Dimapur, May 27 (MExN): The Annual General Meeting (AGM 2022) of North East Writers' Forum (NEWF) and Agartala Literary Fest, 2022 along with the silver jubilee celebrations of the NEWF was organised by INTERFACE, Tripura Chapter of the Forum at Agartala on May 15 and 16.
The meeting was inaugurated at Agartala Press Club by lighting of the lamp by dignitaries from Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura. The welcome address was delivered by Arindam Nath, former Vice-President, NEWF while the meeting was declared open by Acting President, T Bijoykumar, followed by Secretary's Report presented by Dipanjol Deka.
During the meeting, an update received here stated that the new executive committee NEWF was elected headed by Monalisa Changkija as new president. Prof Ashes Gupta, Pankaj Thapa, and Samrat Bora as Vice-President(s); Dr Elika Assumi as Secretary; Dr Gumlat Ong Maio as Jt. Secretary; Treasurer’s post is yet to be filled. Sajjad Alam as state representative from Assam; Ponung Ering Angu from Arunachal Pradesh; Dr RK Bhagyachandra from Manipur; Dr Thieyi Keditsu from Nagaland; Arindam Nath from Tripura. The Advisors of NEWF are- Mamang Dai and T Bijoykumar.
The organizers felicitated the top ten winners of ‘Dear Covid-19’ online letter writing competition organized by INTERFACE, Tripura Chapter of the forum, in August 2020. Also the second issue of INTERFACE Journal published by the Tripura Chapter was released in the presence of dignitaries such as Padmasree Mamang Dai, Monalisa Changkija, T Bijoykumar, Dipanjol Deka, Arindam Nath, among others.
A panel discussion was held on the theme ‘NE English Writer and the NE Reality: Public expectations, marketability and the mirroring effect.’ The panelists were Padmasree Mamang Dai, Monalisa Changkija, T Bijoykumar. It was moderated by Prof Ashes Gupta.
According to the update, the discussion highlighted on “how the use of English in the North East was not an elitist privilege, but that it was a language meant for the masses.” Panelists also put forward their views on what it means to be a writer from the NE writing in English and not in their mother tongue as well as presented their own interpretation of folktales/folklores and their relation to the marketability of writings from the NE.
In another session, poets and writers from the participating Chapters of the Forum read out their poems and short stories.
The North East Writers’ Forum, formally registered in 1997 as a book-reading club, has now members from Tripura, Mizoram, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Manipur, Sikkim, Arunachal and Assam. The primary objective of the Forum is “promotion of creative writings in, and the translations of regional literary works to, and vice versa, in English.
