About JLF
Described as the ‘greatest literary show on Earth’, the Jaipur Literature Festival is a sumptuous feast of ideas.
The past decade has seen it transform into a global literary phenomenon having hosted nearly 2000 speakers and welcoming over a million book lovers from across India and the globe.
Our core values remain unchanged: to serve as a democratic, non-aligned platform offering free and fair access.
Every year, the Festival brings together a diverse mix of the world’s greatest writers, thinkers, humanitarians, politicians, business leaders, sports people and entertainers on one stage to champion the freedom to express and engage in thoughtful debate and dialogue.
Writers and Festival Directors Namita Gokhale and William Dalrymple, alongside producer Teamwork Arts, invite speakers to take part in the five-day programme set against the backdrop of Rajasthan’s stunning cultural heritage and the Diggi Palace in the state capital Jaipur.
Past speakers have ranged from Nobel Laureates J.M. Coetzee, Orhan Pamuk and Muhammad Yunus, Man Booker Prize winners Ben Okri, Margaret Atwood and Paul Beatty, Sahitya Akademi winners Girish Karnad, Gulzar, Javed Akhtar, M.T. Vasudevan Nair as well as the late Mahasweta Devi and U.R. Ananthamurthy along with literary superstars including Amish Tripathi, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Vikram Seth. An annual event that goes beyond literature, the Festival has also hosted Amartya Sen, Amitabh Bachchan, the late A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Oprah Winfrey, Stephen Fry, Thomas Piketty and former president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai.
The Jaipur Literature Festival is a flagship event of Teamwork Arts, which produces it along with over 25 highly acclaimed performing arts, visual arts and literary festivals across more than 40 cities globally.
Teamwork Arts also produces JLF London, JLF Colorado, JLF Houston, JLF New York, JLF Adelaide, and for the first time in 2019, JLF Belfast and JLF Toronto.
Testimonials
CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI is an award-winning and bestselling novelist, poet, activist, and teacher of writing. She has won many awards, including the American Book Award and the Premio Scanno. Her work has been published in over 100 magazines and anthologies while her books have been translated into 29 languages. She teaches at the internationally acclaimed writing program at the University of Houston.
HARI AGRAWAL is CEO of CNA Metals Group, a multi-national brokerage company that specializes in ferrous and non-ferrous scrap metal, paper, and plastics. Agrawal’s expertise is in international business development, finance, turnarounds, and commercial real estate.
The Jaipur Literary Festival is part-circus, part-postgraduate seminar and part-revolutionary assembly.
The greatest literary show on Earth.
The most fabulous literary love-fest on the planet.
Seeing school students, in uniform, on a Saturday, peppering esteemed journalists and politicians with erudite and wide-ranging questions was brilliant.
Teamwork Arts
From Concept to Curation and Design to Production
Teamwork Arts is a highly versatile production company with roots in the performing arts, knowledge-creation, social action and the corporate world. For over 30 years, Teamwork Arts has taken India to the world and brought the world to India, presenting the finest of Indian performers, writers, change-makers and visual artists in the knowledge and arts space in India and abroad. The arts of India are unrivaled in their depth, diversity and mystery and showcasing India to global audiences requires a deep understanding of her culture, an acute sense of relevance in programming, an unflinching attention to detail and above all, love and respect for the artist. Our expertise spans the sphere of entertainment and knowledge, and includes making of documentary and feature films, conceptualizing and developing visual, performing arts and literary festivals around the world which embody both a classical and contemporary India, and nurturing new talent across all art forms.
Every year, we produce over 33 festivals in 42 cities and 17 countries in the fields of performing & visual arts and literature; our venues include Australia, Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, the UK and USA as well as many eclectic festivals across India. We produce the world’s largest literary gathering: the annual Jaipur Literature Festival; JLF international now travels to the US, UK, Canada and Australia and the Maldives and Spain!
We produce acclaimed festivals across India such as the Ishara International Puppet Festival, the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards (META), festivals of magical music -the Mahindra Kabira in Varanasi, the Sacred in Pushkar, the Jazz India Circuit in Goa and the National Capital Region, the Jaipur Music Stage in Jaipur and the monthly Under the Banyan Tree which happens on a “Full Moon” night in Delhi.
Our international festivals include India by the Nile in Egypt, India by the Bay in Hong Kong, Confluence - A Festival of India in Australia, India in the Sunshine City in Zimbabwe , India by the Bosphorus in Turkey, India in the Alps in Switzerland and many more. Our musical extravaganza, Bollywood Love Story - A Musical, continues to tour the world with sold-out shows everywhere it is held.
Even amidst the upheaval and unsettling times of 2020 and through 2021, Teamwork Arts successfully launched the digital series, ‘JLF Brave New World’ and ‘Words Are Bridges’, which were viewed by over 4.8 million people in their first season. Through its digital avatar, the Jaipur Literature Festival reached over 27 million viewers in January 2021 and brought together the world’s leading commentators and writers. Amidst the pandemic, Teamwork Arts also created ‘Art Matters’ - an initiative empowering artistes across India to collaborate across genres by commissioning them to create new works. It has since then raised awareness, actioned change, developed support channels and inspired the community to contribute to the cause in various direct and indirect ways. The digital series ‘Be Inspired’ was launched in 2021 – a series that crystal-gazes into the future with conversations on science, technology, innovation, environment and more.
More information at: www.teamworkarts.com
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