After the vehemently positive response and success of the first and second editions of the festival, Ananke established the Women In Literature Foundation in 2021. The Foundation essentially serves as a vehicle to celebrate, nurture and amplify voices that may otherwise not find safety and security to be brave. The Foundation’s as well as the Festival’s fundamental value system is driven by principles of inclusion, non-violence, intersectionality and dismantling systemic violence.
The WLF2023 envisions to cultivate the art of enunciation by stripping away the complexities of semantics. Removing all forms of oppression infused in linguistics through the vectors of race, nationhood and ethnicity, the event seeks to unearth the universality of the language of grief and melancholy.
As Joao Guimarães Rosa exposits that ‘every word has its shadow,’ the Women in Literature festival sets out to explore that migratory experience of language; its journey of losing and regaining, of seeking refuge, for shelter against the notions of banishment, expulsion, ostracism and intersecting the prospects of victimhood and hyper-nationalist fascism.
Many believe the act of creating is more than often linked with the desire to achieve that which has been denied, take for example the Guttenberg printing press to even the Internet. These creations saw the light of day all due to the need for the freedom to communicate, thereby giving birth to ‘new configurations’ of life, nature, power, hegemony, legitimacy and ideology. Focusing on the multiplicity of realities, the festival seeks to uncover, consequently deconstructing the crisis of humanism in a post-humanist society and expounding, contemplating – perhaps – the end of the era of the Vitruvian man defining the measure of things.
“We are overwhelmed by the excitement and buzz around Ananke’s Women in Literature Festival and can’t wait to unveil all our esteemed collaborators and speakers on board. The announcements will be in the days to come. AnankeWLF is a space where thought leaders, innovators and change-makers especially from the Global South converge and congregate. Speakers and attendees not just engage in conversations that are thought provoking, it gives me immense pleasure to say that this space has in fact promoted and invigorated cross cultural exchange on so many levels. And this makes me hopeful,” says , Sabin Muzaffar.
Previous editions were a huge success with writers, academics, authors, editors, journalists from all over the world joined in.
Festival Ideas for WLF 2023 (not limited to the below) include:
- Exploring New Pathways to Creativity and Literature
- The Language of Grief vis-à-vis the Dialectics of Freedom & Autonomy
- The Migratory Experience of Language
- Digital Disruption & Content
- Decentralizing the human to realize an inclusive world - Ending the era of the Vitruvian man
- Reimagining Anthropocene: A post-humanist exploration of climate resilience, urbanism, and nonhuman habitat loss in South Asian fiction
- Blurred Lines: On Science, Fiction and Fantasy
- The Age of the Graphic Novel
- Inclusive Publishing
- Publisher’s Corner
- Spotlight
- Illustrated Resistance
- Transnational Feminism in Print and Media