Look alive literature fans – the 2023 DESIblitz Literature Festival is kicking off this Friday (20th October), with a 25th Anniversary ‘Goodness Gracious Me’ Panel featuring TV stars Kulvinder Ghir (Bend it Like Beckham, Blinded by the Light, Postman Pat) and Nina Wadia (Still Open All Hours, Skins, Eastenders), at Birmingham Symphony Hall.
The panel will discuss how instrumental the beloved sketch comedy show was in changing perceptions of the South Asian community in the UK, confronting racist stereotypes and opening the foor for future South Asian comedians, such as Nish Kumar and Romesh Ranganathan.
The wider festival will take place at various venues across the second city, showcasing the breadth of talent in modern British South Asian literature, from 20th – 29th October.
The DESIblitz Festival Background
The DESIblitz Literature Festival was created by the team behind the multi-award-winning publication DESIblitz.com which publishes editorial content related to British-Asian lifestyle with a South Asian theme.
Their mission is to make literature as accessible as possible, proving that it is possible to be a professional writer in the UK if you are from an Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Sri Lankan background. The site has acted as a catalyst, helping to kick-start careers in mainstream media, securing jobs with national newspapers, magazines and broadcast outlets.
The DESIblitz Literature festival seeks to support minority communities in experiencing, understanding and creating meaningful arts and journalism.
The Lineup
Tickets to most of the events are free, in line with the festival’s ethos of providing access to the arts for all, and there are a whole range of exciting events up for grabs. Events include a talk with crime novelist Ajay Chowdhury, a workshop on writing children’s fiction with Costa Prize-winning author Jasbinder Bilan, and a talk with lawyer Kavitha Rao about the legacy of female doctors in India.
Other events include a panel on ‘What Publishers are Looking For’, and ‘Stitched Up – Stories of Life and Death from a Prison Doctor’, wherein Dr Shahed Yousaf will share what it is really like working day-to-day as a doctor in a prison system that is massively underfunded and incredibly overcrowded. Amongst the chaos of racing from overdoses to cell fires, with one hand always hovering over the panic button, Dr Yousaf details how he and his colleagues must deliver the best possible care to their patients, while infrastructure crumbles around them.
On Saturday, ‘Shakespeare Readings with a Desi Twist’ will hit the Bullring as part of the ‘Everything to Everybody’ tour, celebrating Shakespeare with DESIblitz. Alongside music, entertainment and food, extracts of classic Indian stories, inspired by the works of Shakespeare, will be read in Urdu, Punjabi and Bengali. Visitors will have the opportunity to see South Asian material from Birmingham’s Shakespeare collection, with a range of digitised pages from plays, adaptations and scans of posters.
If you’re looking for some free half-term activities for the family, there are plenty up for grabs at the DESIblitz festival, and we’re so excited for the festivities to begin! Tickets are available on the DESIblitz Literature Festival website, or via Eventbrite.
