Celebrating its 10th edition, the Neev Literature Festival (NLF)—India’s biggest children’s literature festival—will bring together a community of readers and children’s book creators, around the theme “Stories from the Heart”, on September 26 and 27 at the Neev Academy campus, Yemalur. NLF is completely free and open to all.
The festival has a rich array of excellent creators who will be conducting sessions at the event such as Corinna Luyken, an award-winning New York Times bestselling author-illustrator, who is known for her lyrical and introspective picture books such as My Heart, The Tree in Me, The Book of Mistakes, and In the Dark.
NLF will also host Frances Hardinge, the award-winning British author known for her brand of complex, layered, and absorbing fantasy. M T Anderson, who is popular for his dystopian novels as well as his adult non-fiction, and has been awarded the Newbery Honor as well as the National Book Award in the US, will be a speaker at the festival this year.
Alongside them are Christopher Myers, an artist and picture book maker, who heads the Make Me A World imprint at PRH US, and is also a Caldecott Honoree, Coretta Scott King Award Honoree, and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honoree. New York Times bestselling author Samira Ahmed, who is known for her books that feature stories of revolutionary girls, will be at NLF, with Namrata Tripathi, president and publisher, Kokila Books, an imprint of PRH US, that champions diverse books and creators. Angie Kang, an innovative picture book creator and Caldecott Honoree, completes the line-up of global delegates at NLF. They will be joined by 66 Indian creators including eminent writers such as Devika Rangachari, Anushka Ravishankar, Shabnam Minwalla, illustrators such as Nina Sabnani, Priya Kuriyan, sports journalists and commentators such as Suprita Das and Kunaal Majgaonkar, formerly with Bengaluru FC, and editors such as Sayoni Basu and Shobha Viswanath.
Last year, the festival saw a little over 4700 attendees. Here’s a view into the highlights from NLF 2025 —1 and 2. NLF 2026 will host 80 Delegates, 105 sessions for children across different age groups (3-5 years, 5-8 years, 9-12 years, 13-15 years, and 15-18 years) with events for parents and educators, as well as 2000+ curated titles at the children’s book marketplace. These sessions will be a mix of on-stage interactions, masterclasses for children and adults on aspects of writing, illustration, production, or trends in the publishing industry, alongside book readings, and signings.
The festival will also unveil the winner of the Neev Book Award for the best Indian children’s book to have come out in the last year from a shortlist of 5 authors. The winner stands to win a cash prize of INR 3 lakh with a trophy and a citation, while every shortlisted author receives a cash prize of INR 1 lakh. The finals of the national NLF Reading Challenge Quiz for 9-12 years in which the top 4 teams, from a total of 707 teams, compete for the grand prize will take place at the festival as well.
