KARACHI (APP) - The Oxford University Press will organise the first Islamabad Literature Festival from April today.
This was announced by OUP Pakistan the Managing Director Ameena Saiyid here on Friday.
Encouraged by the remarkable success of the Karachi Literature Festival over the past four years, the OUP Pakistan would hold the first Islamabad Literature Festival from April 30 to May 1, she added.
Ameena pointed out that four KLFs have been conducted so far and added that the annual KLF is about the promotion of books and reading and of enriching the minds.
“We want to leverage on the success of the four KLFs and take the festival to other parts of the country so that more people get an opportunity to celebrate the written word and be exposed to some of the finest Pakistani writers and their works. Based on this idea, the ILF aims to provide the writers and people of north Pakistan a forum to interact, exchange ideas, and engage in dialogues, discussions, and readings,” she said.
Ameena added that through such literature festivals, OUP Pakistan intends to create an intellectual space in which the diversity and pluralism in Pakistan’s society is expressed by authors from traditions both within and beyond Pakistan’s borders. 
In this regard, the Islamabad Literature Festival will feature debates, discussions, interviews, talks, a mushairah, dastangoi, a book fair, book launches, readings, and signings. Some of the notable authors who will be participating in ILF included Mohammed Hanif, Muneeza Shamsie, Kishwar Naheed, Iftikhar Arif, Amjad Islam Amjad,
Tariq Rehman, Intizar Hussain, Mustansar Hussain Tarar and Abdullah Hussain.
Besides, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Maleeha Lodhi, Nasim Zehra, Fouzia Saeed and Riaz Khan have also been invited. Ameena elaborated that apart from well-known authors, the Festival projects several new writers, giving them a platform from which they can be noticed and appreciated by more readers. The Co-Founder of KLF, Asif Farrukhi, also expressed his views on the occasion.