The second edition of Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters (www.mbifl.com) will be held from Jan 31-Feb 3, 2019 at Kanakakkunnu Palace in the capital city with over 200 speakers from all across the world.

Held under the theme “Known Lands; Unheard Voices”, the festival will have a strong field of speakers from Europe, the US, West Indies, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.

MBIFL ’19 will have a large contingent of close to 50 foreign speakers who include poets, novelists, academics, graphic novelists, filmmakers and journalists. There are over 100 speakers from Kerala in addition to the leading Indian writers in English and other languages.

The keynote speakers of the festival include Dr Shashi Tharoor and Prof Germaine Greer while award-winning Iraqi novelist Shahad Al Rawi and journalist and author Joumana Haddad, one of the ‘100 powerful Arab women’, Lorna Goodison, the poet laureate of Jamaica, and well-known Sri Lankan writer Shyam Selvadurai are part of the eclectic list of speakers.

There are over 100 speakers from Kerala in addition to the leading Indian writers in English and other languages.

Even though the festival strives to create a platform for discourses and a confluence of minds, the underlining aspect of the festival is literature and its various forms, and the voices that have not been heard here before.

Celebrated as the greatest literary fest in South India, Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters is an event where one can experience a disparate flavour of literature in Kerala.

The first edition of the festival in 2018, provided a platform for the literary minds from different parts of the world to meet by bringing together more than 150 international and Indian writers, speakers, and performers.

The highlights of the festival are high-profile conversations, reading and storytelling sessions, impromptu performances, workshops and also an exploration of traditional Kerala cuisine.

The festival hosted numerous sessions devoted to divergent topics, trends, ideas and genres ranging from fiction, poetry, non-fiction, politics, environment, travel and cinema.

The festival also has cultural programmes in the evenings by leading performers.