Transverse

The first international Tamil literary festival, aptly called Living Tamil Lit Fest, took place in NYC on April 3 & 4, 2026. Around 30 writers, translators, publishers, and other members of the literary circle from all over the world participated in it. My wife Sharada was one of the organizers of the event. I was up on the stage for a short while giving an update on how we run our book club in the Bay Area. All things considered, the event was a success.

Here’s the report of the event from my 11-year-old daughter Kavya. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

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On April 3rd and  4th, writers from all over the world came to New York City to participate in the Living Tamil LitFest (Literary Festival). It wasn’t just writers though. Translators and  publishers attended as well. The reason I was here is because my parents played a role in organizing this event, plus my dad was going to be a panelist.  As soon as we entered the venue (NY Academy of Medicine), my mom spotted Varsha Vivek and  introduced me to her as if we were BFFs when I had never seen this kid in my 11 years of life! Soon after I realized she was the girl my mom had shown me videos of in 4th grade. Videos of her giving hour long reports of a 20 page short story by Jeyamohan. But after some conversation, we realized we had lots in common and  got along super well.

​We were talking when my mom grabbed me and led us to the 2nd floor where there was an array of snacks and  drinks. Varsha and  I started with drinks, but they weren’t labeled, so we had no clue what anything was. I hesitantly filled my glass a sips worth of what I hoped was Coco-Cola while Varsha did the same with what looked like mango juice. I LOVE mango juice. I stuck my tongue into the cup and  immediately took it back out. This was some kind of cherry-berry-grape-fruit punch concoction. If you have known me for over 15 seconds, you should know that I HATE cherry-berry-grape-fruit punch concoctions and love mango juice. I turned to Varsha. She put her thumb up and  said “orange juice”. She took another sip, but this time, her face screwed up. “There’s no sugar,” she said. We managed to gulp down the rest of our drinks and throw the cups away. I stood in horror as I watched two people happily chug the drinks we had gagged at. The only good things were two of the snacks. There was chocolate biscotti and  fruit kabobs. Man, those kabobs were good! The only thing was that they had PINEAPPLES. Pineapples are dead to me. 😡

​Amma helped us decide what session we should go to.  How the LitFest works was that there were two halls, the Su Ra hall and  the Ka. Na. Su (such a cool name) hall. They are named after trailblazing Tamil authors. (Fun fact, Su Ra is Nithya Peddama’s best friend’s dad! Isn’t that so cool?!) At any time other than a coffee break (after each session), lunch or dinner, there is a session going on in each of those halls.

​Here is how a session works. There is a main topic idea and  a moderator—someone in high school or college—to ask 3 panelists questions. If a panelist answered in Tamil, they planned in advance for a moderator to get a translation of their answer. The sad thing was that whenever a panelist cracked a joke in Tamil, the translation would drop it.

​Our first session was called “The Timeless Humanity”. It featured authors: Peter Constantine, Ajithan, and Sayanthan. Constantine translates from 28 different languages to English! But he’s so fluent in Greek and  German that he can translate into them! Ajithan is actually Jeyamohan’s son. He wrote the short story “Pork Roast”. Pork Roast is about a man on a search for pork for his dying grandmother. One of the questions he got was “Who is the Tamil equivalent of your favorite American singers?” I thought that was interesting because what does Tamil literature have to do with American music? His answer was Abinav Gupta, but I don’t know who that is. Sayanthan was my favorite panelist of that session. He grew up during the civil war in Sri Lanka and wrote many stories about it. I love books that have the authors’ personal experiences in them because it makes the story feel so real, which is why I like memoirs as well.

​Another session that struck me was called “Through Her Lens”. My favorite panelist in that was Venila. She was a poet who used to write novels. Something she said that I liked was “Novels are like a forest, but poetry is a burning leaf.” At first I didn’t understand it, but Amma said in novels, there is a lot to say, whereas poetry is short and  intense. Another panelist in “Through Her Lens”—Chandra Thangaraj—writes fiction novels. She said she had tried to write non-fiction but could only get through 2,400 words before it fell apart, but in fiction, she could write whole-length novels. Maybe it’s because she grew up reading fiction novels. She also ended up bringing too much personal life into non-fiction.

There is only one word in the dictionary to describe lunch. Mid. There was plain pasta that was just soaked in oil and  salt, which was honestly the best thing there. There was also Coco-Cola (actually this time), so I got that too. 

On the way back home, there was no room on the buses so we took the subway to the NJ transit station and then the train back to Radhika Auntie’s house.

​On the second day, my sister co-moderated a session called “Towards Contemporary Aesthetics”. She was awesome! She interviewed Chad Post (aka C-train), an American publisher. My favorite session of the 2nd day was called “Redefining culture through language”. I know it sounds super boring, but it was one of the only sessions I actually understood. One of the panelists, Yuvan Chandrasekar, spoke in Tamil and  kept making really funny jokes, but I couldn’t understand most of them because they were in Tamil, but everyone was laughing so hard when he spoke. But what I liked was even though I couldn’t get what he was saying, there was this lively aura around him that made the whole thing feel a lot more conversational and  less “I have been presented with a question and I have to answer it” type thing. He is a novelist who used to write poetry. He thought poetry was too restricting, so he switched to fiction novels and short stories. 

The lunch on the second day was actually pretty good. There was basil pesto pasta (still super oily, but what good basil pesto isn’t?). 

In conclusion, this event was a big success and  I learned lots from it. It’s crazy to think that over 250 people came to this event from all over the world just because they like someone’s writing . You need to be a very powerful writer to do that. It was also surprising to think of all the moderators who did so well and the fact that they are only around 6 years older than me. If there ever is another LitFest, I definitely want to moderate.  Overall, the Living Tamil LitFest was the complete opposite of  a cherry-berry-grape-fruit punch concoction.