The three-day long country's first ever online literary festival titled ‘English Jubilee Lit Fest 2021’ concluded at Jahangirnagar University (JU) on Sunday night.
The festival began on Friday with the theme ‘Reflect, Rejoice, Renew’ and received an overwhelming response. JU Vice-Chancellor Professor Dr Farzana Islam inaugurated the programme as chief guest.
JU Department of English organized the festival in association with Ekattor TV and Ice Today in order to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of our Independence and establishment of the department.
The festival featured diverse topics of literature, online theatre, film aesthetics, poetry performance, indigenous studies, decolonization, music and culture in all 18 sessions.
More than 40 literary stalwarts,
performers and thinkers around the world took part in the event.
Noted Canadian poet laureate John B Lee and Richard M Grove, Indian litterateur Subhabrata Bandhaapadhyay, Harish Trivedy, activist Ganesh N Devy and Iranian writer Farshid Kazemi participated in the programme among others.
The festival was open to all and the whole fest was conducted through the Zoom.
Mashrur Shahid Hossain, Convener of the event said that more participants not only from Bangladesh but also from other countries attended the event than they expected and they were asking the speakers various questions on literary topics. It shows the thirst for literature among the people. They want to know, want to quench that thirst, he added.
He further said, “We wanted to provide a platform for the students to interconnect across the globe, and I believe we successfully did it.”
