After the successful run of the 1st Adab Festival last year, the literary festival is all set to take place at the Karachi Arts Council this weekend. With the aim of celebrating literature in diverse Pakistani languages as well as writers and artists, the 2nd edition of Adab Festival will kick start from January 31 and run till February 2, 2020.
Founder of the literary festival Ameena Saiyid along with co-founder Asif Farrukhi, recently revealed that the three-day event will feature over 200 speakers, book launches, feature talks, interviews, discussions, mushairah / poetry sessions, a book fair, music, dance, theatre, comedy/satire, and film.
Some of the keynote speakers include Amar Jaleel, Asif Saeed Khosa, Maleeha Lodhi, Noor ul Huda Shah among many others. As far as the music performances are concerned, the event will feature The Sketches (ft. Bhagat Bhooro Lal, Saif Samejo, and Nomi Ali) and Farid Ayaz and Abu Mohammad Qawwal as well as dance performance by Mani Chao.
This year, new features have been included in the programme, such as a four-day creative writing course – starting from tomorrow (January 27) for 25 aspiring writers, which will be conducted by London-based novelist Aamer Hussein and Shehryar Sheikh, H.M. Naqvi and others.
In all, there will be more than 60 sessions that will include how women are portrayed in TV dramas, how the electronic media supports adab (literature) and the challenges faced by the media in Pakistan. Besides these, there will be sessions on Muslim Social Cinema, an interview of Sherry Rehman, and a riveting discussion on Urdu poetry with Zehra Nigah and Arfa Syeda Zehra.