Up Close & Personal with #Author Vivek Tejuja - @JaipurLitFest

Up Close & Personal is a series of interviews with Speakers at Jaipur Literature Festival 2020. As a preview to the big event, here are a few quick sets of warm up interviews. The main show begins on 23 Jan and runs till 27 Jan, 2020. I hope you're ready!

Besides being an avid bibliophile, Vivek loves food and cats. An accidental writer, he indulges and wishes there was more time to write and read. A Bombay boy through and through, the sea is one of his loves. Men are also a part of his existence on and off. Vivek believes in the complete providence of fate. So Now You Know is Vivek’s debut novel.

Up Close & Personal with Vivek Tejuja

What is the one question you are tired of answering?

What was the inspiration to write your book?

What is the one question you secretly wish people would ask you?

Why a memoir and not a work of fiction?

Tell us your favourite literary quote.

“To be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope.” - Anne Carson

Recommend just ONE book.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

Do you think that Literary Festivals help encourage the love for reading and help lure more readers into the fold?

I think they set the foundation stone, so to say. I think literary festivals are needed because people are curious about who attends and why and who are these authors and it results in people picking up a book or two. May be they won't read them immediately, but they will for sure and that's a huge change, resulting in more readers and mindful discourses.

What are you looking forward to the most at JLF 2020?

These specific sessions: Bookends: The Writer's Craft, Akbar and Dara, On Susan Sontag, This Land is Our Land, On Memoir, and Jaipur Journals. I could go on and on and on but you wouldn't want that for now.

If you could invite any author (living or dead) to be on a panel with you for the fest, who would you choose and why?

It would have to be Elizabeth Gilbert (given she is also going to be there) because there is this grace, intelligence, and a different perspective to life and living in her books. Would love to discuss her writing.

What can we expect from you 2020?

Well, honestly, even I don't know that. I am just going with the flow.

Check out the Book:

So Now You Know