New York, Eminent writers, thinkers and business leaders will headline the Indo-American Arts Council Literary Festival 2026 in New York, with discussions covering India’s emergence as a global economic force, American leadership, climate change, water and migration.
The participants include Padma Bhushan awardee Dr Pratibha Ray, Barclays CEO CS Venkatakrishnan and economist Arvind Subramanian. “Literature has never belonged within borders. “At IAAC, we want Indian and American voices to meet not merely on the same stage, but in the same conversation. “Through voices such as Dr. Pratibha Ray’s, we want to introduce New Yorkers to stories that deserve a much wider international audience.
The great questions of our time-identity, economic power, climate, migration and the human condition-are shared across continents,” Vice Chairman of the Indo-American Arts Council Rakesh Kaul said in a statement Thursday. This is where literature becomes a bridge between cultures and ideas,” Kaul said. Ray’s session titled ‘My Life, My Time: A Literary Journey’ will spotlight the pioneering voice in Indian literature who has spent more than five decades “challenging assumptions about gender, caste, identity and social justice,” the IAAC statement said, noting that her seminal novel ‘Yajnaseni’ retells the Mahabharata through its central female protagonist. Festival Director Preethi Urs said the two-day event has been curated to create connections that audiences might not expect-between a novelist and a business leader, between an ancient epic and a modern woman’s voice, between the crisis of water and the power of imagination. Above all, we want people to leave having discovered a book, an author or an idea that stays with them,” Urs said. “Blending a contemporary ecological crisis with sacred water stories, the novel explores a haunting question: What happens when humanity loses its relationship with water?” the statement said.
The festival will be held on November 14-15, featuring conversations and discussions exploring how literature illuminates identity, economic power, migration and climate change. Among the highlights of this year’s edition is the Odisha Literary Festival, a special three-hour showcase that will celebrate the literature, language and culinary heritage of the eastern Indian state, anchored by Ray, a Jnanpith laureate who was also recently conferred the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship. Discussions about American leadership, global finance and India’s economic future will be central during the festival. Former Chairman and CEO of American Express and currently Chairman and Managing Director of General Catalyst Ken Chenault will discuss his memoir ‘Equal to the Task: A Life Forged Between America’s Promise and Its Truth’. Another marquee conversation will examine India’s development journey and its emergence as a global economic force when Starr Foundation Professor of South Asia Studies at Johns Hopkins SAIS Devesh Kapur and Subramanian, former Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, will present their book ‘A Sixth of Humanity: Independent India’s Development Odyssey’. They will be joined by Chairman of Warburg Pincus Chip Kaye and Venkatakrishnan for a wide-ranging discussion. The festival will shift gears to the fiction, memoir and food genres, with Manil Suri, whose novels include ‘The Death of Vishnu’ and who was longlisted for the Booker Prize, discussing his memoir ‘A Room in Bombay’, while Karan Mahajan, a National Book Award finalist for ‘The Association of Small Bombs’, will discuss his novel ‘The Complex’. The festival opens with Brooklyn-based chef and food writer Rachel Gurjar, whose ‘East to East: Recipes and Stories from Mumbai to New York’ celebrates food, memory and cultural belonging, IAAC added. A poetry panel will feature Preeti Parikh, Subhashini Kaligotla and Sudeep Sen while other sessions will explore the Ellora cave temples, Indian political thought and the legacy of Indian arts scholar and historian Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan. The Indo-American Arts Council is a New York City-based nonprofit that promotes the arts and culture of India and the Indian diaspora to New York audiences. Its flagship programs include the New York Indian Film Festival and the Erasing Borders Dance Festival, alongside the IAAC Literary Festival. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
Bringing together literary imagination and the urgent realities of environmental change, Kaul will present his climate-fiction thriller ‘WaterFire Day Zero’ in conversation with Rajendra Singh, internationally recognized as India’s “Waterman” and recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award and Stockholm Water Prize.
