personalities like Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, Pabitra Sarkar, Rudraprasad Sengupta, Nrisingha Prasad Bhaduri, Bani Basu, Subhaprasanna, Kamaleshwar Mukherjee, Parambrata Chattopadhyay, Subodh Sarkar, Anindya Jana, Procheto Gupta, Himadrikishore Dasgupta, Saikat Mukherjee, Prasun Banerjee, Binod Ghosal, Gaurav Chakraborty, Subhankar Dey, Indrani Chakraborty, Yashodhara Roychoudhury, Dipannita Roy, Raja Bhattacharya, Debjyoti Bhattacharyya, Abhijnan Roychowdhury to name a few.

(With imports from IANS)