Devyani Saltzman

As part of Luminato 2011, we’re excited to partner with The New Yorker on a series of literary events over two days of the festival.

As the Middle East enters a new chapter, David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, will lead a discussion among an international group of writers and journalists entitled Rewriting the Narrative of the Middle East. Panelists include Amira Hass, Mona Eltahawy and Hisham Matar. The event will be held at the Jane Mallet Theatre in Toronto.

In the lead up to this discussion, we thought we’d profile one of those journalists coming to share her insights.

On June 12 Jian Ghomeshi (Q) will be interviewing five young writers at the Glenn Gould Studio in an event entitled Beirut39 at Luminato. Over the last four years we’ve had the chance to partner with some wonderful local and international arts partners – The New Yorker, the Toronto Public Library system, Diaspora Dialogues and The Atlantic. Back in September I reached out to an organization we’ve long admired, the UK’s Hay Festivals. Hay, which started in Wales in 1988, is an international festival of literature and ideas. Bill Clinton called it the “Woodstock of the mind.”

From time to time we will have guest bloggers in the lead up to Luminato. Today Mari Ferzli, Luminato Literary Program Intern and MA candidate in comparative literature, writes about her experience on the job:

The 13th annual Blue Metropolis Literary Festival kicked off in Montreal last Wednesday. I had the pleasure of taking the train down for my second fest, and one which is especially dear to my heart because of Blue Met’s 2011 celebration of Indian writing timed with the Year of India in Canada 2011. As a fan of South Asian writing, I couldn’t wait to meet Amitav Ghosh, Booker-nominee for the incredible novel Sea of Poppies and author of The Glass Palace and The Hungry Tide. Blue Met’s line-up also included favourites Bernard Schlink (The Reader), Kate Pullinger (The Mistress of Nothing) and Gore Vidal.

From time to time we will have guest bloggers in the lead up to Luminato. Today Saima Hussain, former Books Editor for Dawn, Pakistan’s largest English language daily, writes about the history and adaptation of One Thousand and One Nights:

Due to its fantastical nature, One Thousand and One Nights has long been considered by western audiences to be more suitable for young readers. But given that slave girls, eunuchs, adulterous wives and violent husbands also feature prominently in the tales, this is hardly the case. It is therefore fitting that now, almost 126 years later, it is an Arab writer, and the first woman, who will adapt a selection of these legendary stories to be performed on stage this summer at Luminato.

About this time every year, I feel like a book lover and a wedding planner. It’s mid-April, and we’re two months out from mounting a large-scale, multi-genre arts festival – Luminato. My reoccurring June wedding. Ten days, dozens of venues. Theatre, literature, music, dance, visual arts. Five-hundred guest artists. Every year I bring over twenty-five Canadian and international authors to Toronto to share new work and celebrate the written word. Our past guests include Gore Vidal, Ben Okri, Neil Gaiman, Chimamanda Adichie, Yiyun Li, David Bezmozgis, Aravind Adiga and Dionne Brand among others.