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We’re glad to announce the dates for the Galle Literary Festival 2009!
From 28th January – 1st February 2009 we will gather again in Galle for an international celebration of writing. Festival planning is underway and we are drawing together an exciting line-up of authors and events. The first announcements will be made here in September 2008.
This will be the third Galle Literary Festival. The first Festival was voted by Harpers Bazaar UK as “Number 1” of several literary festivals around the world – and many repeat visitors stopped to tell us the Galle Literary Festival 2008 was even better!
Early in the new year a hundred writers and artists from around the world gathered for five days in the bijoux walled city of Galle – a UNESCO World Heritage site on the southern coast of Sri Lanka. The PARTICIPANTS included Gore Vidal, Vikram Seth, and Alexander McCall Smith, alongside Sri Lanka’s own Shyam Selvadurai, Karen Roberts and Yasmine Gooneratne.
The writers discussed their work with large captive audiences and were joined by their readers at intimate meals in splendid settings. There were seminars and plays and films – and fringe events including a photographic exhibition portraying the lives of 80 people who live in the Fort. The Festival spilled beyond the Fort too, with a poetry slam uphill at the Sun House and an architectural tour that took us into private homes and public treasures down the coast of Sri Lanka.
Click on the PROGRAMME and PRESS RELEASE to see what you missed, or visit our BLOG for an eyewitness account. And a big thank you to our SPONSORS and PARTICIPANTS and to all the festival-goers who joined us to make the Festival a true celebration.
See you at the Galle Literary Festival 2009!
Best wishes
Geoffrey Dobbs
Festival Founder |
