TERLAHORE – The much awaited Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) kicks off today (Saturday) at Alhamra, The Mall. First of its kind in the history of Lahore, the LLF aims to capture and explore the real Lahore, the cultural hub of the country. The two-day festival has brought a number of literary stalwarts together, providing an opportunity to listen them. Literary bigwigs are of the view that the festival would be the revival of literary activities as about 60 leading names of literature would share their writings and experiences to the audience. The talks would cover the wide range of topics of human interest in the LLF.A team member of organisers Razi Ahmad is hoping that LLF would produce a platform for worthy interaction between leaders in arts and art lovers. The festival is being organised by Zahra and ZZ Ahmed Foundation in collaboration with Government of Punjab, Lahore Arts Council and City District Government Lahore. The board of directors (BoD) for the festival includes Nayyar Ali Dada, Fasih Ahmed, Hameed Haroon, and Iqbal Ahmed, while the advisory committee consists of Aysha Raja, Mohsin Hamid, Muneeza Shamsie, Salima Hashmi, Ali Dayan Hasan and Nusrat Jamil.While famous literary persons like Bapsi Sidhwa, Intezar Hussain, Ataul Haq Qasmi, Afzal Ahmed Syed, Asghar Nadeem Syed, and William Dalrymple, as well as young authors like Mohammed Hanif, Musharraf Ali Farooqi, Mohsin Hamid, Daniyal Mueenuddin, Moni Mohsin, Nadeem Aslam and HM Naqvi. Journalists Owen Bennett Jones, Omar Waraich, Lyse Doucet, Ahmed Rashid and Declan Walsh would participate in the festival.