Eighth Adab Festival on Nov 10

The Eighth Adab Festival will be held in Karachi on Sunday, November 10, at Habitt City, Tipu Sultan Road, from 11am to 10pm. This was announced by Ameena Saiyid, founder and director of Adab Festival, at a press conference on Wednesday.

Ameena Saiyid said that Adab Festival will open at 11am with a play by Khaled Anam and his Grips Theatre group for ages 8 to 80. It will close with a one-hour show by Anwar Maqsood, she added.

She said there will be an inauguration ceremony where the annual Adab Festival/Infaq Foundation Awards will be announced for the best writings in Urdu, English and, for the first time, in Sindhi. She explained that each award worth 2.5 lakh will be given to each writer for their work and not just one specific book.

Saiyid said that with an aim to involve youth, the festival will have several sessions led by youngsters as moderators. Dr Abed Chaudhry, a Bangladeshi researcher, writer and scientist would talk about rice cultivation three times a year instead of once during a session on agriculture and economy, she said, adding that there would also a separate session where he would talk about science, art and heritage.

She said that now instead of one big Adab Festival every year, several one-day festivals will be held annually. "We started the festivals in 2010 and have held around 80-90 festivals so far. But now I feel that we need to bring in some new innovations and change the format a bit. So, what we have decided now is, instead of holding a big, two-day festival once a year with three parallel sessions at a time, we are opting for a one-day festival that will be held three to four times a year," she said.

Other speakers at Adab Festival include Imrana Maqsood, Miftah Ismail, Yasser Latif Hamdani, Dr Ali Usman Qasmi, Omayr Aziz Saiyid, Syed Naved Husain, Faisal Jahangir Malik, Omar Shahid Hamid, Safinah Danish Elahi, Taha Kehar, Syeda Maham Zahra, Maria Memon, Nasrin Iqbal, Anjum Halai, Muhammad Ali Shaikh, Hassan Khan, Shoaib Arshad, Noorul Huda Shah, Dr Sahar Gul, Mahtab Rashdi, Salman Faruqui, Jawad Khan, Rabia Nasir, Awab Imam, Umer Khan, Dr Tasnim Ahsan, and Dr Huma Baqai.

Ground-breaking books, including The Election, Omar Shahid Hamid's latest book; Jinnah, A Life by Yasser Latif Hamdani, Dear Mr Jinnah: 70 years in the life of a Pakistani civil servant by Salman Faruqui; and Heart Tantrums: A Memoir of Marriage and Misogyny by Aisha Sarwari, will be discussed.