The 17th edition of Godrej Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest concluded on October 25, featuring more than 130 novelists, poets, writers, thinkers and performers from 18 countries across over 40 sessions.
Veteran novelist Irwin Allan Sealy received the Godrej Literature Live! Lifetime Achievement Award, while Hindi poet Gagan Gill was named Poet Laureate. Rahul Bhattacharya’s *Railsong: A Novel* won Book of the Year – Fiction, while Ghazala Wahab’s *The Hindi Heartland: A Study* received the Non-Fiction award.
DeepikaArwind’s *Good Arguments* won Best First Book – Fiction, and Tanul Thakur’s *Wild Wild East* was named Best First Book – Non-Fiction. AdilRustomjee’s *Running Behind Lakshmi* won Business Book of the Year, while Westland was named Publisher of the Year.
The festival featured discussions on literature, business, media, history, artificial intelligence, social media and contemporary society. Prominent participants included Gulzar, Javed Akhtar, Shabana Azmi, Shashi Tharoor and Ramachandra Guha. The parallel Little Festival offered storytelling, workshops and performances for children aged seven to 13.
For Guwahati’s literary and publishing community, the festival offers insights into emerging literary trends, regional readership and opportunities for writers, publishers and cultural organisations to strengthen literary engagement in the Northeast.
Held from October 23 to 25 at Mumbai’s National Centre for the Performing Arts, the festival also featured theatre, music, workshops and campus outreach programmes.