Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program Blog

Anita Rau Badami	Bharati Mukherjee	Ved Mehta

The South Asian Literary and Theater Arts Festival (SALTAF™), entitled “Scripts, Stories, and Syllables of South Asia,” made its Smithsonian debut, marking the beginning of a long collboration between the Washington, DC chapter of the Network of South Asian Professionals (NetSAP-DC) and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program.

Time:
Saturday, November 20, 2004
10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Sunday, November 21, 2004
10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Location:
Baird Auditorium
National Museum of Natural History
10th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW

The inauguaral SALTAF at the Smithsonian was a two-day event that included literary panel discussions, book readings, and signings by renowned South Asian authors including Bharati Mukherjee, Anita Rau Badami, Indu Sundaresan, Samina Ali, Neela Vaswani, Tim Ward, T.S Tirumurti, Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi, and Vijay Lakshmi.

Also featured was a slide presentation by Robert Arnett and Smita Turakhia of India Unveiled, the highly-acclaimed travelogue illustrated with award-winning photography.

Additionally, the festival included the presentation of four one-act plays, an award-winning South Asian feature film, and a media arts panel discussion with South Asian filmmakers and theater professionals.

SALTAF™ was presented by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program and the Network of South Asian Professionals of Washington DC (NetSAP-DC). Sponsors included Cornet Technology, Inc., the Embassy of India, and The Humanities Council of Washington, DC.

For more information, visit www.netsap.org/saltaf2004.