About JLF Houston

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Sanjoy K. Roy

Managing Director - Teamwork Arts (Producer)

Literature builds equity, and engenders empathy. It exposes the cracks in fractured communities and reflects the daily pain and anguish of a society. Creating platforms for dialogue and enabling environs for writers to express themselves is vital for the very sustenance of progressive societies. It is literature and the arts that create a window to other worlds and allow us to appreciate and understand varied cultures, their histories, traditions, economies, and ways of life, pushing back against hatred and the fear of the unknown.

Even as the world learns to cope with the reality of climate change, polarization across political, economic social, religion, and race become more pronounced, the freedom to express has been challenged by hatred, violence, war and authoritarian regimes

that are the dominant narratives of the day. Against this backdrop of hyper-nationalism and extremism, it is imperative that we continue to build equitable spaces and create an environment for writers and thinkers to articulate their worldview and foster creativity.

JLF, over the years, has spread its wings to include Adelaide, Belfast, Boulder, Doha, Houston, London, New York, Soneva Fushi in the Maldives, and Toronto. In 2023, we opened JLF Valladolid Spain – our first edition in the Spanish-speaking world, which was received with great enthusiasm with capacity crowds and multilingual simultaneous translations.

 As we look ahead to our 10th year in the United States, we renew our commitment to showcase the best literary works, address important issues such as empathy, climate crises, gender, economic upheaval, migration and developments in the areas of science, technology, space and health. We will nurture new writing, and hope to bring to the forefront a million ideas which can rise like fireflies into the night sky illuminating us all!

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Namita Gokhale

Writer, Publisher & Festival Director

We are delighted to return to Houston to present the 6th edition of JLF at the inspirational Asia Society with a special appearance this year at the University of Houston.

Our narratives define us. These narratives are changing, as are the voices and technology that platform them. Our weekend of ideation and literary conversation looks at the different perspectives of our shared stories. We look at how these stories travel and transform and renew themselves. 

Anjan Sundaram and Salil Tripathi explore the personal and the political.  Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni talks of her recent novel on the partition of the Indian subcontinent when it gained Independence.

Astro-physicist Priyamvada Natarajan maps the heavens and takes us on a journey through the cosmos. 

Celebrated filmmaker Mira Nair takes us on a journey through her award-winning work.

Parini Shroff and Aruni Kashyap speak of writing across cultures and continents . 

We invoke the poetic imagination with Aris Kian Brown, Aruni Kashyap and Rohan Chhetri. 

We discuss Forbidden Pages - banned, burned and censored books with writer and activist Tony Diaz, writer and editor Salil Tripathi and librarian Dorcas Hand.

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William Dalrymple

Writer, Historian & Festival Director

We are thrilled to bring our beloved festival back to the United States. The Jaipur Literature Festival is a unique celebration of writing that has grown into something bigger and more wonderful than anything we could ever have hoped for when we first conceived this festival more than a decade ago. We are as surprised as we are proud of this. This Fall, we present in Houston, New York, and Boulder a series of pocket-sized Jaipurs bringing the color and energy of the festival from the Aravallis to the bayous of Houston, the skyscrapers of New York, and the Rockies of Colorado. We can’t wait to once again share with the United States a little taste of the dynamism, energy and literary brilliance that has made Jaipur the most happening literary festival in the world.