Every Bengali carries a library inside them.
It lives in the stories their grandmothers told, in the poetry they memorised without being asked, in the novels that shaped how they see the world – even if they now read them in translation, or remember them only in fragments.
Shabd is where those fragments come together.
The conference’s literary pillar brings Bengal-based writers and diaspora voices onto the same stage – in Bengali and in English alike – for conversations about fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and the quiet, powerful act of putting a life into words. Senior immigrants share memoirs that have waited decades to be heard. Translators wrestle with the question of how to carry a literature across languages – outward to the world, and inward to the next generation that may no longer read Bangla fluently. English-language diaspora writers find a place that recognises their work as part of the Bengali literary tradition, not apart from it. And a dedicated conversation on children’s literature asks the simplest, most urgent question of all: how do we make sure the generation growing up farthest from Bengal can still find their way into its stories?
A new annual award for immigrant literary excellence gives Shabd a lasting marker – a recognition that the Bengali literary imagination did not stop at the border.
Some words travel further than the people who write them. Shabd is where they come home.
Bengal-based and diaspora writers on the same stage, reading and responding to each other’s work across panels that run through both programme days. The core of Shabd – deliberately mixed, never separate – because Bengali literature stops being divided by geography the moment its writers share a room.
Senior immigrants carry the longest stories and the quietest voices. Smritikatha gives them an unhurried afternoon in the Galleries – readings from memoirs and life-writing shaped by decades of migration, settlement, and return visits, in a conversational setting designed for listening rather than performing.
How does Bengali literature travel? A roundtable on the business and craft of taking it global – rights sales, foreign-language editions, and the publishing partnerships that carry a book from Kolkata to Frankfurt, São Paulo, or Seoul.
The children read English. The grandchildren may read neither. A separate roundtable asking the more personal question: how do you translate Bengali literature for your own family – the ones who grew up abroad, who may not read Bangla fluently, but who deserve access to the stories that shaped where they come from?
Not every diaspora writer writes in Bangla – but the sensibility didn’t change with the language. A panel and readings spotlighting diaspora Bengali writers who work primarily in English, recognising their work as part of the Bengali literary tradition, not at its edges.
The simplest entry point into Bengali culture for a child growing up abroad may be a book. Publishers, authors, and educators – including Paper Planes Journal – come together to work through a practical question: how do we write, translate, and distribute children’s books that connect second- and third-generation kids to Bengal, even when Bengal is a place they’ve only visited?
No moderator, no mic, no agenda. Just writers, editors, translators, and publishers finding each other over tea and conversation. The connections that matter most at a literary gathering almost never start on stage – this is the session that protects time for them to happen.