Scheduling any festival in the time of a pandemic is going to be a nightmare. Rijula Das is the new Verb Readers and Writers Festival Programmer for 2022, and it's one of the big literary events in the capital. Rijula has a long involvement in the literary scene, as a writer, translator, ex-bookseller and buyer. She's also taken part as both a speaker and audience member at Verb, a festival that's been running since 2014. Rijula's debut novel A Death in Shonagachhi was published in July 2021 by Picador India and will be published as Small Deaths in the USA and elsewhere in 2022. A Death in Shonagachhi was longlisted for the JCB prize 2021 and won the Tata Lit Live First Book Award 2021. Rijula's English translation of Nabarun Bhattacharya's novel Kangal Malshat is forthcoming. She received her PhD in Creative Writing and prose-fiction in 2017 from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where she taught writing for two years. Verb is scheduled to start on the 3rd of November in Te Whanganui a Tara.