Also in Starmag today - a feature by Tan Karr Wei about the winners of the Apostrophe sixteen word short story competition and their Bali trip. (A shame there isn't a bit more about the actual festival apart from a passing mention. This is one of the major literary events in the region, and the Malaysian authors who attended did the country proud!)The battle of the performing poets at Wayang Kata IV is featured in a very entertaining piece by Daphne Lee.
I do like her little diversion about the Sylvia Plath film where a poetry recital leads to some passionate table-top sex! Rest assured though, nothing happened like that the other night. You'd have to go to the Ubud Writers' Festival to find that!(Divya, the one poet I didn't manage to get a photo of the other night, is pictured here, right. And of course, that's Priya K. to her left.)
The education section of the Star has a very nice article by Sarah Chew about some of the excellent initiatives in Malaysian schools to encourage kids to get their hands on books.I was really pleased too, to read about how some schools are encouraging parents to get in on the act. The student-teachers I was working with earlier this year had seen parents helping in UK schools and knew what a big difference such involvement can make. And now it seems that the idea is percolating into Malaysian classrooms. Great!
