NOW Live from the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center

SALTAF 2009 marks the sixth year that the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program joins forces with the Washington, DC, chapter of the Network of South Asian Professionals (NetSAP-DC) to bring you another unforgettable event.

Time:
Saturday, November 7, 10 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.
 
Location:
Baird Auditorium
National Museum of Natural History
10th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW
 
Metro:
Smithsonian or Federal Triangle
(Orange and Blue lines)

Mark your calendars now, because you are not going to want to miss a single minute of SALTAF this fall!

SALTAF 2009 is the sixth year that the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program joins forces with the Washington, DC, chapter of the Network of South Asian Professionals (NetSAP-DC) to bring you another unforgettable event.

Our literary guests are confirmed and we couldn’t be more thrilled …

• Kamila Shamsie, whose latest novel, Burnt Shadows, is an astonishing story about two unlikely families intertwined for generations;
• Dr. Kunal Basu, whose latest title is the 12-story collection, The Japanese Wife, whose eponymous opening tale is the basis of Aparna Sen’s latest film of the same name;
• Ru Freeman, whose debut, A Disobedient Girl, weaves two seemingly disparate stories about a houseservant yearning for more and a mother on the run with her young children; and
• Tania James, another debut novelist, whose Atlas of Unknowns, explores the divergent lives of two sisters, one who travels to America and the other who remains back in their native Kerala.

THIS JUST IN …

• Dilip Mehta will be joining the festival in person with his award-winning documentary, The Forgotten Woman, which begins where his older sister Deepa Mehta’s 2006 Academy Award® nominee for Best Foreign Language film, Water, ended. This documentary captures the heartbreaking stories of some of the 20 million Indian widows who are abandoned by their families and literally turned out into the streets after losing their husbands. No mere companion piece to Water, this resonating portrait is characterized by “more than enough visual beauty, graceful compassion and understated anger to stand on its own,” wrote critic Nathan Lee in The New York Times.

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• And we’re thrilled to announce that director Paresh Mokashi will be here to present the Washington, DC premiere of Harishchandra’s Factory, India’s official entry for the Foreign Language Film category of the Academy Awards. Go, Oscar, go! And how fitting to be showcasing a film about the making of India’s first full-length feature, Raja Harishchandra, brought to the screen by a tenacious, pioneering ex-printer named Dadasaheb Phalke. It’s 1911 and the unemployed Phalke decides to take his family on a rollicking adventure of filmmaking, unheard of in the long decades before Bollywood films became household fixtures. The rest, as they say …

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CLICK HERE FOR THE DAY’S SCHEDULE …

UPDATES
[October 8, 2009] Alas, alas … we’ve had some mighty disappointing news about The Japanese Wife, the latest feature from acclaimed filmmaker Aparna Sen (Mr. and Mrs. Iyer). We just heard from Ms. Sen’s representative that due to earlier strikes in the Hindi film industry, the film will not be finished in time for SALTAF. We wish Ms. Sen the best and hope to see her at a future SALTAF.

[October 27, 2009] Due to a family tragedy, Daniyal Mueenuddin will not be able to join us. His phenomenal debut collection, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, wowed readers this year and was recently announced as a National Book Award finalist. We wish him the very best of luck and hope to cross paths soonest at another Smithsonian event.