‘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, and all those interested in new writing from the region.
New Delhi and Shimla, India: October 2008
The Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and the Asia-Pacific Writing Partnership are pleased to collaborate in organising Indian and international support to hold the first ever Asia-Pacific Festival of Writing in New Delhi.
This unique Festival, which combines a regional focus but a truly international reach, seeks to raise the profile of the enormously rich literature and thought of the Asia Pacific region.
The Festival has been planned in some detail and has already generated considerable interest through this website. The full, packed schedule is available here:
Several writers and academics of international standing have agreed to be part of the enterprise and have brought their expertise and – above all – enthusiasm to the initiative.
Registered participants include writers and scholars from Australia, Bangladesh, Fiji, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, UK and USA, amongst others. This spontaneous show of interest, we feel, is in itself a true measure not only of the vitality and reach of the Festival but of the felt need for such self-expression and interaction across the region.
AIMS
Our goal is to:
bring the excitement of reading new literature to a wide audience across the region;
enable young writers and university students to interact with well-known writers; and
encourage cultural cross-talk & literary debate across a variety of regional languages
To this end, we have organized the following forums for literary interaction:
ACTIVITIES:
Creative writing workshops for emerging writers from the region, taught by writers of international repute - a festival feature that is familiar in the West but has never before been part of South Asian literary events. Emerging writers in the West have over the past decades gained tremendous benefit and advantage from workshops with peers and established writers, but there are few equivalent opportunities in Asia. This festival hopes to change this situation.
Translation workshops, undertaken in collaboration with the Indian Academy of Letters and the Jamia Millia University. These workshops will be held in four languages (Hindi/Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Tamil) at venues in Southern India (Mysore) and Eastern India (Kolkata) as well as in Delhi. Translators of national standing are involved in this initiative.
A major academic conference on new writing from Asia and the Pacific
The conference will 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, and notions of writing in relation to regional, hybrid and/or diasposric identities globalization, cosmopolitanism, post-colonialism, and other associated issues.
Public events featuring established writers and performers of international repute.
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.
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.
ADVANTAGES
It is our belief that this Festival is the timely start of an important new form of cultural cooperation which will provide valuable opportunities for new writers in the region for years to come. It will eventually provide a forum that challenges outmoded boundaries between academic and creative texts, between traditional pasts and technological futures, between the new and old media and between genres, cultures and institutions.
One of the more unusual features of this festival is that the IIT will host the ‘Writing the Future’ conference together with a host of other Indian institutions who have generously extended their support. These include:
The Indian Council for Cultural Relations
The Sanskriti Foundation
The Indian Institute for Advanced Studies
The Sahitya Akademi or National Academy of Letters
Delhi University
Jawaharlal Nehru University
Jamia Millia Islamia University
To repeat, this festival, an initiative of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, international scholarly collaboration and the Asia-Pacific Writing Partnership, is the first ever festival of its kind being held in the region. It offers a unique blend of academic interaction, creative writing workshops and public events where writers interact with participants, publishers and other players in the global literary arena.
The aim of the festival is, finally, to together ‘write the future’.
*
BACKGROUND
*
WELCOME TO THE ASIA-PACIFIC WRITING PARTNERSHIP. Although this organization is in its earliest stages of formation, we're pleased to invite expressions of interest from individuals and groups. We are also thrilled to announce that a number of the world's top literary people have already joined it, and a very successful inaugural meeting was held in Bali in late September 2007.
The APWP, brainchild of Australia-based writer and literary educator Jane Camens, brings together authors, academics and literary organizations from Asia-Pacific and around the world, to form an umbrella organization which provides a forum and a network to foster the growth of the literary arts in the Asia-Pacific region.
Included are senior individuals from some of the world's top training schools for writers, where some of the world's most acclaimed authors have honed their skills.
Many representatives from universities and literary festivals have also become active participants, as have individual authors.
*
ALTHOUGH ATTENTION is likely to focus on major institutions joining the APWP, it's clear that things rarely happen unless individuals make them happen, whether these individuals are part of organizations or operate on their own. So there will be a chance for individual authors to become members, as well as groups, large and small.
*
ELSEWHERE ON THIS SITE you'll find a brief record of our initial meeting, which took place in a rice paddy field in Bali, and other information, such as a list of founder members, and a draft charter for the organization. But please note the use of the word "partnership" in this group's title. Literature cannot exist in a vacuum. Writing does not exist for its own sake; it needs readers. We will all need to work together to reach the widest possible readership with new writing emerging from Asia and the Pacific.