Bonus: Bringing South Asian Literature To Seattle

The Jaipur Literature Festival in India is one of the biggest lit festivals on the planet. Hundreds of thousands of people attend to hear writers and artists talk about the rich, multilingual literary traditions of South Asia. 

JLF is big in another way too. Since its beginning in 2006, the festival has expanded to cities around the globe. And Seattle is one of them. The Jaipur Literature Festival will be here from September 18th to the 21st. 

Books host Katie Campbell went to the very first JLF here in Seattle last year - and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. The whole weekend felt like she was discovering new things. One standout was an art historian who discussed famous Indian paintings and the hidden messages he’d found in them after decades of study. In one of the paintings, he’d noticed how a prince was saluting his father, the king. The prince’s hand was open to the sky, and the historian explained how this was a sign of great deference and respect. Katie thinks about that talk a lot – about all the little things we can miss in art if we don’t know how to look for them. 

Katie is super excited to go to this year's JLF and she wants you to get excited too, so she decided to give us all a sneak peek into what to expect with UW Bothell professor and JLF Seattle Executive Director Alka Kurian. 

If you need even more help filling that book shaped void, here’s Alka and Katie’s Recommended If You Liked (RIYL): JLF Seattle. 

• JLF Seattle 2025: Sept. 18-21 

• Exquisite Cadavers by Meena Kandasamy 

• Too Good To Be True by Prajakta Koli 

• Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree 

• Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq 

• The Nutmeg's Curse by Amitav Ghosh 

• Tra