The Ananke Literature Festival 2026 will host a keynote address by Sahana Ahmed, the Indian poet, novelist, editor and publisher who founded Bare Bones Publishing. Her address, Publishing: People, Process, Technology, and the Grace of Time, airs at the festival’s seventh edition, August 13–15, 2026, on Ananke’s YouTube channel and across its social media platforms.
Held fully online under the theme Fault Lines: An Unmasking, this year’s festival examines the visible and invisible fractures that shape lives across nations, communities and the self. Ahmed turns that lens on the industry itself — and argues that the fracture most often named is not the one that matters.
About the Keynote
“The greatest fault lines in publishing today are not between tradition and innovation,” Ahmed writes, “but between people, process, technology, and our willingness to give literature the time it needs to endure.”
Her address takes those four in turn, closing on the question the trade is least comfortable with: whether an industry built on patience can survive being made to hurry.
About the Speaker
Sahana Ahmed is an Indian poet, novelist, editor, and publisher. She is the founder and CEO of Bare Bones Publishing, an independent press based in New Delhi. Her writing includes the novel Combat Skirts (2018) and edited anthologies of poetry and nonfiction. In recognition of her leadership and social impact, she was awarded the ‘Woman of the Decade’ title by the Women Economic Forum in 2022.
A Word from Ananke
“Sahana has spent her career on the side of the writer nobody has heard of yet, and it shows in what she chooses to talk about. Everyone in publishing is arguing about machines right now. She is asking a quieter question — whether an industry built on patience can survive being made to hurry. That is exactly the kind of unmasking this festival exists for,” said the organisers of the Ananke Literature Festival.
About the Ananke Literature Festival
Launched in 2020 by Ananke (www.anankemag.com) — a digital media and development platform focused on technology, diversity, innovation, media and literature across the Global South — the Ananke Literature Festival is a fully online event celebrated for creating meaningful conversations about the written word, publishing, diversity, empowerment and social justice. Its seventh edition, themed Fault Lines: An Unmasking, airs August 13–15, 2026, with pre-recorded sessions broadcast on Ananke’s YouTube channel and across its social media platforms. Past speakers include Urvashi Butalia, Naveen Kishore, Feryal Ali Gauhar, Mohammad Hanif, Meena Kandasamy, and many more.
