'A match made in literary heaven.' The Jaipur Literature Festival is coming to Seattle

Seattle is adding another festival to its summer roster, and it's a big one for the local literary scene: the Jaipur Literature Festival.

Founded in 2006 in its titular city in India, the festival known as JLF had a modest start. The inaugural festival started with just 18 Indian authors and about 100 attendees. The event's co-director William Dalrympl said most of those in attendance "appeared to be tourists who had simply got lost," according to The Brunei Times. Since then, it has grown into a world-renowned literary affair. About 550 authors and artists and more than 200,000 attendees joined this year's festival in February, according to the festival.

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JLF has also expanded to other countries, including the United States. Seattle is the latest city to host the festival, which will kick off on Sept. 20 with a special invite-only evening at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. The rest of the festival will be held Sept. 21-22 at Town Hall Seattle. Get the complete lineup and tickets here.

Seattle joined the ranks of JLF's hosts thanks in large part to Associate Professor Alka Kurian, who teaches a range of courses in film, media, gender studies, and human rights at the University of Washington's Bothell campus.

"It took a long time to convince the producers of the festival that we have the bandwidth to bring a festival of that nature and that scale to Seattle," said Kurian, who also hosts the podcast "South Asian Films and Books." "We wanted to make sure that people understand that this is, on the one hand, a festival that has roots in India or in South Asia. It also is a celebration of of books, ideas, debates and discussions globally."

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Kurian said JLF Seattle will showcase about 30 authors, including some Washington-based writers and others who will be traveling from India to attend. Panel themes will range from geopolitics and the environment to poetry and fiction. JLF Seattle is also partnering with Northshore School District to bring in emerging writers. Kurian said they will read excerpts of the books being discussed.

"We are trying to build bridges between the academia and the literary space in Seattle," Kurian said. "We want to make sure that it will be here for the rest of our lives, because JLF Seattle has the promise to become a key cultural event for years to come."

Sonora Jha, author of "The Laughter" — which is on the KUOW Book Club reading list — attended the festival in Jaipur this year. What she experienced was "a big fat dose of India" that left her "drunk on all of the color and the music and all the things that I miss about India, having grown up there." Now, Jha will be among the local authors featured at JLF Seattle.

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"Seattle is such a literary city, and, [JLF] is one of the biggest literary festivals in the world. So, it feels like a match made in literary heaven," Jha said.

Jha will moderate a panel on the nuances of writing amidst a contentious social and political climate at noon next Saturday. She will also be on a panel about women, their bodies, and their lives at 11 a.m. next Sunday.

For Jha, JLF coming to Seattle represents an opportunity to showcase immigrant voices, particularly first-generation Americans who are "living in multiple worlds." They're politically engaged, Jha said, so she expects the JLF audience will be hungry for their perspective.

But even if you're not familiar with any of the speakers or their work, she said Seattleites shouldn't be afraid to check out the festival.

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"This is a great opportunity for people to really get acquainted with something that they may not even have heard of and see how rich it is and how important it is to other people of other cultures. That just enriches our own storytelling, our own imagination," she said.

One piece of advice for anyone who hasn't attended an Indian event: "Wear colorful clothes."

"In India, we dress really nice for these events," Jha said. "Seattle, I hope you pick it up a notch."