The Bookworm’s Bazaar – Room To Read’s Literary Festival

Just around two weeks ago meand my service had worked incredibly hard to host our very own literary festival. We had quite a successful one last year and were hoping this time it would run just as smoothly. Over several weeks of planning we were able to come together to host our festival once more. We spent most of out lunch times on Tuesday’s to get together as a group and plan this event out. Fortunately enough we were lucky to have our advisor, Ms Lockwood be able to bring an amazing group of people together to make this event exciting and interesting as possible. We had people such as Dr. Henry Throop, a renowned NASA astronomer who has published over 40 scientific articles and contributed to the New Horizons mission, promoting astronomy to developing nations, along with Sanath Herath, a Sri Lankan artist and landscape artist. We also had invited Jonathan Geense an author of the book “Tiger and the Girl” for a Q&A as well as Rohini Mohan, a renowned journalist and author to discuss her writings on her book based off the Sri Lankan civil war. We were also fortunate to have Yudhanjaya, a science fiction author and co-founder of Watchdogs, and lastly Kai Bird, who co-wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” which was later adapted into the Oscar-nominated movie Oppenheimer.

We were extremely grateful to have the opportunity to invite these people over to our school to really make this event even more special. Considering this event was running throughout the day we would have small intervals as well as music in the courtyard which was performed by several talented members of the OSC community such as teachers and students. To make this event more engaging we had writing workshops held by parents and teachers for students from grades four to five, this was done so that people from all ages could participate and enjoy the festival. Without food stands and snacks for guests to enjoy between the many talks and activities, a festival wouldn’t be the same. For this reason, we asked some of our service members to bring small plates like cupcakes, donuts, savory and sweet pastries, and some cool homemade lemonade. In addition, we were fortunate enough to have Belimo’s Pizza, a nearby pizza restaurant, come set up a food stand at the school’s entrance where visitors could purchase and dine. Unfortunately we did not have as many people to come join us as we’d have liked compared to our more successful events prior to this, we still had an amazing crowd that we were greatly thankful for to support us. We were able to raise a lot of money which goes into our goal of helping the Vidyaloka School build a library for their students. Overall the festival ran smoothly and everyone seemed to enjoy it as they all engaged with our guests with intriguing questions and conversations.