About the Event

The award-winning Rainbow Lit Fest – Queer & Inclusive, South Asia’s largest queer & inclusive literary festival, returns this December 7 & 8 with over 80 speakers and performers hailing from Imphal in India’s north-eastern state of Manipur to Vancouver in Canada. Held at the Gulmohar Park Club, the event is spread over two stages, a food area and a space for queer-run stalls and a bookstore.

The first reveal of speakers includes the award-winning, filmmaker, Hansal Mehta, the gay writer, Rhode scholar and India’s first national spokesperson of a political party, Anish Gawande; the critically acclaimed author, Saikat Majumdar; the award-winning queer filmmaker, Faraz Ansari, the first trans woman to act in a lead role in a Hindi feature film, Bonita Rajpurohit; the gay lawyer and author, Saurabh Kirpal; writer and founder of Agents of Ishq, Paromita Vohra; the award-winning gay podcasters, Yogi & Kabeer, besides the public intellectual and award-winning writer and Carnatic musician, T M Krishna. With them are the queer author, Sindhu Rajasekaran; the actor, poet and stand-up, Sandhya Mridul; author and translator, Kinshuk Gupta and feminist, author and publisher, Urvashi Butalia. 

The festival will also host the tri-nation Queer Caravan, involving artists, writers and podcasters from France, Germany and India, organised and curated by the French Institute, Goethe India and the Queer Muslim Project. There would be several young voices too such as the trans-woman and video essayist, Katyayini Saksham; gay man and founder of Official Humans of Queer, Yash Sharma; the journalist, Sudipta Das and author and queer lawyer, Rohin Bhatt.

The Festival will witness several ways of expression be it talk, dance, poetry, discussion, music, drag and stand-up. Over two days, expect the following:

Music: Bollyjazz (a critically appreciated band which queers Bollywood music and traditional jazz music, bringing them together to create Bollyjazz)

Drag: Patruni Sastry & Krystal Koko

Films: Sifar; IYKYK; Sheer Qorma; Samlinga; What’s In A Name?; Holy Curse and Mehroon

Stand-Up: Navin Noronha

*Programme details to be released in a few weeks from now on www.rainbowliteraturefestival.com.

All students (including PhD scholars) can avail of a 50 per cent discount on tickets. The same applies to officials and consultants attached to queer-focused NGOs. 

At the time of registration at the Festival registration desk, students must provide relevant government IDs. In the case of persons who works as consultants or are representatives of queer-focused NGOs, please bring any document that establishes your relationship with the specific organisation you are associated with.