New Delhi: It was roughly thirteen years ago, when three people from Boulder, Colorado, wrote to the organisers of the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF), asking them to bring the festival to their city. The organisers were not immediately convinced. Suraj Dhingra, senior vice-president of festivals and production at Teamwork Arts and producer of JLF USA, said he did not even know where Boulder was. The three were asked to return with the groundwork needed to make a festival possible.
Six weeks later, they came back with the city involved, two universities on board and the Boulder Public Library as a partner. The city had also agreed to fund 60 per cent of the festival for its first three years.
That unlikely beginning has since grown into a sprawling North American circuit. At a virtual press preview on 13 August, organisers announced the 2026 edition of JLF USA, which will travel through seven cities across the US and Canada this September and October.
JLF’s US calendar
The festival opens in North Carolina from September 11-13, followed by its new Los Angeles edition from September 14-16. Seattle follows from September 17-20, Colorado from September 22-23, Toronto from September 25-26, New York from September 29-30, and Houston brings the circuit to a close from October 2-4. Los Angeles is a new addition this year, while Toronto is being revived after the festival’s pre-pandemic editions.
For JLF, however, the expansion is about more than adding cities to a calendar.
Sanjoy K. Roy, managing director of Teamwork Arts and producer of the JLF, said the festival has increasingly become international in its programming. Around 30 per cent of its speakers are from India, he said, while 70 per cent are international. “We are an international festival,” Roy said, adding that unlike many US literary festivals, JLF is “not publisher-driven. We are content-driven.” The festival looks at themes around books and brings different people together to explore them.
That global outlook is reflected in this year’s programme, which will host discussions on geopolitics, including on Iran and Uganda, as well as the new world order. Photography, film, technology and artificial intelligence will sit alongside memoir, fiction, partition, art history and the supernatural.
The festival’s programmes will also move beyond conventional author panels. Seattle will feature photography, music, technology and AI, while its sessions will include conversations between writers and historians. In Los Angeles, the new edition will combine literature with photography, USC Thornton School of Music performers, food and dance, and a special Malibu breakfast exploring storytelling and social impact.
What’s new at JLF
For the authors appearing at the festival, that ability to bring readers and writers together is part of JLF’s appeal. Manil Suri, whose new memoir A Room in Bombay will feature at the North Carolina and Colorado editions, said he first attended the Jaipur festival in its second year and later the inaugural Boulder edition.
“The JLF, Boulder was maybe the most enjoyable festival I’ve been to,” he said, recalling its intimacy. Suri said JLF USA has become increasingly important tool to connect readers with books as newspapers devote less space to book reviews.
“It’s amazing that JLF USA is part of the effort that actually connects audiences to books,” he said. “I think that’s getting more and more essential.”
Suri will bring A Room in Bombay, a memoir about growing up in a single room in Mumbai shared by four families–three Muslim and one Hindu. The book also follows his journey of understanding his sexuality and eventually moving to the US.
Delhi-raised historian and filmmaker Sam Dalrymple, whose Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia will feature at several editions, also spoke of his long association with JLF. He said he had attended numerous JLFs in Rajasthan and India but was looking forward to experiencing its international editions.
Novelist Sonora Jha, meanwhile, will bring Intemperance to JLF Seattle. Set between Seattle and India, the novel explores love, caste, disability and ancestry through a middle-aged woman, who decides to organise her own modern-day swayamvar. Jha said the book was inspired by bell hooks’ writing about love and seeks to explore not only the trauma but also the joy and agency of queer love.
Sonya Rhie Mace, curator of Indian and Southeast Asian Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, said she was “absolutely blown away” by her first experience of JLF Jaipur and was grateful that the festival includes art history in its conversations. Her sessions will draw on Pahari Paintings, Art and Stories and examine how museums are rethinking the histories and classifications of Pahari art.
Former UN leader Lakshmi Murdeshwar Puri, meanwhile, called JLF the “mother of all literary festivals” and said it was a privilege to bring the international edition of her novel Swallowing the Sun to the festival.
And while JLF USA continues to expand, its “mother festival” in Jaipur is approaching a milestone of its own. JLF will turn 20 next year, with the next Jaipur edition scheduled for January 14-18, 2027. Roy said the festival has grown into a wider movement, with Teamwork Arts now running more than 30 festivals in around 42 cities across 19 countries.
At its heart, though, JLF remains built around a simple idea: a book is only the beginning of a conversation.
(Edited by Aakriti Handa)