Kelaniya Uni English Lit Festival: Exploring creativity
Kelaniya Uni Lit Fest proceedings in progress. Pix by Indika Handawala
The Kelaniya English Literary Festival ( KELF) 2017, took place for the first timelast week. Organized by the University of Kelaniya, the festival was a day of activities, exploration of creativity and launch of their first magazine of writing.
The daylong event was inspired by other famous literary festivals such as the Jaipur literature festival and the annual Fairway Galle Literary Festival, explained Head of the Department of English, Dinali Fernando. Colourful buntings decorating the path to the venue were a precursor to the imaginative performances and concepts the students had conjured up for the event. The launch of their English magazine “Blink 2017
(E)merging memories ” included submissions from students of both the universities of Kelaniya and Jaffna following a joint collaboration between the two universities in the previous year. “Blink 2017” is not only the first edition of the magazine to be launched as an e-magazine and also available to the public. The progressive magazine accompanied was accompanied by several performances of snippets from the contributors.
Accompanied by ingeniously directed performances and a sometimes folky guitar, the magazine was dedicated to the loving memory of Prof. Manique Gunesekera a stalwart in the field of English in Sri Lanka as well as the force behind the university’s department of English and Englih Language Teaching during her career of 36 years in the academic field. The event also included ‘kuppi classes’, book sales and conversations with well-known authors Ashok Ferry and Sunila Galappatti.
