JLF London at the British Library
Friday 13th to Sunday 15th June.
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JLF London at the British Library will be back this year, from 13th–15th June, marking its 12th edition with an exciting line-up of speakers and sessions.
JLF London will embody the multi-faceted spirit of the mother festival – the iconic Jaipur Literature Festival, with its unique celebration of books and ideas, inclusivity and community – and be back at the heart of London with a host of writers, thinkers, poets and speakers. Like all JLF international editions, the London programme too brings alive South Asia’s unique multilingual literary heritage and blends it with local literary highlights. The upcoming edition promises to bring together some of the world’s most renowned and relevant voices to speak on essential themes that look at the different dimensions and perspectives of our shared stories.
Namita Gokhale, award-winning writer and Festival Co-Director said, ‘JLF London returns to the British Library to platform books and ideas, poetry and music, debate and dialogue. Our London iteration is a vibrant affirmation of multilingual literary connectivities. At this volatile moment of change and transformation, we seek to make sense of our fractured world, and to explore and understand it through our shared stories.’
Highlights of the festival include:
Broadcasts from Kabul: Narratives of Hope
June 14th, 12.30pm, Main Hall
Saad Mohseni, Batool Haidari and Lucy Hannah in conversation with Georgina Godwin
Lucy Hannah, Director of Untold Narratives, examines My Dear Kabul, a collective diary formed from the Afghan Women Writers’ Collective’s WhatsApp group. The book is a testament to assertion, solidarity and the fight for a voice during Kabul’s collapse, and a courageous collection of messages about life unravelling under Taliban rule. Saad Mohseni, author of Radio Free Afghanistan, discusses how independent media navigated the country’s transformation. Together, they take us through individual narratives of resilience and defiance amid Afghanistan’s political turbulence.
Roots: The Stories We Carry
June 14th, 12.30pm, Piazza Pavilion
Sheela Banerjee and Somnath Batabyal in conversation with Pragya Tiwari
Journalist, academic and storyteller, Sheela Banerjee has spent her career uncovering the intimate and often untold histories of people – through her work at the BBC and Channel 4 and in her writing. Her new book, What’s in a Name?, is a deeply personal and historical exploration of identity and migration through the names we bear. Somnath Batabyal, author of The Price You Pay, teaches at the School of Oriental and African Studies. The journalist’s most recent book, Red River, is a journey through the turbulent tides of youth in Assam, where friendship and love collide on paths that lead from Guwahati to Dhaka, Bhutan, and London. The book pulses with the militant heartbeat of a generation. Pragya Tiwari is a writer and a culture and policy consultant, Creative Director of Oijo Media and co-founder of the Indian History Collective. Together with Batabyal and Banerjee, she discusses how personal and collective histories are shaped by movement, memory and the search for belonging.
Heart Lamp
June 14th, 1.45pm, Pigott Theatre
Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi in conversation with Lucy Popescu
Winner of the International Booker Prize 2025, Heart Lamp by veteran Kannada writer and activist Banu Mushtaq has been translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi. Blending biting wit with deep empathy, the collection of 12 stories presents the intimate struggles and quiet rebellions of Muslim women in Southern India. In conversation with Lucy Popescu, they discuss this rich narrative, which provides a powerful glimpse into lives shaped by tradition and resistance.
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Unearthed: The Power of Gardening
June 14th, 4.15pm, Piazza Pavilion
Matt Reed, Antonia Moon and Sui Searle in conversation with Datshiane Navanayagam
Unearthed: The Power of Gardening, the British Library’s currently running exhibition, exhibits the power of gardening as a centre of culture, habitat and community. Matt Reed, Global Director of the Aga Khan Foundation, speaks of how the Trust uses green spaces to create sustainable community gardens around the world. Sui Searle, founder of @decolonisethegarden, works towards reclaiming gardening as a decolonial act – the garden as a tool of resistance. Antonia Moon is the co-curator of Unearthed: the Power of Gardening and the Library’s Lead Curator of Post 1858 India Office Records. In conversation with journalist and broadcaster Datshiane Navanayagam, they explore how gardening can be a joyous impetus for social change, creating nurturing spaces, healing and community renewal.
The Poetry of Nature
June 14th, 5.30pm, Piazza Pavilion
Seán Hewitt, Ruth Padel, Mona Arshi, Karen McCarthy Woolf and Dipanjali Roy introduced by Rishi Dastidar
Five distinct poets – Seán Hewitt, Ruth Padel, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Mona Arshi and Dipanjali Roy – whose works are deeply entwined with nature’s rhythms, come together to reflect on its enduring pull. Seán Hewitt, a poet, memoirist, novelist and literary critic, is celebrated for his meditative explorations of nature and the human condition. His latest poetry collection, Rapture’s Road, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. He is joined by poet and writer Ruth Padel, known for weaving cultural history, science and the wild into many award-winning works, and poet and novelist Karen McCarthy Woolf, a Fulbright Scholar and recipient of an inaugural Laurel Prize for ecological poetry for her poetry collection, Seasonal Disturbances. Woolf is co-editor with poet and former human rights lawyer, Mona Arshi, of Nature Matters, an anthology of nature poetry by Black and Asian writers. Joining them is award-winning poet Dipanjali Roy, who won the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. Together, they explore how poetry shapes – and is shaped by – the natural world, as a means to question, console and reimagine the world we live in.
Rites of Passage: Three Novels
June 15, 12.30pm, Piazza Pavilion
Keshava Guha, Devika Rege and Seán Hewitt in conversation with Catharine Morris
Three writers trace the restless terrain of coming of age, capturing the beauty and ache of lives in transit. Seán Hewitt speaks about his debut novel, Open, Heaven, a celebration of youth, sensuality and love in all its forms. Writer Devika Rege’s Quarterlife is a sweeping, polyphonic novel about the restlessness of youth, where ambition, class and desire collide in turbulent India. Keshava Guha offers an acerbic and emotionally layered picture of Delhi in his recent book, The Tiger’s Share, where brilliant daughters and feckless sons grapple with inheritance, ambition and a crumbling patriarchy. In conversation with Catharine Morris, the Associate Editor of the Times Literary Supplement, the session explores how their characters confront the delicate and tumultuous journey of youth, navigating the intersections of family, identity and ambition.
Making Empire
June 15th, 1.45pm, Entrance Hall
Jane Ohlmeyer, William Dalrymple and Anita Anand in conversation
Jane Ohlmeyer and William Dalrymple explore how imperial domination fueled intellectual revolutions and political awakenings across both India and Ireland. Jane Ohlmeyer’s recent book, Making Empire: Ireland, Imperialism, and the Early Modern World, examines how the colonisation of Ireland by the British was almost a practice run, a laboratory for the later, and much larger colonisation of India. Prominent historian and Festival co-director William Dalrymple’s award-winning podcast, Empire, explores the power struggles and global politics of empires, and how they still impact our world today. Together, in conversation with co-director of the podcast Empire, and author of The Patient’s Assassin, Anita Anand, they uncover the political and intellectual movements that challenged colonial power.
What’s in a Name?
June 15th, 4.15pm, Pigott Theatre
Sheela Banerjee and Michael Rosen in conversation with Somnath Batabyal
Through personal reflections and the diverse experiences of her friends, Sheela Banerjee, and academic, poet and author Michael Rosen, paint a vivid, multicultural portrait of Britain, blending heartbreak, wit and insight to present a social history of a kaleidoscopic society. They are in conversation with author and professor Somnath Batabyal.
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For more information about JLF London, visit the JLF Lit Fest website.
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