We were very excited when Anindya Roy reached out to us about the Delhi Comic Arts Festival – which aptly shortens to DeCAF, on the lines of international comic arts festivals like ELCAF, VanCAF, and TCAF. The first edition of DeCAF will be held at the India International Centre (IIC) in Delhi from 4th to 6th December 2017.

Anindya runs an art/literature based events company called Manic Mongol, and before that, he used to run a publishing house called Phantomville, along with artist and graphic novelist Sarnath Banerjee. Phantomville, now defunct, produced some really interesting graphic novels like The Believers and Kashmir Pending. Anindya is now spearheading DeCAF as its director, with support from many prominent organisations. In an official press release, he said that the “festival has been created for comic creators, particularly the new generation of visual storytellers, professionals who are associated to the many branches directly connected to the world of comics and audiences who are looking for more diversity and range in the world of graphic storytelling”. He also added that they hope to take the festival to the other cities of India eventually.

For the first edition, DeCAF has an excellent line-up of speakers from both India and abroad. Here is the list of speakers:

As part of the festival, there will be also an exhibition of 250 artworks spread around the campus of IIC featuring works by the participating artists as well as others.

Artwork by Indian visual artist Priyesh Trivedi