With NanoWrimo in full flow now, FWBA comes with its new initiative – The Pitchfest!
Aindrila Roy shares with us the juicy details.
Litventure was conceived when the minds behind the Facebook group, For Writers By Authors, realized that there is a gap between the authors and the readers that is seldom bridged. That single thought gave birth to the idea of a litfest that would create a platform where authors could interact with their audience and get a pulse of what their readers want.
Thanks to Neil D’Silva’s efforts, The Children’s Academy Group of School took an enthusiastic interest in the idea and graciously opened their doors to host the venture. With the platform set, the team set on to conceiving and putting together a litfest that would set itself apart from the plethora of literary festivals that are abound. One of the first things was to come up with a name, one that caught immediate attention and identified with the purpose of the fest. A lot of brainstorming later, we came up with the name Litventure. The name is a portmanteau of ‘literature’ and ‘adventure’.
The team worked tirelessly for months and in the end, came Litventure 2015. A star-studded event that included names like, Oliver LaFont, Ketan Bhagat, Debashish Irengbam, Utkarsh Patel, Shilpa Gupta, Kiran Manral, Shunali Khullar Shroff, Niyati Patel, Gopika Kapoor, Neil D’Silva, Meghna Chaudhary Joshi, Lakshmi Ashwin, Reeta Gandhi, Vikram Dhawan and Ansoo Gupta. We organized book stalls, panels and interactive sessions that included audiences from across ages. Covered by the media, the event went on to become a stupendous success.
Now, the team is gearing up for the second edition of Litventure with a bigger scope and wider audience. This time, For Writers By Authors joins hands with Mumbai Mom to bring a new, sparking edition of the litfest that welcomes readers, writers, artists, filmmakers, and cultural connoisseurs to take part in it. Our other partners include popular literary entities such as Kaffeinated Konversations, Mumbai Book Exchange Club, Read Out Loud, Rising Litera, and Pen Paper Coffee. The host continues to be Children’s Academy, Mumbai.
Our target audience is students of Grades 6 to 10, their teachers, and their parents. The overarching theme of this event is to inculcate the reading habit in the upcoming generation, and to equip their educators and facilitators to make them better readers.
In the second edition, we have a panel ‘Why Kids Need to Read’, organized by Mumbai Mom including prominent personalities like Kiran Manral, Swati Popat Vats, Priyanka Singhvi and Preeti Vyas, and moderated by the founder of Mumbai Mom, Nidhi Dorairaj Bruce.
This will be followed by a second panel, ‘Better Readers Make Better Humans’, comprising of award-winning authors such as Anand Neelakantan, Shatrujeet Nath and Faraaz Kazi. The event will be moderated by the popular author Utkarsh Patel.
A third panel discussion, titled ‘Discover the Creator in You’ would include popular authors Anjali Kirpalani, Bilal Siddiqi and Sriram Subramanian. In this segment, the authors would talk about their own journeys as creators of novels. The segment will be moderated by Reeta Gandhi, cofounder of Book Exchange Club.
We would also be hosting the launch of a Film Production Company and showcase a few short films at the event in a segment titled ‘Books/Films’. This would be followed by a book launch by the popular author, Shilpa Gupta.
For our younger audience, we have a host of events organized to keep them engaged and entertained. The events begin with a book exchange, conducted by The Book Exchange Club. Next up, in association with FunOKPlease publishers, an event called Your Turn Now would be hosted by us.
There would also be two concurrent workshops for the children that would be conducted simultaneously – Read Between the Lines conducted by Nalini Ramchandran and Fun with Cinquain Poetry, conducted by Archana Sarat.
These would be followed by two more workshops that would also be running simultaneously. One, Daily Dose of Vitamin R, conducted by Monika Khanna Jhalani and another as yet undecided workshop.
This year, at Litventure 2016, we present an opportunity for you to get a traditional publishing contract. Pitch your story idea to our panel of esteemed judges from the publishing and marketing industry, and you could just walk away with a contract!
The contract will be offered through BruteGorilla, an imprint of Frontier India Technology.
For more details, see http://frontierindia.org/2016/10/23/litventure-2016-pitchfest/
You can also view the FB page at https://www.facebook.com/Litventure/
About the Author
The writing bug bit Aindrila at the tender age of eleven and she has been scratching that itch ever since.
She likes to mix fantasy and horror and create a blend of dark fantasy with complicated, twisted characters. She is also a fairly adept romance writer and enjoys writing children’s books as well.
When not writing, she can be seen nursing, fighting, running, building Lego tunnels and hospitals, and driving toy school busses- all for her three and a half year old.
And in the odd chance that she finds a moment free, she likes to read. An erstwhile voracious reader, she is now perpetually yearning to read more.
She is also a paleontology lover and can be seen going on long monologues about prehistoric creatures that have been extinct for millions of years.
WordJini 