Each November, Mumbai’s sea breeze carries something more than salt and stories, it brings back the city’s most beloved celebration of ideas, words, and worlds. Now in its 16th year, Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest returns to NCPA from 7–9 November 2025, promising three days of sharp conversation, stirring performance, and everything in between. This year’s line-up spans over a hundred writers, artists, and thinkers all gathering to make sense of who we are, and where our stories are headed.

It’s also a reminder that literature is a living, breathing conversation that spills into everyday life. Expression feels increasingly fraught, but Mumbai LitFest gives us a rare public space for curiosity and contradiction. Across NCPA, Mumbai thinks out loud. Here's what we recommend you catch:

Workshop by Dhamini Ratnam, Dhrubo Jyoti, Parmesh Shahani

A writing session that moves beyond labels to explore identity, intimacy, and truth. Led by three of India’s most important queer voices, this workshop dives into memoir, reportage, and everything in between. Expect to read, write, and reflect on what it means to find the ‘Other’ in the self, and leave with tools to tell stories that shift the needle on visibility.

Performed by Aditya Prakash

Blending Karnatik music, diaspora stories, and contemporary movement, Room-i-Nation is a performance piece that fuses sound, film, and narrative. Created by vocalist Aditya Prakash and choreographer Mythili Prakash, it takes audiences through the push and pull of identity, immigration, and inheritance from Los Angeles to Chennai. A chance to watch tradition reimagined through rhythm and resistance.

Open Mic by Poets of Mumbai

Forget fancy stages, this one’s for the wordsmiths with grass under their feet. At Poetry in the Park, anyone can take the mic, scribble a few lines, and perform on the spot. The twist? You get a mystery topic right before you write. This is Mumbai’s most spontaneous literary playground: equal parts nerve, craft, and heart.

Sumanto Chattopadhyay in conversation with Anuvab Pal

Two linguistic obsessives — one calling himself The English Nut, the other a comedian known for his love of absurdity — take us on a joyous ride through the evolution of English. There'll be trivia, detours, and revelations about how everyday phrases travelled across time and empire to land in your vocabulary today.

Performed by Ahmed Tobasi

A searing, deeply human story from Palestine: actor Ahmed Tobasi performs a one-man show tracing his transformation from resistance fighter to artist. Written by Hassan Abdulrazzak, the play weaves tragedy, humour, and rebellion, spanning the intifadas and the refugee camps of Jenin. It’s followed by a discussion with filmmaker Devashish Makhija, a dialogue on identity, exile, and art as survival.

Jeet Thayil and Omar Musa in conversation

Two lyrical storytellers unpack what it means to carry memory across borders, across bloodlines. This conversation blurs the line between fiction and inheritance, exploring how the past shapes the present and how writers transform ancestral weight into art. Music, memory, and meditations on what we owe to our forebears collide.

With Anindita Ghose, Raghu Karnad, Ranjit Hoskote and Rehana Munir

A love letter to the city that never stops storytelling. Editor Anindita Ghose’s new anthology brings together Mumbai’s many voices: chaotic, compassionate, and constantly in motion. The panel explores how memory and migration shape Mumbai’s imagination, and why this city remains an endless source of literary fascination.

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