Festival to celebrate independent bookstores
New Delhi: Some of the leading names in publishing and the creative arts will come together next week at what is being billed as the first-of-its-kind cultural event in the country - The Indie Bookstore Festival.
The 10-day festival from February 18 has a line-up of more than 20 authors and 10 independent bookstores in the country. Curated by Preeti Chaturvedi, CEO of The Sunflower Seeds, the event aims to bring the focus back to independent booksellers in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic.
Actor Sonali Bendre, founder of Sonali's Book Club and chief mentor of the festival, said indie bookstores are run by people who are passionate about reading and she wanted to support them in whatever way she could.
"The whole experience of entering a bookstore and looking at the stocked shelves automatically puts a smile on your face - it's like being a kid at a candy store! And one can never leave with just one book - the beauty about indie bookstores is that they would also personally recommend which books to get based on your preferences," she said.
Talking about the idea of the festival, Chaturvedi said being in the industry, one kept hearing of some iconic bookstores shutting down during the pandemic.
"It's time we start having a conversation about independent bookstores in the country. Book trade is different from other businesses because independent booksellers are custodians of thought and culture and we need to partner with them to ensure that they thrive," she said.
"It is with this intent that we curated the festival and some of the finest names in arts and culture have come forward to support us - be it bestselling authors like Andy Griffiths, Durjoy Dutta, Ravinder Singh, Anita Nair to icons of Indian cinema like Vishal Bharadwaj, Rahul Rawail and Imtiaz Ali," Chaturvedi added.
Ritu Vaishnav, co-founder of KoolSchool, a partner bookstore to the festival, said independent bookstores are definitely more than the sum of their parts, more than places to buy and sell.
According to Trushant Tamgaonkar, executive director of one of Mumbai's marquee bookstores Title Waves, this is a much-needed initiative. "Indie booksellers are also reinventing themselves to provide value to their customers. And I am confident we will continue to reinvent and thrive in times to come.
