"India's First Literary Festival dedicated to highlight LGBTQIA+ Literature and art."
Queer LitFest, Chennai is an independent festival organised under the Queer Chennai Chronicles (QCC) banner since 2018.
QCC is an independent initiative to promote queer literature, writers, translators, and artists. Over the years, QCC has engaged with the media, social movements, and civil society to create awareness around LGBTQIA+ lives and issues. The Chennai Queer LitFest is one of the initiatives which we successfully organised for four years. With limited resources we have achieved and created the impact that we intended to create. After two years of physical events in 2018 and 2019, in 2020 and 2021 we organised the festival virtually due to the pandemic limitations.
While we have paused the festival since 2022, we are in continuous discussions within the team to analyse the best way for us to take forward the festival. There are a few reasons for us to think that the festival has to be restructured. When we started the festival in 2018, it was a different world with respect to queer literature and queer awareness in our country. With the changing times and societal attitudes, we would like to organise a festival that is relevant and impactful for the times we live in.
But we have not stopped our other work under QCC. In 2020 we launched our Tamil and English bilingual webzine paalputhumai.com (Paalputhu Pakkangal). We published our first translation, Kaadhalenum Perungadal (Ocean of Love), translated from English to Tamil, in 2022. In 2022 we also started working on the LGBTQIA+ Media Reference Guide. And the project evolved over time and in 2023 the project became InQlusive Newsrooms, where we worked in partnership with The News Minute. The LGBTQIA+ Media Reference Guide was created in Tamil, English, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi and Hindi.
We may have taken a break from organising the Chennai Queer LitFest, but we haven’t stopped thinking about relaunching the festival in a new format. Meanwhile please follow our social media channels and this page for updates related to our other work and the future Queer LitFest.
- Team Queer Chennai Chronicles