The Galle Literary Festival just concluded with a bang! And the literary excitement that ignited late last year won’t slow down as the Ceylon Literary Festival is around the corner! And Asian Review is excited to have a chat with the curator of this fabulously promising literature festival, Ashok Ferrey, a best-selling Sri Lankan author.

“Oyez, oyez, oyez… Buckle up, bookworms and wordsmiths, for we’re about to dive headfirst into a literary shindig as charming as a well-crafted metaphor and as lively as a caffeinated plot twist – the Ceylon Literary Festival!”

I half expected Ashok to adopt a town crier voice and make the big announcement, but he was always more profound and explained calmly how exciting CLF would be. Let’s start with the points we are curious about CLF!

Why you thought of a Ceylon Literary Festival? The Galle Literary Festival also just finished!

For the past few years, there have been no festivals. I was originally working on the Galle festival. But many others were also working hard to revive the Galle literary festival. Then, what happened was we all came to the surface. We realised there were too many people working on the same thing. We decided to work separately. So then my partners and I decided no, let’s do something different. In fact, it was the president who suggested doing a Jaffna and Kandy festival. Jaffna was too difficult with our time, so we thought to focus on the easy one at the moment and maybe focus on Jaffna after a year!

Kandy is the second largest city but always gets the step-brotherly treatment compared to Colombo. So we are kicking off in Kandy, giving them the best of the best! 8th and 9th of Feb in Kandy, then 10th, 11th and 12th in Colombo.

The Galle Literary Festival began in my dining room; I was one of the founding members of the original committee. It was Geoffrey Dobbs’s idea. Libby Southwell, Nazreen Sansoni, Ameena Hussein, and I were the members of the original committee of five. We realised then that there was a need for an English literary festival. Sri Lanka is large enough, and we have enough English speaking. India has over 300 literary festivals. And comparing percentages, we have a higher rate of  English speakers than them.

How would this Literary festival contribute to the Sri Lankan literature scene?

There is a practical point here, which I am very keen on. At least once a week, somebody approaches me and asks me how to learn English. One of the game plans of the festival is to encourage young people to not look at English as an enemy language but as a wonderful doorway that gives them access to so many writers. Let’s face it, English is not just in England; you can’t think of English as a colonial language anymore. English is widespread today; it’s a world language.

As I mentioned, the young people who want to learn English know that English can open doors to better jobs and opportunities. But let me tell you, English is not about getting jobs or feeling superior; it’s about enjoying the language.

Now that you mentioned today’s youngsters longing to sharpen their English skills let’s talk about the youth programmes on the CLF.

It’s very, very simple. There’s one thing that will encourage youth to come to a literary festival. That is giving them free tickets. I believe we are the first English literary festival in Sri Lanka that opens absolutely free passage for students. If you are an O/L or A/L student, A university graduate student, or a graduate student, as long as you are studying at this festival, all the sessions are free. Of course, you have to register online with your student ID or relevant proof. I would tell them to beg, borrow or steal a card and come to CFL!

It seems we have quite an exciting set of panels in CFL. And you may have had so much fun matchmaking people for the panels!

Well, the answer is very short. It was extremely difficult. I am a mathematician in another life, as you know. So, this task was like solving a very intricate jigsaw puzzle. You look at the hand you are dealt; you think there’s an ace of spades and a king of hearts. Now, how can you put those two together?

For me, the sheer delight of running a festival is matching the right people with the right theme. You can’t randomly put two people together and expect the sparks to fly! We had a much more difficult time than other festivals as we had just started, so getting people to agree to come was challenging. But some really lovely people agreed to come. Of course, I threatened to shoot them privately if they didn’t come!

You have a group of authors, and you are thinking, who am I going to match with them? It’s almost like a marriage. And I’m a marriage broker. Who do I put with whom? Who will resonate? Not easy. And then you have to think of a topic. For instance, I noticed that I had four writers who all wrote a book on sports. Tanya Warnakulasuriya is writing on angampora. We have Shahan Karunatilake on cricket, then I have somebody else on boxing, and so on. Of course, I won’t realise how successful we are until the marriage takes place. They might walk out, they might kill each other after the first night, or they might disappear. So you just have to come and watch the festival to know the results!

And the topics are fascinating too!

I tried to get really interesting topics to discuss at the festival. Even if you don’t know a word in English, you will still be interested to know what is happening with artificial intelligence today, right? Are we writers going to be out of the job? I read online about a Japanese writer who won a literary award for fees for using ChatGPT. Isn’t it interesting to talk about?

If somebody is keen to become a writer or write something, how would the CFL benefit them at least to kickstart their desire to write?

Yes, there are workshops within the CFL, but those workshops are pretty small with the resources we have. But don’t worry about the workshops. Just come to the festival and at least listen.

For instance, I have a session on the short story, and I have used the best short story writers in English in Sri Lanka, Lal Madawattegedara, Senaka Abeyratne, Kiara Manaduli Mendis, and Chiranthi Rajapaksa, who just won the Grecian Prize. So, I’ve put them all together, and it is to discuss how to write a good short story. Because it’s incredibly difficult to write a good short story. It’s easier to write a novel than a short story. Any writer would say that. Because you have to condense everything. So come and listen to them because these are the masters of the game. And they are the best that Sri Lanka has to offer

Then there’s a poetry session. If you’re a budding poet, come and listen to five of Sri Lanka’s best poets in English, Vivimarie Vanderpoorten, Ramya Jirasinghe, Megan Dhakshini and more. There’s a Bangladeshi poet in there, too. So I hope young people will come and listen. And even if they don’t understand English, it doesn’t matter. You can come and listen to the poetry. Just listen to the music of the poetry.

So, kudos to the authors who dared to pen the extraordinary, the readers who revelled in every turn of phrase, and the Ceylon Literary Festival for being sharp and bold in orchestrating a promising and fascinating literary fest! See you connoisseurs in Kandy and Colombo from 8th to 12th February.

For more information, visit: http://ceylonliteraryfestival.com/

By Pathum Punchihewa