Arundhati Roy

At that point, she was 73 years old.

She's already published Arundhati Roy, Thomas Pynchon, Zadie Smith.

So she's seen it all.

And this is also a wonderful story about queer collaboration, because I don't think I would have been able to do that if it wasn't for her.

The idea that when we celebrate life, human dignity, creativity, and the human experience, we're also affirming the rights of every person to live with equality, freedom, and dignity.

And that ma- leads me to the second quote from Arundhati Roy, the prominent Indian writer, novelist, and political activist, who says, "Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it with our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness, and our ability to tell our own stories." Now, there's something very powerful in that idea of telling our own story, of using creativity, imagination, music, literature, theater, and the arts as a way of challenging injustice, giving voice to different experiences, and creating spaces where people can come together and be heard.

And that brings me to the third quote, which is specifically about the festival, and it's from Kevin Courtney writing in The Irish Times, where he says about the Irish Arts and Human Rights Festival, "In a world where human rights continue to be under attack, the Arts and Human Rights Festival sets out to celebrate the people who have stood up for them around the world and throughout history, and to highlight the role artists can play in promoting a more just society." I think these three quotes really speak to the heart of what the festival is about, the relationship between art, human rights, storytelling, participation, and social change.

And the Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality and Frontline Defenders, and a range of partners are doing a huge amount of work to present the festival every year.

I started reading Chomsky and slowly became very interested in anything that had to do with Israel and Palestine.

Reading Edward Said, Mahmoud Darwish, Hassan Kanafani, John Berger, Tanya Reinhart, Ilan Papeh, Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky, Kurt Vonnegut, Arundhati Roy, Naomi Klein, all became part of my daily routine.

Books changed me, and I think that they are, more than anything else, one of the best tools we can use to learn, reflect on, and truly understand the world we are living in.

They are a bridge between languages, continents, and people.

What are you reading at the moment?

Uh, Arundhati Roy, um, The God of Small Things.

So she's an Indian author.

Um, yeah, really fascinating.

When I have my closing event at the Library of Congress in April 2027, I'm going to assemble a selection of different translations of people from all around the country who have made translations, some for the first time in their life, some who are practice and professional translators.

And as a final note, I'll say totally out of the blue because I've never met her, but the writer Arundhati Roy emailed me from Delhi, India, and she said, Arthur, we've never met, but Transient Worlds found me.

You are inviting people to become part of a global literary citizenship.

You're saying anyone can read and make a translation and they have their own voice and vision and they can experiment with language and take pleasure in that.