IIM Udaipur has announced a star-studded line-up for this year’s annual literary festival of IIM Udaipur – The IIM Udaipur Leap Day Lit Fest. The fest will be held on February 18th, 2018, from 11 am in the 330-seater auditorium at the IIM Udaipur Balicha Campus.

The theme for this year’s edition is “The Other Opinion”. The literary festival has always been a celebration of art and culture and has striven to leapfrog genres and mediums to bring together writers and content creators from different walks of life. This year’s theme is another step forward in the direction of celebrating the freedom of expression in all its forms.

The event will be spread over two sessions with speakers from diverse backgrounds addressing the audience and presenting their unconventional stories and thoughts. The speaker lineup for this year are as follows:

Aanchal Malhotra is an artist and oral historian working with memory and material culture. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, US, UK and India.

Sujata Massey is author of 13 novels, 2 novellas and numerous short shorties. She has been awarded the coveted Agatha and Macavity award and been a finalist in multiple other forums.

Anshu Mor is a standup comedian who quit the corporate world to launch his own company called Talking Mime. Their firm provides digital content and storytelling workshops on humor.

Shailender Singh Sodhi, better known as Shellee is an incorrigible nonconformist, though widely acclaimed as a poet, film lyricist and writer. He has been a lyricist in Bollywood movies like Udta Punjab and Dev D.

Manjiri Prabhu (Author) is colloquially known as “the Desi Agatha Christie.” In her latest novel, The Trail of Four, Ms Prabhu has chosen to pen characters from different cultures and places, unfamiliar to her. She has set out to know and understand their perspective as an insider, and provide us with their Other Opinion.

Dr. Moushumi Kandali is a writer, art historian and translator who loves and dreams in Assamese but examines different thematic concerns in the backdrop of the socio-cultural ethos of various tribes of her State in English. She has set out to make her opinion known to the masses in a language they understand which makes her a perfect addition to this edition of ULLF which explores the Other Opinion.