I’m really pleased to…

I'm really pleased to note that we've confirmed Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni as our keynote speaker at Kriti. It wasn't easy to get her, and I suspect that it'll be well-nigh impossible after this year, since The Mistress of Spices is coming out next year as a Hollywood movie, starring the utterly gorgeous Aishwarya Rai. Divakaruni has a huge and ardent following, so this should be a big help in making sure that we have good attendance at the festival.

This also means that we're definitely co-sponsoring her speech in collaboration with the Chicago Humanities Festival, which should also help immensely with attendance -- their events are regularly sold out. :-) So if you're planning on coming to our festival, and want to hear Divakaruni, I *strongly* suggest you purchase one of our 250 pre-registration all-weekend passes, which will include the Divakaruni address. The other 500 tickets for her address will be sold through the Chicago Humanities Festival, so once our 250 are gone, you'll need to fight with their regular attendees... And for only $20 for the entire weekend, it's a real steal!