The annual Kerala Literature Festival (KLF), organized by the DC Kizhakemuri Foundation and DC Books in Kozhikode for the past seven years, was a key catalyst in the city becoming a UNESCO City of Literature. The eighth edition of KLF takes place from 23 to 26 January 2025 in Kozhikode.
The festival’s massive attendance became the most visible symbol of Kozhikode’s love for literature. The Kerala Literature Festival 2025 will feature more than 500 speakers from 15 countries. France is the guest country this year. Participating countries include Germany, France, Spain, UK, USA, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Greece, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Israel, Greece, Egypt, Turkey, Sweden and Latvia. Engaging workshops, shows, theatre, and music performances are planned. Speakers include Jerry Pinto, Manu S Pillai, Urvashi Butalia, Shinie Antony, Shashi Tharoor, Rajdeep Sardesai and Perumal Murugan. Children’s KLF, introduced this year, will provide a dedicated space for children and young adults.
In all major literature festivals be it the Jaipur Literature Festival, Bangalore Literature Festival, or the Kolkata Literature Festival, there is a small component of vernacular languages, usually called Indian languages, while English is used as the main or link language. Govind Deecee, editorial director at DC Books notes, “Being Malayalam publishers and Kerala being a very open state in terms of reading, in our view there was never an event that put books at the center despite the history of the state having a good library system and a good education system. The state lacked the presence of a litfest and we wanted to address this by having a platform where discussions around books and authors can happen, and readers can directly communicate with the authors.”
The Kerala Literature Festival has debutant authors, philosophers, and scientists among its speakers. “It has become much more than just being about books, but we have always kept books at the center of the festival.” Govind Deecee adds, “There is a strong sense of literary and social activism, as KLF has become a space where we talk about and debate many topics including politics, law, and social issues.”
“We had a feeling that there is a young audience out there who is very much interested in these things – who want to talk, discuss, and engage with authors on a wide range of topics. Through the festival, we have featured many new and interesting authors because they have discovered a way to reach out to us. Publishing is partly midwifery about creating books and partly about curation. As a publisher, you are creating the value of each book – the reason you put out a certain book is because you feel there is a certain readership, a certain thing to discuss, a certain point to address and that’s the reason some books get published, while others might not see the light of the day,” he says.
The way you shape the content along with the author is what publishing is all about, Govind shares, adding that there is a bottleneck that has always existed in terms of selecting certain authors and selecting some works. “If you are a new author how do you reach out to a publisher, how do you get recognized and how do you ultimately get your book published? The Kerala Literature Festival has helped us to become much more reachable to younger audiences,” he says, adding, “We have bridged the gap between the highly-respected, well-recognized and sophisticated person who can easily approach a publisher, to the extent that anyone with an interesting idea for a book can now approach our publishing house.”
Govind Deecee believes that there has been a general resurgence in language and KLF has been instrumental in creating new conversations and intellectual thought in colleges and public spaces that impact the publishing scene. He notes that his company has been able to discover new authors due to the litfest because, in the course of organizing the event, it can network with a younger set of writers keen to be published. “I feel most publishers are hard to reach, you need to have some references and contacts within the organization – it’s a daunting process and through the KLF we can bridge the gap between the writer and the editor to a certain extent.”
Meanwhile, Siddarth Deecee, Director- Marketing & Sales notes that the KLF is the ultimate platform for the company in terms of bookselling as 500,000 people show up at the venue over five days.
