Another South Asian Literary Festival

I got email from someone involved with South Asian Literature and Theater Festival; people in or near the DC area this coming weekend might be interested in attending. The full agenda for the conference can be found here. Some up-and-coming desi academics are involved, including Karni Bhati and Lalitha Gopalan. It looks like they've eschewed glamorous appearances in favor of interesting little discussions. Good: it makes for a more lively conference.

"Please join us for the 2004 South Asian Literary and Theatre Arts Festival (SALTAF) entitled Scripts, Stories, and Syllables of South Asia, on November 20-21, 2004 at the Baird Auditorium, National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution from 10am-5pm.  This event is sponsored by the Network of South Asian Professionals of Washington DC (NetSAP-DC) and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program.
 
"This two day event will include literary panel discussions, author readings and book signings by renowned authors such as Bharati Mukherjee, Ved Mehta, Anita Rau Badami, Indu Sundaresan, Samina Ali, T.S Tirumurti, Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi, Neela Vaswani, Tim Ward, and Vijay Lakshmi, as well as a slide show with Robert Arnett and Smita Turakhia featuring India Unveiled, the highly-acclaimed travelogue illustrated with award-winning photography. The festival will also include four one-act plays; an award-winning South Asian feature length film, Bhavum, written and directed by Satish Menon, as well as a short film by Rohit Rao followed by a media arts panel discussion with Geeta Citygirl and the filmmakers.  This artistic extravaganza is free and open to the public. 

For complete agenda and further information please visit www.netsap.org/saltaf2004 or email saltaf@netsap.org.