Indian influence at Writer’s Festival

The Australian festival of Travel Writing in Melbourne (from October 29-31) will host famous Indian writer, Chetan Bhagat. He is listed as one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. His bestselling novels Five Point Someone (2004), One Night @ The Call Centre (2005), and The Three Mistakes of My Life (2008) have inspired major Bollywood films including 3 Idiots. His most recent novel is 2 States: The Story of My Marriage (2009). As the biggest selling English language novelist in India’s history, Chetan is a youth icon who captures the essence of contemporary India in his writing. His presence at the Festival is sponsored by the Australia India Institute (AII). Chetan will speak on topics like Bollywood stories, contemporary Indian cool and inside India.

The Australian Festival of Travel Writing will be held at Wheeler Centre, 176 Little Lonsdale Street, Melbourne , Victoria 3000 . It is a multimedia event coordinated by Jacqueline Dutton in association with The University of Melbourne. The festival aims to provide a public forum for exchanging ideas and developing new strategies to promote travel and travel writing in ways that help inform on travel choices and reflect current environmental, intercultural and economic concerns. The programme includes panels and workshops on travel writing that will go beyond the standard travel book to incorporate print journalism, blogging, radio, film, photography, performance and arts that contribute to the way we think about travel.

The festival hopes to encourage a new understanding of travel writing as a medium with cultural consequences and a representation of intercultural encounters with other people, places and politics. As a publicly oriented event, The Australian Festival of Travel Writing aims to promote debates, discussions and publications on environmental, intercultural and economic issues surrounding travel and tourism in the current climate.

Other Indian links at the festival include Chandani Lokuge . She is the author of two internationally acclaimed novels, If the Moon Smiled (2000) and Turtle Nest (2003), and a collection of short fiction, Moth and Other Stories (1996). Chandani has just completed her new novel Softly, as I leave you. The short story that inspired Softly was published in the leading Australian literary journal, Meanjin. The festival will also feature Sarah Macdonald the author of the international bestseller Holy Cow! An Indian Adventure, which has become a classic example of the Indian travel memoir. She has worked as a political commentator on Triple J and on 702 ABC Radio Sydney Acclaimed travel photographer Richard I’Anson will also offer his visions of India, inspired by 20 years of travelling through all parts of this diverse and fascinating country.

This year’s programme features three exciting travel themes: Dynamic India, Multicultural French Travellers, and Travel on Two Wheels. A line-up of prominent local and international writers, photographers, journalists, winemakers, chefs, comedians, performance poets, bloggers and translators will participate in panels, workshops and special events about travelling that reaches beyond the words on the page and challenges us to think differently about travel and tourism in the current climate. So grab your passport and get on board for a weekend of new ways to talk about travel! For more information visit aftw@aftw.com.au