Celebrating SAIL Fest – the new South Asian Children’s Illustration and Literature Festival

Discover more about the inaugural SAIL Fest that took place recently at The British Library.

 

Celebrating SAIL Fest – the new South Asian Children’s Illustration and Literature Festival

by co-founder, Sinéad Gosai

SAIL Festival is the exciting new South Asian illustration and literature festival that’s dedicated to celebrating, connecting and empowering South Asian children’s authors, illustrators and poets creating books for younger readers between the ages of 0-17.

When Sanchita first approached me about being part of SAIL Festival, I think I actually squealed. There’s nothing like this currently for our community, so of course I said yes immediately. I’m of mixed Indian and Irish heritage and whilst I’ve always felt very connected to both thanks to my family, outsiders have sometimes had a very different impression, which hasn’t led me to the best experiences. But to be a part of something that is helping to uplift and amplify the South Asian community working in the children’s books space feels like a real privilege.

We set up a Community Interest Company because we wanted to try and help, in our own small way, to unite the South Asian children’s book community from across the country; from publishers and booksellers to aspiring creatives, teachers and librarians and through various events and outreach, try to encourage more collaborative and transparent working practices whilst also creating wider opportunities for everyone involved so we can hope to level the playing field.

Working with award-winning author Chitra Soundar and Bookseller Sanchita, who I co-founded the festival with, has been a dream come true. We all have very different personalities and bring a different set of skills and ideas to the mix but we’re all very hands on in all parts of the festival. Chitra is bursting with creativity and is always coming up with ideas – whether that’s for panels, outreach for the future or plans for social media, it’s so inspiring and she understands the author side of things in a way Sanchita and I just can’t. Sanchita meanwhile has a wealth of knowledge of children’s books and has great relationships with publishers and authors which means we have access to a broad scope of the industry. I wear the publicity hat and take care of the website, partnerships and making sure we’re shouting as loudly as we can; I’ve worked in media/PR for around 20 years and set up a freelance consultancy business around 4 years ago. We’ve also just taken on a social media executive – Manchester based Aneesa Marufu, author of The Balloon Thief who is a brilliant addition to our team.

We were lucky enough to be gifted a space by the British Library and we held our inaugural event on Friday 6th September. Trailblazer Perminder Mann – who heads up Bonnier Books, is the head of the Publishers Association and is the first South Asian to lead a UK publishing house – kindly agreed to deliver our keynote speech.

She talked about her fear since the racist riots and feeling like our identity and belonging can sometimes feel fragile but urged us to stay strong and unite as a community. Listening to her journey was incredibly inspiring.

We all rolled up our sleeves and hosted panels too and we had a brilliant team of volunteers who were run off their feet to set up the day, sort out our social channels and help manage all the onsite tech. I had the pleasure of talking with Jasbinder Bilan, A.M. Dassu and Zanib Mian on storytelling and how it intersects with culture. We chatted about the research involved when writing about culture and heritage, how we celebrate South Asian food and clothes in stories and whether there is sometimes a need to inflate or tone down cultural references. Spoiler alert, unsurprisingly a number of writers have been asked to remove more Indian references from their books.

There were four other panels across the day, that looked at demystifying South Asian publishing hosted by lecturer and author Darren Chetty, featuring Knights Of Editor Eishar Brar, Tate’s Children’s Commissioning Editor Cherise Lopes-Baker, and Children’s Book Consultant Jake Hope. They discussed the lack of South Asian books being publishers, what publishers are looking for when evaluating books from South Asian creators and what new authors can expect when entering the industry.

All things Picture books and visual storytelling were discussed with illustrator Rikin Parekh – who designed and illustrated SAIL’s gorgeous logo, writer Smriti Halls and author/illustrator/poet Krina Patel-Sage, hosted by Chitra who tackled questions around the misconception that writing picture books is easy and Krina talked about the reality of battling imposter syndrome and feeling not enough for the industry.

Meanwhile, Sanchita dug into the past, unpacking historical versus contemporary writing with authors Savita Kalhan, Bali Rai and Hiba Noor Khan who discussed how they set their stories. We also had a dedicated fantasy/sci-fi panel that Sanchita led, chatting with authors Sarwat Chadda, Nazneen Ahmed Pathak and Zohra Nabi who explained how they make stories from South Asian mythology, folklore and fantasy accessible to all readers

There was a real sense of pride in the room as I looked around at the shared heritage and culture that bonds us and saw the excitement on everyone’s faces that this was a space truly just for us. To talk, to connect, to share experiences – both bad and good and to learn from one another. Being in that room, with the energy and enthusiasm, I don’t think any of us had truly quite grasped how much we needed a festival like SAIL. So I feel I would be remiss here if I don’t acknowledge those who came before us and give thanks to all the Dada’s and Dadi’s who passed down our stories.

Since we launched the festival, we’ve had an overwhelmingly positive response from both the industry and the community and it feels like some small miracle that we managed to pull the whole thing off in just over 4 months. Sanchita, Chitra and I are very clear in our mission to harness our collective power to create real and lasting change and provide a safe and welcoming space for South Asian folks working in the UK children’s books market. The reality is though we simply can’t continue without funding, so whilst we’re of course immensely grateful for the support and for those publishers who contributed financially and to Papa Gosai (my dad) because without him this first event just wouldn’t have happened.

For all three of us it’s very much a passion project and we’re really only getting started. We have so many more plans for outreach throughout the year and to grow and develop the festival. We’re always on the lookout for new partners, collaborations and funding opportunities, so if you’re reading this and want to support us, visit our website and say hello!