Toronto: The second edition of Canadian Literature Festival (CLF) is showcasing India as its partner country, with sessions spanning seven languages.
The festival which had its inaugural edition in 2025, is being held at venues in Toronto and Mississauga. It began on Wednesday and will conclude on Sunday.
A release from the festival organisers said its “central theme” was built around India@CLF26 and features over 125 authors, poets, screenwriters, scholars and storytellers, spanning the Indian languages of Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Odia, Gujarati and Urdu other than featuring works in English.
CLF is being divided into two segments this year, with the first, being held in May, its flagship diaspora edition. Organisers hope to hold the mainstream event in September.
CLF founder-director Ajaay Modi said the ethnic chapter was “where the mother tongue meets the adopted homeland, where a poem written in Kolkata can be read aloud in Mississauga and find its rightful audience” and this was what “the diaspora has been waiting two generations to write”.
“The Chapter consciously refuses the long-standing English-language monopoly on diaspora literary platforms, restoring to the stage the languages in which the diaspora actually dreams, prays, argues and writes love letters,” the CLF release added.
Programming is scheduled to span keynote conversations, multilingual poetry symposiums, panel discussions on craft and translation, book launches, mushairas, kavi sammelans, performance literature, and intimate author-reader encounters. “Each of the seven languages is curated with its own programmatic spine, not as a token panel, but as a full literary current within the festival,” CLF noted.
Other than the sessions, the headline event at the festival will be the Creator’s Gala, which will be held on Thursday evening.
CLF cited the recent renewal in ties between New Delhi and Ottawa in its decision behind the partner country programming. Referring to the bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Canadian counterpart Mark Carney in New Delhi in March, during the latter’s first visit to the country after assuming the leadership position, CLF said this was “the cultural answer to that political handshake: a living bridge of words, ideas and imagination spanning two of the world’s most consequential democracies”.
