Writers Unlimited Tour of KL

We're just a few days away from the Writer's Unlimited Tour - our mini lit-fest happening in June. Please click up to size the poster and the information about the writers taking part. Please pass on the information to your own circle.

Press Release

Writers Unlimited Tour KL/Makassar 2001
June 10,11 & 12th June

Writers Unlimited - the Hague Literature Network (www.winternachten.nl)

Since 1995, Writers Unlimited has focussed its attention on the maintenance and development of the network of writers from both The Netherlands and mainly non-Western countries. Writers Unlimited (formerly known as Winternachten) organises an annual international literature festival in The Hague in January. More than seventy writers, poets, thinkers and musical groups come together for a programme focussing on the presentation of literary work to the public, in addition to hosting cultural and social debate. Apart from its annual festival in The Hague, Writers Unlimited organises literary events abroad, in cooperation with local partner organisations. Once every two years, Writers Unlimited organises a literary festival in each of their partner countries. Amongst their current partner organisations are ITEF Festival in Istanbul, University of Western Cape in South Africa and the Literary Festival Foundation in Surinam. Writers Unlimited is coming to Malaysia, and ‘Readings@CeritAku’ is pleased to be its first local partner.

Readings was created by Malaysian poet/writer Bernice Chauly in January of 2005 as a platform for live literary events, which focusses on emerging and established writers. Sharon Bakar took over as organiser in 2006 for Readings at 67tempinis satu in Bangsar, and Bernice Chauly expanded the literary repertoire to create Readings@CeritAku at KL’s top jazz bar No Black Tie in 2007. Now in its seventh year, both Readings’ are the city’s longest lasting live literary events.

“I was fortunate to have been invited to tour as a writer/poet with Writers Unlimited last year to the Dutch Antilles, Suriname and South Africa and was privileged and honoured to have seen the work that Writers Unlimited does in countries outside the Netherlands. As a result of this collaboration, Writers Unlimited has decided to come to Kuala Lumpur to seek new shores and to work with Malaysian writers and thinkers”.

The theme of the festival is Writing the Truth – Fact of Fiction? We are fortunate to have four touring writers of various origins from the Netherlands, Turkey, Egypt and the US who will be performing in languages as diverse as Arabic, Dutch, Turkish and English. Our five Malaysian writers will perform in Bahasa Malaysia and English. Writers will discuss their own work as intersections of history, politics and autobiography. Is fiction ‘the lie’ that can help us get at ‘the truth’? Or do we rely on fact as truth to then fictionalise new versions of the truth?

This three-day event will incorporate readings, panel discussions and a visit to a local university. This small literary festival has the potential to invigorate and inspire many who write, think and enjoy discourse.

We hope to see you there!
Bernice Chauly
(festival director)
Bernice Chauly (festival director)

012 323 0929/mulutmata@gmail.com


Bernice Chauly is a writer, poet, photographer, filmmaker and actor who has worked extensively in the arts in KL for twenty years. She has worked on many award-winning projects and has also written, acted and directed for the stage and screen. Her photographs have also been exhibited locally and internationally. She has published two collections of poems, a collection of short stories and has performed in literary festivals all over the world. Her upcoming fictive memoir, Growing Up With Ghosts, chronicles a hundred years of her Punjabi and Chinese family diasporas and stories will be published later this year. She lives in KL with her two daughters.

Let Vikram Twist Your Arm

If you need any more persuasion to go to the Ubud Writers and Readers' Festival this year do have a listen to what Vikram Seth has to say about it!



Early Bird tickets for 4 Day Passes (at 10% off) are available now! Early Bird offer ends 14 July.

Singapore Writers' Fest Needs You!

The Singapore Writers' Festival takes place between 24 October to 1 November 2009 at The Arts House, with the theme UNderCovers. The website promises that :

There will be something suitable for everyone whether you love thrillers and mysteries, fairy tales, or enjoy a tale or two about the dark side of the human condition.

And, they will need volunteers for the event :

... to ensure the smooth flow of events and human traffic and that the whole SWF experience is a most comfortable one!

Find out more here!

Asia House Festival and Tash's UK Launch

Britain will be celebrating its first major literary festival dedicated to Asian writing in May. The Asia House Festival of Asian Literature runs 11-22 May and features over over 25 authors,
highlighting writing from ten Asian countries.

Some of the writers appearing :

Amit Chaudhuri, Sir Mark Tully, Hardeep Singh Kohli, Ziauddin Sardar, Kamila Shamsie, Nadeem Aslam, Christina Lamb, Alice Albinia, Kenan Malik, Patrick Cockburn, and BBC journalists Frank Gardner, John Simpson and David Lyon.

There are also some pre-festival events and these include the UK launch of Tash Aw's book Map of the Invisible World on May 7th, where the author will be interviewed by Karim Raslan. If you happen to be there (and I hope to be) let's go give the fellow a big cheer.

Amit - The Publisher's Nightmare

I reacted against this professionalising of the author, in India and in Britain ...

Indian author Amit Chaudhari confesses to being something of a publisher's nightmare to Sophie Harrison in The Guardian. His new novel The Immortals is in nine years.

Particularly interesting in the interview is the comparison between Chaudhuri's

... slender, focused novels ...

and the

... grandeur, whimsicality and pickle factories ...

of Rushdie and his followers, which :

... represents a kind of hallucinatory cliff behind which we cannot see.

I came across Chaudhari's work when he was a guest at our first KL Literary Festival, and was stunned by the meticulous observation and the humanity of his writing which transported me into the same space as his characters.

I have owed him an apology since the festival so post it here.

There really was a balls up with the programming which I was supposed to be in charge of and thought I had sorted out okay. But the nice Mr. Raman decided during the event to shoehorn a couple more readers - folks that he had published - into each slot at the very last minute. It would have been okay ... but both these guys ran over their allotted time and ignored my notes and wild wavings. (I'm studiously avoiding names here because they are guys I really love and they deserved their moment in the sun. Only I wish I had known earlier that they were to be accomodated in the programme.)

Amit's slot (his second appearance in the festival) was scheduled for the very end of the afternoon. I had found a good moderator (or so I thought) for the session - a woman who had studied his work and was a tremendous fan, and she was going to interview him one on one. I told her before the session began the timing she had to work to.

And then the pair of them, up on stage, totally ignored it!

Amit is so interesting, I'd have loved him to speak for hours, and the woman interviewing him certainly knew her stuff and was asking the right questions ... but the ballroom at the Rennaisance was only booked till 6 and there was a wedding dinner taking place that night so the hotel staff needed to move in pretty sharpish to get the place set up so I could give him only 45 minutes. Tops.

The couple on the stage ran over ... by ten minutes ... by 15 minutes ...

I tried to catch their eye.

The hotel staff began to move into the room. I ran over to them and begged for a few more minutes. Not possible.

I started to gesticualte wildly from the back.

The hotel staff began to move tables.

Members of the audience angrily turned round to shush them.

The hotel staff became increasingly and I think deliberately noisier.

The couple on stage were now 25 minutes over time ... having a really cosy chat ...

I picked up the mic and asked the speakers, if they could just wind up the session.

The audience got all angry with me and one woman (a major sponsor) told me to sit down and shut up!

I was by now in tears. I looked around in vain for Raman to help. For anyone who would tell me the right thing to do.

Amit was relectant to end, but said he would close with a reading. He read ... not one of his beautiful descriptive pieces, but a very odd poem about ... shit! Was this a polite and controlled expression of his anger?

And then it was over, and shit was exactly what I felt like! I bawled my eyes out in the Ladies. I had not slept in a couple of days for worrying about everything and all that had to be released before I could face the world again.

But there was the next event to attend ... it was the wonderful production of Riding the Nice Bus over at Zouk, and it went so well that my spirit was completely smoothed again.

And this is why I won't ever be an organiser for a literary festival again, and take my hat off to anybody who does the job. And especially if they manage to remain calm under extremely adverse circumstances!

Dubai Debate

You have to be careful with language. Old war horses like me hear the word 'ban' and creak out with our rusty swords to ... rally around a flag that wasn't really there ...

said Margaret Atwood, talking about her cancellation at the Dubai Festival before learning the facts of the Geraldine Bedell "banned book" case. (See here and here.)

I react in exactly the same manner to the word (though thereafter any resemblance to Ms Atwood sadly disappears!) and must remind myself to gather up all facts first before humphing in outrage.

Sometimes that's hard to do as the press does so love to sensationalise stories. (Bloggers - inc. myself - are just as bad but at least we have the excuse that we have less access to the sources.)

It's also interesting how the initial shock-horror story travels so widely, but not the more accurate report that comes later ...

It's such a shame that it was a blare of negative publicity that brought the festival to public attention. Kathy Guest in The Independent writes about the event, where :

... for an all-too-fleeting four days last week, the InterContinental hotel in Dubai, Festival City, became an oasis of cultivation in the otherwise featureless landscape of designer labels and oil billionaires.

The debate on censorship went on, with Atwood appearing by video link (top left) and the discussion is reported here by Ed Lake of The Nation.

Penguin in the Doghouse?

Thanks William Shaw for sending me a link to his post re the kerfuffle over the Dubai Festival.

Not all is as it first seemed.

According to Isobel Abulhoul the decision to cancel the launch of the book was communicated to Ms Badell in September ... so why was it only brought to public attention this month?

Margaret Atwood now apparently regrets her decision to withdraw and has :

... come around to Isobel Aboulhou’s view that this was as much a controversy stirred up by Bedell’s publishers as anything to do with censorship. ... On speaking to , the festival’s director, however, she was told that this was not the case, she writes. Rather, the festival director had sent a “candid” and somewhat naive email of rejection, which “was carefully guarded by someone - who? - until now, when it was hurled into the press with great publicity effect, easily stampeding people like me.” Atwood, upset that her principled stance was taken under what she now sees as false pretences, and protective of the “first-time festivalite” Abulhoul, says her “head is spinning” as a result of the controversy.

I think our heads are spinning too. And I must make a note to be a bit more of a sceptic ...

Postscript (24/2/09) :

Margaret Atwood is to take part in the debate on censorhsip via video link.

Galle Festival - How Relevant?

Of course, there's no immediate way that fiction or poetry can be of constructive use in a bloody conflict whose human cost remains concealed. But the fact that most of us can't read the Sinhalese novelists does point to one very relevant literary exercise. A key failing of the otherwise world-class Sri Lankan education system is that while many islanders read at least some English, very few Sinhalese can read Tamil, and vice versa. This will be a major obstacle to any peaceful integration of the island for all sorts of reasons, and allowing Sinhalese and Tamil literature to promote understanding across the ethnic divide is perhaps the least important of them. But putting effort into translation projects would be a small but tangible step in the right direction ...

Lindesay Irvine on The Guardian blog writes about authors celebrating freedom of expression at the Galle Literary Festival in Sri Lanka, and notes the great need for translation of locally written fiction to transcend ethnic boundaries.

Ajith P. Perera [found via The Literary Saloon] refers to the event as :

Colombo elite’s annual intellectual masturbation

and rather cynically asks what objectives the festival actually serves :

A section of Colombo elite might take a long holiday, eat continental breakfasts, drink lots of expensive wines, exchange yarns about their kids, buy few ornamentals, gain few pounds, may even boost the condom sales of nearby pharmacies and disperse. So much for the literature.

The tragedy is large section of creative writers never benefit from either of these festivals. They become untouchables at state festival because they do not appease Talibans. State shows the rebels the door. ... They have no place even at Galle because they do not write in English.

He says he sees the best creative writing - particularly poetry - on the blogs. But bloggers were not a group represented at the festival.

Maura O'Connor of The Sunday Times of Sri Lanka [also found via!] says that:.

.. despite all the fun to be had at the festival, there was a strong sense that the event had yet to seriously deal with the reputation and criticism it garnered in previous years for rather unabashed elitism.

While the programme touted intimate gourmet dinners in Galle Fort mansions and the opportunity to rub shoulders with literary hotshots, there was little in the way of events that allowed for the discussion of topics such as the current ethnic conflict, politics, education, media responsibility, or development. This is strange because one of the festival’s espoused objectives is to “encourage debate on topical issues.”

These are the challenges that the organisers of any literary festival in this part of the world (or indeed in any part of the developing world) have to face up to. The Ubud Festival I think is managing to keep on right side of the line.

Ubud Interlude

So yes, I'm back. Back home and back to blogging.

Crawled in at 1.30 a.m. (thanks to a delay on AirAsia) loaded with dirty washing and a huge pile of books - mostly signed copies - and a ton of stories to tell.

But not as many photos as I wish I had ... as I managed to leave my camera in a taxi! The driver returned it to the hotel where I had been attending Camilla Gibb's book launch and I was touched and impressed by his honesty.

This was the view of rice paddies from my hotel room at dusk. (I stayed at a cheapie hotel at the end of Hanoman Street.)

This is the gateway of the Yoga Barn, just up Jalan Hanoman and next to the excellent Kafe. Ubud is the place to find peace and tranquility and beauty, tradition and new-ageyness. All the time you meet folks from across the world who come to Ubud and never leave. It's the true land of the lotus eaters. (I want to live here too!!)

This is my lunch at the little restaurant in a garden behind at Toko Toko gallery where I go for peace and quiet when the festival is on. I will miss my nasi campur so much!!

I will not miss the pre-monsoon heat and humidity though - sweated rivers this Writers' Readers' festival.

(Still when I think of some of the British literary festivals and the accounts of the rain and mud and events in tents, I know I that I have no cause to complain.) More to come!

Bacon on Bali Menu

I'm getting all excited about going to Bali in a few days time for the Ubud Writers and ReadersFestival and am so happy that Eric has blogged an interview with author Charlotte Bacon (left), a Hemingway prize winner who has relocated to Bali with her husband. He has also posted a piece from the Bali Post written by Alexis Wright about how her Miles Franklin winning novel, Carpentaria, came to be written. The festival programme is up here to whet your appetite if you need last minute convincing.

Malaysians for Ubud

Fancy a book-lover's dream holiday?

This year's Ubud Writers & Readers Festival will take place from the 14-19 October and has the theme Tri Hita Karana, which refers to Balinese concept of balancing Man, Nature, God.

There are plenty of literary superstars going to be there including Vikram Seth (be still my beating heart!), Indra Sinha, John Berendt, Camilla Gibb and Alexis Wright.

Malaysians will be out in force, represented this time by Preeta Samarasan, Chiew-Siah Tei, Faisal Tehrani, Amir Muhammad, and Bernice Chauly. Sharanya Manivannan, now living in India, is also invited.

Pignapped

(Warning - non-halal post.)

What do you do if you feel that the results of a literary award are :

... a stitch-up ...

(the winner announced before the shortlist is out) and the author you really feel deserves to win a particular literary prize doesn't? How about running off with the prize and holding it randsome as a protest and so that the judges are forced to reconsider their choice?

And what if the prize includes a Gloucester Old Spot pig to be named after the winning novel?

What would P.G. Wodehouse himself have done? What would his hero Bertie Wooster have done? Julian Gough tells the story of a pignapping, and the whole event is caught on video too :



The book Gough wanted to win is a wonderful novella called The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett which I so thoroughly enjoyed, that it seems a good opportunity to slip in a mention.

It's the story of how the Queen, out walking her corgis one morning, comes across a strange little van parked in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. It turns out to be a mobile library, patronised by the members of her household staff. She goes in to apologise for the trouble caused by her dogs, but finds herself taking out a novel ... and after she returns it, another ... and then another. And pretty soon a total hopeless bookaddict is born.

The queen's public duties suffer as her passion for reading grows. Worse still, she finds herself asking difficult questions about her role as monarch.

(Read an extract from the novella.)

McCrum in Ten Chapters

The Observer's literary editor Robert McCrum hangs up his hat after more than 10 years in the job and gives us a fascinating whistle-stop tour of the changes he has seen in the publishing world in that time.

Along the way he shares his thoughts on subjects such as: Zadie Smith and the new generation of authors; how Amazon.com has changed the retail market; the rise and rise of Rowling; Franzen snubbing Oprah; the explosion of literary festivals; how literary prizes have come to be the most reliable guides in a perplexing landscape; why McEwan's success typifies the decade; how blogs have taken over the role of reviewing; how Lynne Truss talks to our anxiety in an age of cultural upheaval; and finally, the Kindle.

This article is a must-read for anyone interested in the trends, and it's nice to discover that McCrum is very optimistic about the future of the book :

... what I have described are the birth pangs of a golden age. The market for the printed book is now global; the opportunities for the digital book are almost unimaginable. To be a writer in the English language today is to be one of the luckiest people alive.

Festival of Asian Literature

Michael Binyon in The Times has news of a very interesting literary festival and it's one that slipped beneath my radar completely last year.

The second Festival of Asian Literature will runs from May 12-23 at Asia House which Binyon describes as :

... a vibrant new cultural centre, is fast emerging as London's cultural window on a continent, one that is fast emerging as the main showcase of the arts, films, music and literature of India, China and some 30 other countries from Indonesia to the Gulf.

The 11 day event brings together some major Asian authors including Mohsin Hamid, Amitav Ghost, Shashi Tharoor, Pankaj Mishra, Xinran, Diane Liang Wei, as well as Malaysian author Chiew-Siah Tei , who was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary prize.

I am terribly jealous of those who will get to go!

(Picture above shows Xinran, Diane Liang Wei and Chiew-Siah Tei)

Singapore Stories Part 2

A second dose of stories from the Singapore Writer's Festival.

Yesterday, I talked about out blogging panel. I realised just how skimpy I'd been when I read Ivan's account and he's recorded pretty much everything everyone said! The guy is nothing if not thorough.

Sharon essentially explained that she had a compulsion to write and blogging was her outlet. She often had to tell herself to stop posting (and occasionally feed her husband, she says).

How true!

I first met Captain Elmo Jayawardena (below) at the Ubud Writer's Festival last year, and he's one of the people who most gives me warm fuzzies of the heart.

Not only an award winning novelist (Sam's Story, based on the life of one of his servants, took Sri Lanka's Graetian prize in 2001) but also a great humanitarian, raising funds for tsunami victims and the destitute through his Association for Lighting a Candle (AFLAC). He has also been a Singapore Airlines pilot, and will be in KL soon running pilot training courses for Air Asia (at which point I promise I shall nab him for one literary event or another here!)

I went along to his session with Deepika in which he talked about his books and the project he's working on at the moment (a novel with a crow's eye view of humanity! He's even threatened to have a Sharon crow in it), and his new collection of short stories Rainbows in Braille, which was launched later in the afternoon. (In typical Elmo style, all proceeds from the sale go to charity).

Zafar writes wonderfully about Elmo and the launch, and if you aren't in love with the man before you reach the end of the post, I don't know what's wrong with you!

After that, I did a quick dash over to catch the last quarter of an hour or so of Malaysian laureate A. Samad Said's poetry reading with his son Az Samad playing jazz guitar. Excellent stuff, and I was sad that I hadn't been there for the whole thing. (That's the thing about writers festivals, you have to keep making tough choices when things you want to see are scheduled against other things you want to see!)

I did though catch a full session with Pak Samad (above and below) on the Sunday. He talked (among other things) about his connection to Singapore, his early influences, and the politics of being a writer in Malaysia. (I've bought a copy of his most famous work, Salina, in Malay, so wish me luck!)

I also went along to hear Czech Jewish writer Arnost Lustig (below), who has written about his time in the concentration camps. (He survived Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Dachau.)

I learned about the nature of man. Not everything, but enough ...

he said.

And told us a couple of very moving stories, about his early life and time in concentration camps.

One about how his friend stepped in to save his life when he was about to be shot for stealing bread, and another about the necessity "to become a man" even in the shadow of the camps with the ever present threat of death.

It could always have been much worse ...

he said, adding that the main quality in life is luck, and you also need to have luck as a writer to find editors and publishers. And publishers it seems are:

...the most brutal and cruel people.

So that was my Singapore Writers' Festival. As in the famous blind men and elephant story, I only experienced a little piece of it. I am still sad that I wasn't able to be there for the whole thing, but thoroughly enjoyed the sessions I did go to. The whole thing was very well organized and the programme wonderfully varied so as to provide for all literary tastes and language groups.

There were of course the writers who got away. I spotted Jung Chang in a white suit disappearing down a corridor and almost gave chase. I wonder if that thoughtful young man standing by the staircase was Su Tong? I was too shy to ask.

Wayang Kata IV ... and the Road to Singapore

And talking about poetry in performance, a quick plug for an exciting event that's coming up soon. This from the British Council's website:

WAYANG KATA IV: AN EVENING OF SPOKEN WORD

Getting it across!

Some say good things come in three’s but we beg to differ! Presenting the fourth edition of Wayang Kata – harder, better, faster, stronger!

Wayang Kata IV will feature an all-Malaysian line-up of poets that have attended our poetry workshops but here’s the twist: we’re going to have these wordsmiths battling it out for an opportunity to attend and perform at the Singapore Writers Festival in December.

The poets will be assessed by a panel of guest judges but ultimately the audience gets to sway the final decision! If you’re thinking Poetry Idol, you’re getting warm…

Back as emcees are Jerome Kugan and Jasmine Low also known as Troubagangers, our Wayang Kata co-presentors. The evening will also include special performances by our hosts, guest judges and new talent as well. Watch this space for updates and details.

Check out the competitors, note the dates and see you there!
Date Wednesday, 24 October 2007
Venue No Black Tie, 17 Jalan Mesui off Jalan Nagasari, KL
Time 8.30 p.m.
Admission RM10 at the door

For more information, email us at arts@britishcouncil.org.my

Well, there's nothing like a little competition to motivate folks to do their best, and judging by the list of poets who are up for it, it's going to be a tough contest!

This is what we know so far about the Singapore Writers' Festival:

In 2007, the nine-day festival will feature over 100 exciting programmes including film screenings (of literary adaptations), a book exhibition, panel discussions, literary tours and lunches, literary-related music performances and of course talks, book signings and readings by prominent writers.

The festival will be presenting, for the first time, a professional symposium, specifically focusing on the literary publishing industry. Industry experts from all over the world will be invited to give talks and take part in panel discussions. These sessions will also be opportunities for industry networking and information sharing among the key players in the literary ecosystem.

To generate buzz for the festival in December and to nurture a sustained interest in the literary arts, there will be monthly literary events leading up to the festival from February to October 2007.

The literary ecosystem? Either someone's been reading my blog or they're just as brilliant as I am. Publishing is an ecosystem, in which all parts must be healthy and in balance.

I know where I'm going to be in December!

Ubud Early Birds

From Ubud Writers' and Readers' Festival director Janet de Neefe:

Greetings,

There is a buzz in the air as the residents of Ubud start gearing up for the 4th Ubud Writers & Readers Festival. But don't think the chatter ends in our little village. Apparently the literati-glitterati, from as far away as London, have been talking up our next Festival. They must know that this year promises to be even more dynamic, stimulating and magical than ever.

For those who are willing to take a leap of faith and trust that this year's program will be better than ever, Early Bird Specials are available on the 4-Day Festival Pass. Purchase a 4-Day Pass from now until when the program is released on the 13 August and receive 10% off [that's a AUD$30 discount!]. With less than a month to take advantage of this special offer we encourage you to throw caution to the wind and head to the Booking page on our website to get your ticket or for more information.

Although the full Festival program won't be released until mid-August, we have released our Adult Workshop and Feature Events Programs to sate your curiosity. Tickets for these are on sale now and we recommend that you book early.

Once again, our fabulous Feature Events will take transport you into the worlds of some of our most fascinating Festival guests, whose writing and experiences are as diverse as their countries of origin. Set in some of Ubud's most elegant hotels, these unforgettable feasts of flavour, mind and soul are always quick to sell out. So book now!

It's no wonder that the Festival was named among the world's top six literary events! Join us and see what all the talk is about. You wont be disappointed!

This year will see more Malaysian participation in the festival than ever before with our Tan Twan Eng, Farish Noor, Kam Raslan and playwright Ann Lee taking part.

But some of the other invitees have a strong Malaysian connection.

There's Catherine Lim, a Malaysian-born author resident in Singapore, and Madeleine Thien, an Canadian author with Malaysian-Chinese parents whose novel Simple Recipes was a regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize finalist.

Then there's a couple of Hong Kong based authors I know because I included their stories in the Silverfish volume I edited (Collateral Damage) : Xu Xi, and Mohammad Cohen.

I hope that there will be more Malaysians attending the festival too, because, despite what Mr. Raman says, you really aren't going to feel out of place.

Check out the guestlist to know who else will be coming.

(I'm sure I've heard of this Kiran Desai somewhere ...)

Read or Die!

Tiara asked in the comments to a previous post if I would mention the Read or Die Convention 2007, to be held on Feb 3 and 4 in Manila, the Philippines. And I'm happy to because it sounds a great event and I'm almost tempted to jump on AirAsia myself! (And just look at how these guys are marketing reading - as something fun and sexy - how unlike our feeble attempts to hook folks on books here.)

As Tiara says:

It's the Philippines's first ever literary convention of its kind. There will be panels, events, exhibits (rare books from Gaiman and Rushdie!), film screenings, and other fun stuff, as well as the Pinoy Readers' Choice Awards. It's completely non-profit and all the proceeds will go towards the AHON Foundation, who are aiming to build libraries all over the Philippines.

If any of my Filippino readers make it to the convention, do let us know how it went.

Racism at the Hong Kong Litfest?

Shock news (passed on to me by Deepika): novelist Nury Vittachi, the co-founder of the Hong Kong Literary Festival is to be sacked by the organization’s board in a row about racial insensitivity and improper business links.

He claims:

* That he campaigned for years to set up a literary prize, but once sponsorship was obtained, he was cut from the project because of a Westerners-only rule.
* That the festival board, ostensibly non-profit, limits membership to directors and authors of Paddyfield.com and Chameleon Press, companies run by board member Peter Gordon.
* That prime slots in the festival programme were given to Chameleon Press novelists even if they paid for their own publication.

The article (reproduced in full on Nury's blog, source not given) concludes:

While Vittachi’s claims of racism may initially seem hard to swallow given that two of the men on the festival board have Asian partners, yet it is difficult to escape the conclusion that there has been, at the very least, racial insensitivity and a blur between business and festival matters. There is little doubt that Vittachi was one of the key progenitors of the Man Asia Literary Prize. To cut him out after he changed publishers was a move that had to raise eyebrows in the industry. As an extremely well-connected Asian author whose career is in the ascendancy, he would have been an ideal figurehead. In 2007 Vittachi is scheduled to be a featured author at festivals in Germany, Australia and the UK. Furthermore, with a chairman and judges from North America and Australia, the Asian literary prize now feels uncomfortably non-Asian. Without Vittachi, there is no involvement whatsoever from south Asia, the widely acknowledged home of Asian genius in English literature. ... Whatever happens, festival-watchers say the row is likely to force the board to institute the major reforms its outgoing founder recommended. It appears obvious that the group would benefit from having other Asian publishers and bookshops involved, and it will eventually have to open itself up to new members--and preferably Asian ones.

Am extremely sad, for Nury, whom I met at the Ubud Readers' and Writers' Festival.

Related Posts:

New Prize for Asian Writers! (18/11/06)
Man Asian Literary Prize (1/11/06)

KL Litfest 2007

Raman has announced the Kuala Lumpur International Literature Festival which is to take place 28th, 29th and 30th of March 2007. The theme for the event is 'The nation at 50.'

Am happy to see that the whole event has been scaled down compared to the 2004 event which was way too ambitious (though we largely pulled it off) and has dropped the literary conference part which really didn't work last time. The events will be held in and around Bangsar Baru, and are all within walking distance. This also strikes me as a very good idea and there are plenty of places to stop and eat and socialise in between venues.

Events are still being worked out but will include, book launches, discussions, meetings with writers, exhibitions and workshops - for adults and children.

Some names have been announced, local (Dina Zaman, Cecil Rajendra, Salleh ben Joned, Tash Aw, Wong Phui Nam among them) and international (including performance poet Benjamin Zephaniah from the UK).

The whole thing will cost RM100 for the three days (RM50 for writers/ teachers/ students).

The only fault I can find with the whole thing is five events running simulataneously may mean 1) making tough choices (though some events will repeat) 2) some events being under attended.

More news as it comes in! Meanwhile mark the dates in your diaries. (And that's an order!)