Women Writers’ Fest, the travelling literature jamboree that debuted last year, with editions in Delhi, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Pune, aside from Mumbai, returned to the city this weekend. While the first day took place at the Bandra bookstore, Title Waves, today’s sessions will be taking place in Kala Ghoda. The festival is being organised by SheThePeople TV, the feminist video storytelling platform.
Why a feminist literature festival? Kiran Manral, author, columnist and speaker, ideas editor of SheThePeople and co-curator, with founder Shaili Chopra, of the festival says, “For most of history, Virginia Woolf said, Anonymous was a woman.” It wasn’t that long ago, she reminds us, that women weren’t allowed to have an education, so, “The fact that we’re writing now, and have a voice, is something we should take full advantage of.” The festival, then, is about giving women writers a space to discuss issues not given prominence at other festivals, but which are central to and inform their work.
It will not be just literature or ‘very lofty,’ she says; the team has ensures there will be enough happening for the lay woman to take away value. Across the two days, there are discussions one would expect from the name: feminism, parenting, the gender gap in workplaces, sexual identity, and sexual harassment and gendered violence. But there are also be panels with topics as varied as bringing up children to be readers, blogging, urban living, crime writing, visual storytelling, and speculative fiction. And there are performances — poetry and music — and big draws in author Kiran Nagarkar on his book Jasoda, journalist Sagarika Ghosh, and celebrity blogger-entrepreneur Malini Agarwal.
A gap Manral admits to, and hopes to address in future editions, is the underrepresentation of writing in languages other than English. “But there is a panel on new writing in Marathi, which I am excited about.” Isn’t publishing a much less sexist industry than most? “Yes,” says Manral, “It’s not as bad as other industries — we don’t have manels [panel discussions with only men] — but there is a gap in terms of functions. Women are at the highest levels of editorial seniority, but finance, marketing, all that, seems to be skewed towards men, and I don’t know why.”
She adds, laughing, “We have a panel on ‘the gender gap in publishing’ at the Delhi edition, and I hope I get answers there.”
In the course of the conversation, Manral points to one irony: in romance writing, stereotypically a female field, the bestselling authors in India are male, and their readers, if one goes by comments on their sites, are equally distributed genderwise. Aside from that, she says, with authors who get written about, reviewed, “there is a definite gender gap”. What spaces does she think women writers in India are unrepresented in? “Definitely crime — fiction and non-fiction — and thrillers; the corporate and business books, especially successful women telling other women how they did it; sports writing definitely.”
The festival, Manral emphasises, aims to be inclusive, which also means it does not exclude men. There are several male panellists, for instance, like Nagarkar, “men who have done work on or spoken on or written something of relevance to women.” And, of course, men are welcome to attend.
The second day of the Women Writers’ Fest, will take place today at 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, Kala Ghoda