NEW YORK, April 18, 2017 — The Lahore Literary Festival (LLF), one of South Asia’s premier cultural events, returns to Asia Society New York on May 6. This is the second year that the festival, held annually in Lahore, Pakistan, travels to New York.
LLF in New York will explore contemporary Pakistan, and feature artists, writers, and commentators. The festival will present American audience with a more nuanced view of Pakistan, with discussions on fiction and nonfiction writing, music, arts, popular culture, and politics.
Participants include novelist and opera librettist Mohammed Hanif; MacArthur fellow and contemporary artist Shahzia Sikander; Pulitzer-prize winning composer Du Yun; former Viacom CEO Tom Freston; New York Times literary critic Dwight Garner; Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Navina Najat Haider; Pulitzer-prize winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee; and journalist and foreign policy author Ahmed Rashid.
LLF, founded by Razi Ahmed in 2012, aims to reclaim Lahore’s cultural significance and influence. A global city under the 12th century Sultanate, a capital of the Mughal Empire under Akbar, and a cradle of the modern Punjabi civilization under Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Lahore has fired the imagination of artists for centuries, inspiring global literature and thought from Milton’s Paradise Lost to Kipling’s Kim to Massenet’s Opera Le Roi de Lahore to John Masters’ Bhowani Junction.
The current program agenda follows. Media interested in learning more or RSVPing to attend LLF in New York should contact Asia Society’s press office ([email protected]).