Ananke, the Global South’s celebrated media and development platform, announced the speaker lineup and collaborators for the seventh edition of its annual festival, now rebranded as the Ananke Literature Festival. Taking place fully online under the theme Fault Lines: An Unmasking, the festival brings together some of the most compelling literary voices writing today — across fiction, poetry, translation, publishing, oral history and scholarship.
This year’s theme explores the visible and invisible fractures that shape lives across nations, communities, and the self — from borders, migration and inequality to identity, belief and resilience — creating a space for literature to illuminate and foster understanding.
A Lineup That Crosses Borders and Disciplines
Among the speakers joining the festival are Bhakti Shringarpure, Anam Zakaria, Rahman Abbas, Anthony Alessandrini, Tara Das, Naheed Malik, Gautam Vegda, Meena Kandasamy and Zain Saeed, with more names to be announced in the coming weeks.
Meena Kandasamy is an acclaimed poet, novelist, translator and activist whose fiercely singular body of work includes the novels The Gypsy Goddess, the Women’s Prize-shortlisted When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife and Exquisite Cadavers, alongside the poetry collection Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You and The Book of Desire, her landmark translation of the Tirukkural’s verses on love.
Anam Zakaria is an author, educator and development professional whose acclaimed works of oral history — The Footprints of Partition, Between the Great Divide: A Journey into Pakistan-administered Kashmir and 1971: A People’s History from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India — excavate the human afterlives of South Asia’s defining ruptures. She also teaches storytelling and feature writing for the Al Jazeera Media Institute.
Rahman Abbas is one of Urdu’s most celebrated contemporary novelists. Winner of India’s highest literary honour, the Sahitya Akademi Award, in 2018 for his novel Rohzin — since translated into German, English and Hindi, and longlisted for the JCB Prize — he is the author of ten books, including six novels, and the recipient of four state Sahitya Akademi awards. His acquittal, after a decade-long obscenity trial over his debut novel, made him an emblem of artistic freedom in South Asia. He lives in Mumbai.
Bhakti Shringarpure is a writer, academic and founding editor of Warscapes magazine, and co-founder of the Radical Books Collective, whose work engages decolonial thought, war and digital cultures across the Global South.
Anthony Alessandrini is Professor of English at Kingsborough Community College and of Middle Eastern Studies at The Graduate Center, CUNY. The author of Frantz Fanon and the Future of Cultural Politics and Decolonize Multiculturalism, he is a co-editor of Jadaliyya and works at the intersection of postcolonial studies, critical theory and decolonization.
Tara Das is an author, therapist and Buddhist scholar. A senior journalist for over two decades with bylines across India Today, DNA and Hindustan Times, she is the author of eight books including Who Me, Poor?, Sit Your Self Down and Anitya, founder of the mind-body-spirit therapy platform Shamah, and a founding member of the Shunyata Project examining AI through Buddhist philosophy.
Gautam Vegda is an anti-caste poet, illustrator, painter and doctoral research scholar from Gujarat, and the author of the poetry collections Vultures and Other Poems and A Strange Case of Flesh and Bones. He has taught at some of India’s premier institutions, including IIT Gandhinagar and the National Institute of Design.
Zain Saeed earned his MFA at the University of Texas at Austin. His debut novel Little America (Penguin Random House India) won the top prize at the 2022 Karachi Literary Festival. He teaches creative writing and literature at Habib University in Karachi.
Naheed Malik is a Dubai-based communications specialist and co-founder of The Loop, a PR and communications agency. A writer currently pursuing a master’s in contemporary creative writing, she brings two decades of experience across higher education and media in the Gulf.
Collaborators and Community
The festival continues to be shaped by the guidance and collaboration of esteemed publishing and literary figures, including Arpita Das (Yoda Press), Naveen Kishore (Seagull Books), Urvashi Butalia (Zubaan), Aekta Kapoor (eShe), among others. Their support has helped shape Ananke into a space that nurtures literary voices and builds a vibrant, global literary community.
“Fault Lines is an invitation to look at what lies beneath — the fractures we inherit, the ones we build, and the ones we carry within ourselves,” said Sabin Muzaffar, Founder and Executive Editor of Ananke. “This year’s speakers embody that unmasking: they write across borders, languages and disciplines, and together they remind us that literature remains our most honest map of a fractured world.”
Festival sessions will bring the theme to life through conversations such as “Between Borders: Stories of Migration and Belonging,” “Unmasking History: Hidden Voices of the Global South,” and “The Public and Private Self: Identity in a Digital Age.” The full programme will be announced soon.
The festival is led by Sabin Muzaffar, Founder and Executive Editor of Ananke, and organized under the direction of Namrata, Festival Director.
About Ananke
Founded in 2014, Ananke is a digital platform championing inclusion, literacy and empowerment across the Global South. Through its publications, mentorship and internship programs, and its annual literature festival — now in its seventh edition — Ananke amplifies voices from South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and beyond, expanding its scope from women writers to allies and communities across the region.
Media Contact: sabin@anankemag.com, editor.anankemag@gmail.com · anankemag.com
