13th KLF to celebrate Pakistan’s 75 years this weekend

The 13th Karachi Literature Festival (KLF) will be held from Friday, March 4 to Sunday, March 6 at the Beach Luxury Hotel. The theme for this year’s event is ‘Separation, Belonging and Beyond: 75 Years of Pakistan’.

Lovers of literature, culture and the arts will finally get the chance to interact with their favourite literary luminaries, celebrities, academics and scholars as KLF returns as a live event this weekend.

Addressing a news conference at the Karachi Press Club on Tuesday, Oxford University Press (OUP) Pakistan Managing Director Arshad Saeed Husain pointed out that the last in-person KLF was held a week before lockdown in 2020.

Husain said that in 2021, the OUP conducted a hybrid event, which people attended virtually and a few of them in person. “With that we realised that the reach [of KLF] increases manifold,” he said, adding that people had been able to enjoy and participate in the event globally.

He said that this gave them the idea of conducting different sessions digitally as well as physically. Since the pandemic is not over yet, he stressed on complying with the Covid-19 SOPs, saying that only fully vaccinated people will be allowed to attend the event in person.

The three-day event will explore the country’s achievements through a variety of thought-provoking panel discussions and book launches, which will be broadcast live around the world on OUP’s social media channels, and bring together over 200 national

and international speakers. Keynote speeches will be delivered by Victoria Schofield and Zia Mohyeddin at the inauguration, and Sardar Masood Khan and Hanif Kureshi at the closing ceremony.