Suggest speakers at Hay Festival Dhaka<\/strong>
\nBangladeshi writing in English has mostly remained a step below the international standard, preventing the country’s rich culture and literature from reaching out to an international audience.
\nThe reason, litterateurs told an enthusiastic audience at the Hay Festival Dhaka, is that English has remained an alien language in the country unlike in India where it has been adopted and naturalised into its own unique and separate mould.
\nMany can read and write well in English, they said, but the problem is writing English that others would want to read.
\nThe views came at a discussion on “Contemporary voices and trends in Bangladeshi fiction,” held at the British Council on Fuller Road in the city on monday.
\n\u201cWhy don’t we officially accept English as a second language–after all, we are already using it as a second language,\u201d said Prof Kaiser Haq, a poet, essayist and teacher at the University of Liberal Arts.
\nHaq underlined a need for developing a \u201ccritical English writing framework\u201d for South Asia instead of having separate frameworks for each country in the region.
\nThis would help increase readership of Bangla literature within the region, and create interest outside the region as well, he said.
\nA galaxy of poets, novelists, journalists, filmmakers, musicians, and thinkers from home and abroad participated in the first-ever Hay Festival in the country.
\nThe programme featured discussions and stories in the spirit of Rabindranath Tagore on his 150th birth anniversary.
\nThe Daily Star was the main sponsor of the festival along with British Council as the global partner and Jatrik as project partner.
\nOpening programme, Dhaka University (DU) Vice-Chancellor Prof AAMS Arefin Siddique hoped that the event would be continued in the future continuing the dialogue between authors from home and abroad.
\nEditor and publisher of The Daily Star Mahfuz Anam hoped that the festival would expand in the coming years by including more authors and thinkers from the region and the rest of the world.
\n\u201cThis is a history-making event,\u201d said Gowhar Rizvi, international affairs adviser to the prime minister. The festival would help many Bangladeshi writers show their work to an international audience, he said.
\nDirector of The British Council Rosemary Arnott, British High Commissioner Robert Gibson and Director of Hay Festivals Peter Florence also spoke at the opening ceremony.
\nThe festival, which originated in Hay-on-Wye of Britain’s Wales and later expanded internationally, brought together writers and literature enthusiasts from home and abroad to share stories and ideas, and to simply mingle, organisers said.
\nThe daylong event, offering a mix of intellectual and cultural programmes, offered 18 literary sessions, music concerts, dance recital and a play.
\nThe line-up of authors attending the event included noted writer Selina Hossain, Jon Gower, author of An Island Called Smith and nine other books, Tahmima Anam, author of the award-winning book A Golden Age, celebrated litterateur and feminist Firdous Azim and Tiffany Murray, author of Happy Accidents.
\nThe programmes included sessions on Bangladeshi fiction, translation of literature, world and regional literature, journalism, socio-political issues, and the publishing world, among other subjects.
\nHay Festival of Literature and Arts is an annual literature festival held in Hay-on-Wye in Wales of Britain. Often described as the \u201ctown of books\u201d, the small town of 2,000 people is known for its 49 bookstores and as a popular destination for bibliophiles.
\nOver 2,00,000 people attend the annual ten-day Hay Festival at the Hay-on-Wye, which is usually held in May.
\nAccording to the organisers, the festival of Dhaka aimed to highlight the culture of Bangladesh and mix it with what the rest of the world knows.<\/p>\n

-With The Daily Star<\/span> input<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Suggest speakers at Hay Festival Dhaka Bangladeshi writing in English has mostly remained a step below the international standard, preventing the country’s rich culture and literature from reaching out to an international audience. The reason, litterateurs told an enthusiastic audience at the Hay Festival Dhaka, is that English has remained an alien language in the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[209,7262,199,7260,7259,7261,7258],"yoast_head":"\n