Adventurers, cooks and a host of prize-winning authors jet in for the next Emirates Airline Festival of Literature
British explorers Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Chris Bonington, author and cook Nadiya Hussain and Emirati astronaut Hazza Al Mansouri are among the big names who will appear at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai next year. The event, which will take place at the Inter Continental Dubai Festival City from Tuesday to Sunday February 4 to 9, will host award-winning novelists and poets, including Tayari Jones, who won the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction for An American Marriage, and Man Booker International Prize
winner Jokha Alharthi, author of Celestial Bodies.
Esi Edugyan, who wrote the Booker Prize-shortlisted novel Washington Black, Hoda Barakat, winner of the 2019 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, and Mohammed Hanif, whose 2008 novel, A
Case of Exploding Mangoes, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Novel, will also speak at the festival. An impressive poetry programme will be headed by two-time International Poetry Slam Champion Carlos Andres Gomez and Palestinian performer Farah
Chamma, while the ever-popular Desert Stanzas will return.
Other notable names on the line-up include children’s illustrator Oliver Jeffers, Killing
Eve author Luke Jennings and Canadian crime writer Linwood Barclay of the “Zack Walker” and “Promise Falls” novels.
The programme has been loosely put together around the theme of “Tomorrow”, so there will be sessions and panels on everything from technology and business to conservation, tolerance and exploration. Broadcaster and environmentalist Kate Humble is sure to
be a big draw, as will astronomer Maggie Aderin-Pocock and Mohamed Qasem, who was recently named one of the top science communicators in the Arab world by
Nature Middle East. Nujeen Mustafa, a Syrian refugee with cerebral palsy who travelled 3,500 miles to Germany in a wheelchair, will discuss her role as an advocate for disabled refugees around the world, and Henry Firth and Ian Theasby, the duo behind the internet vegan cookery sensation BOSH!, will be hosting a vegan supper club.
Next year the festival will run for five days instead of 10. “The shorter format means all our authors will have a chance to meet and interact, and we can look forward to some spectacular panel discussions,” says festival director Ahlam Bolooki. “Some old favourite festival features will return along with new developments.”
Tickets go on sale to Foundation Friends on Tuesday, November 12 and to the public from Thursday, November 14. www.emirateslitfest.com