35th National Book Fair: Young, old become first-time authors to exhibit books

PNS|Hyderabad

Authors from 15-year-old to 60-year-old became first writers and exhibited their books in the 35th National Book Fair here on Thursday.

The youngest, 15-year-old Grade X homeschool author Vaishnavi completed three sequels of The Jaz Gang- A Dangerous Escapade. She writes in the afternoon daily and started writing at the age of 12.

She finds convincing the publishers very difficult and wrote mails to many publishers but received only reverts. Taking this opportunity at the National Book Fair, she is exploring to interact with publishers for her books. “It will be a dream come true to find publishers. In future I would like to serve society by becoming a politician and I admire KT Rama Rao as a dynamic leader. As a thinker on how people lived 1000 years back, I decided to write my storylines.”

The fair opened on December 22 and will last till January 1, 2023. The timings from Monday to Friday are 2pm to 8:30pm and on Saturday, Sunday and various holidays from 1pm to 9pm.

Praneetha, 22, used to write lyrics and name it as her creativity. “I just need to sit down with my writings and I finish the books within days. My two books are on romantic fiction. During holidays I write stories as I have a story in my mind and the first readers are my childhood best friends. Over 100 books have been sold so far.”

The Book Fair was inaugurated by Excise, Tourism, Culture Department Minister Srinivas Goud. Speaking on the occasion, he said that books are the starting point to bring change in society. It is said that the knowledge of science and technology has increased by book reading and knowledge of books is eternal.

Vice-president of Hyderabad National Book Fair, K Chandra Mohan, said that this year, over 300 stalls will be set up and encouraged young authors to display their books.

A donation box will be set up like always, wherein interested people can give away old books which will be donated to various libraries in districts and to various government schools. The central organisations showed interest in opening stalls in the book fair.”