We've just agreed to pair with the Chicago Humanities Festival on Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, and Shashi Tharoor. This doesn't mean that they'll be actually appearing at Kriti, sadly, but we get co-sponsorship credit on their appearances at the CHF that same weekend, and CHF isn't scheduling the three of them on the 12th, so as to keep from drawing away too many potential interested parties from our main day. We'll list their three talks on our site, and include info on time/location. It's not quite ideal, but since we probably couldn't have gotten all three of them on our own (or possibly any of them), it's pretty clearly a good deal for us.
This probably also means that we won't convince Anita Desai to come to our festival, since she'll be at CHF the weekend beforehand, but we've sent her an invite, so we can just wait and hope.
Gardening update: Some repotting done -- still need to do the clematis, the hybrid tea, and the hanging baskets. I am drenched in sweat from lugging heavy pots and soil up and down two flights of stairs. Gardening is hard work. If I did this every day, I would have no need for any further exercise routine.
