Founded in 2006, The Asia House Festival of Asian Literature is the only Festival in the UK that is dedicated to writing about Asia and Asians, from the Persian Gulf to the Pacific.

Previous Festivals have hosted a range of authors including: 
William Dalyrmple, Amitav Ghosh, Aravind Adiga,  Kiran Desai, Fatima Bhutto, Daniyal Mueenuddin, Basharat Peer, Azar Nafisi, Tash Aw, Amit Chaudhuri, Pankaj Mishra, Kenan Malik, Miguel Syjuco, Ziauddin Sardar, Kamila Shamsie, Hardeep Singh Kohli, Daljit Nagra, Chang-rae Lee, Neel Mukherjee, Nadeem Aslam, Xinran Xue, Xiaolu Guo as well as many other emerging and established writers from Iranian, South Asian, Afghan, Chinese, Central Asian, British Asian and Southeast Asian authors. We are proud to have showcased award winners like Aravind Adiga and Miguel Syjuco at their first public appearances.

The Times has been our media partner since our beginning in 2007.  Since then we have added the Asia Literary Review and the FT, Granta, Wasafiri, the Commonwealth Prize, The Reading Agency, Intelligence Squared, Bristol's Festival of Ideas, Apple i Bookstore and others as partners. 

Our outreach programme featuring library reading group projects and a library events programm brings our message of cultural understanding to libraries in throughout the UK.  In 2010 we staged the first UK Asian themed book release, giving away +400 free books in Marylebone - in partnership with BookCrossing.com.

Our Festival advisors for 2012 include Erica Wagner (The Times), James Kidd (SCMP), Hardeep Singh Kohli, literary agents David Godwin and Toby Eady, Rachel Holmes of Southbank, Susannah Nicklen of the British Council, Claire Armitstead of the Guardian, Ellah Allfrey of Granta and Ilyas Khan, publisher of the Asia Literary Review.

The programme for the 2012 Festival will include themes such as:  Women, Power and Politics, Writing Revolutions-The Arab Spring and Asia, The Geo-Politics of Oil, Ghosts of Empire, Persianate Poetry, The Many Faces of Love, Women and Water in Pakistan, Busting Stereotypes and more.

Watch for The Festival participating at the Alchemy Festival at in April and the Bristol Festival of Ideas in May.

In partnership with The Reading Agency, the 2012 outreach programme will include a city wide reading programme in five Midlands cities, family events  at libraries throughout Westminster, interaction with schools and universities and participation in a mentoring programme that will pair disadvantaged British Asian teenage writers with established authors for coaching.