Blog: The Patna Literature Festival

“It was in 1936 that something like a literature festival was first organised in Patna,” announces the website of the Patna Literature Festival. In that year, there was a literary gathering in the city with authors Bibhuti Bhushan Bandopadhyay and Nirad C. Chaudhuri as attendees. Now, 78 years later, the city has the jazzy Patna Literature Festival—a three-day extravaganza with literary discussions, movie screenings, musical performances, book launches and readings. First held in 2013 in its new avatar, the festival has become an annual fixture on the cultural calendar of Patna. The list of invitees is remarkably diverse—from authors writing in English, Hindi, Urdu, Maithili, Angika, Vajjika and Magahi to photographers, filmmakers, singers, cultural activists, journalists, historians and scholars. Some of the attendees of the Patna Literature Festival 2014 included Vikram Seth, Piyush Mishra, Sudhir Mishra, Dayanita Singh, Gulzar, Ashok Vajpeyi and Subodh Gupta. If you are interested in literature and would like to learn more about Bihari literature and authors, it will be worthwhile to plan your trip to coincide with the Patna Literature Festival (usually held in February- March). For the exact dates and latest updates, you can visit their website patnaliteraturefestival.in as well as their Facebook page.