‘WRITING THE FUTURE’
The First Ever Asia-Pacific Festival of Writing
An internationally-supported event for emerging and established writers, scholars of contemporary literature from Asia and the Pacific, publishers, agents and all interested in new writing from the region.
New Delhi and Shimla,
India
October 2008
The Asia-Pacific Writing Partnership and Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, are pleased to collaborate in organising Indian and international support to hold the first ever Asia-Pacific Festival of Writing in New Delhi and the hill-station town of in Shimla.
In anticipation of both Indian and international funding, the Festival, called ‘Writing the Future’ will include creative writing workshops for emerging writers from the region, translation workshops, as well as a major academic conference on new writing from Asia and the Pacific and public events featuring emerging and established writers and people in the publishing industry.
The Festival was planned at a two-day meeting at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in mid January, attended by representatives from India’s Ministry of External Affairs, the Ministry of Culture, the India Foundation for the Arts, the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, the Sanskriti Foundation, the Indian Institute for Advanced Studies, the Sahitya Akademi or National Academy of Letters and other universities in India (including Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Jamia Millia Islamia). Others participating included the executive director of Britain’s New Writing Partnership, academics from other universities such as Dhaka University and Lisbon University. Indian literary agents, publishers, writers, performers, translators of standing also attended the meeting.
International sponsorship for the event will be co-ordinated through the Asia-Pacific Writing Partnership (APWP), which seeks to raise the profile of contemporary literature from the region. The Partnership is an international collaboration of scholars, literary organisations, and writers from the region, and is presently housed within a research centre, the Griffith Asia Institute at Griffith University, Australia.
The APWP will promote the Festival internationally and take registration from international participants through its website (www.apwriters.com).
“To quote Victor Hugo: ‘Advancing armies cannot stop an idea whose time has come’,” said co-coordinator of the Festival, Professor Rukmini Bhaya Nair, a poet and Head of ITT’s Department of Humanities and Social Sciences.
“We plan this as an on-going event that we hope will provide valuable opportunities for new writers in the region for years to come,” she said.
Professor Nair suggested the theme ‘Writing the Future’.
“The conference will enable a forensics of literary studies in the region through the lens of creative writing,” she said. “The Festival as a whole will provide a forum for extensive cross-talks between academia and creative writers.”
Executive Director of the Writing Partnership, Jane Camens, said the Festival would be the key focus for the APWP in 2008. Ms. Camens started Hong Kong’s international literary festival which was the first festival in the region to feature writing from and about Asia. She project managed the first events for Britian’s New Writing Partnership while completing her MA at the famous writing program at the University of East Anglia.
“Emerging writers in England gain tremendous benefit and advantage from workshops with peers and established writers, but there are few equivalent opportunities in Asia,” she said. “ ‘Writing the Future’ is an attempt to introduce to Asia a mini equivalent to the UK’s Arvon Foundation writing programs or annual Bread Loaf Writers Conferences in the USA, and other opportunities open to new writers elsewhere.”
Both Professor Nair and Ms Camens stressed the importance of the conference of scholars that will be a central focus at the festival, in addition to the workshops and public events. Academic institutional support is the backbone of the initiative. The conference will examine contemporary writing from the region, the value of writing programs, the state of national literary studies, and notions of writing in relation to regional identity, globalization, cosmopolitanism, post-colonialism, and other associated issues.
The IIT will host the academic conference ‘Writing the Future’ together with other institutions and universities in Delhi. IIT will also actively seek to involve other universities from the Indian subcontinent and elsewhere.
The Indian Literary journal Biblio will publish a special issue in conjunction with the conference, and may also publish a future issue including selected papers from the conference and new writing from the workshops. In addition, IIT, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Delhi University will approach other peer-reviewed international journals to publish academic papers from the conference.
A draft of the Festival Program follows:
Shimla Fiction Writing Workshops (6-17 October)
Fiction writing workshops will be held over two weeks at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (formerly the Vice Regal Lodge in the picturesque former summer retreat of the British Raj in Shimla.). The intake of participants will be selective and limited to a total of 25 emerging writers, 15 of whom may come from outside India.
New Delhi Poetry Workshop (21-25 October)
Poetry workshops will be held at the Sanskriti Foundation which runs other residency programmes in collaboration with UNESCO, Asia-Link, Association Française d’Action Artistique and the Fulbright Fellowships, helping to foster understanding between different cultures through the sharing of ideas and life experiences. Participation will be open to 15 Indian poets and 10 from abroad, as well as local Indian and five international teachers.
New Delhi/Mysore/Guwahati Translation Workshops (13-16 October)
Workshops will be run by the Sahitya Akademi (the Indian National Academy of Letters) in collaboration with the Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi and IIT, Delhi. The workshops will focus on translating writing from Indian languages into English.
The Festival seeks collaboration with international centres of literary translation for this initiative. Approximately 30 participants are expected.
New Delhi Script Writing Workshops (To be confirmed)
New Delhi ‘Writing the Future’: Conference on Contemporary Writing from Asia and the Pacific (21-23 October).
The conference will address some of the following questions. Can writing programs, taught by practitioners, invigorate national Literary Studies courses? What benefits might there be between creating a dialogue between the humanities, creative arts and other disciplines? The conference will call for papers that examine contemporary writing from the region, the value of writing programs, the contrasts and synergies between traditional oral forms of literature and new forms of writing influenced by multi-media, the state of national literary studies, as well as studies that seek to explore writing and identity, nationalist constructs, globalization and diaspora, cosmopolitanism, post-colonialism and other issues raised by contemporary writing from the region.
‘Writing the Future’ Literary Festival Public Events (21-25 Oct)
Public events will be held in New Delhi in the evenings. These will include readings by emerging and established writers; panel discussions with publishers, literary agents, and writers; book launches; and cultural performance by Indian poets, theatre-people and singers.
School and College events (21-25 Oct)
Local and international established writers who conduct workshops and participate in the public events will visit schools and colleges in New Delhi to read from their work and talk about their writing process. Engaging with youth is a very important and intrinsic part of the conceptualisation of this festival.
Asia-Pacific Writing Partnership Board Meeting (23 October)
The international Board of scholars and writers will meet directly after the conference.
For more information, contact:
Prof. Rukmini Bhaya Nair, at the IIT, New Delhi (India) at Tel: +91 11 26591371
or email rbnair@hss.iitd.ernet.in
Or
Jane Camens at the APWP (Australia) at Tel: +61 2 66804906
or email jane.camens@apwriters.com
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