Bali guests made of the write stuff
July 25th, 2008
The Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali has scored a coup this year by luring best-selling authors Vikram Seth and John Berendt to head its line-up of participants.
Indian-born Seth leapt to international fame in 1993 with the publication of his extraordinary novel, A Suitable Boy, a sweeping 1400-page saga set in post-independence India.
Berendt, former editor of New York magazine and long-time Esquire columnist, sold 2.7 million hardback copies of his first book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The book portrays an array of zany locals in the southern city of Savannah and their reaction to a scandalous midnight shooting and subsequent trial.
Other writers to take part in this year’s Ubud festival include Ceylon-born Nury Vittachi, Mexican author Alberto Ruy-Sanchez, Indonesian writer Andrea Hirata, Australian Alexis Wright, 2007 Man Booker Price short-listed writer Indra Sinha and three dynamic Chinese women authors — Geling Yan, Lijia Zhang and Fan Wu.
Collision of Cultures will be a theme of the 2008 program, with established and emerging writers confronting the issues of “us” and “them”. The Ubud festival, now in its fifth year, was started in 2004 by Australian author and Bali resident Janet de Neefe with the aim of boosting business and tourism after the 2002 Bali bombings.
With the help of a tiny staff and an army of dedicated volunteers, de Neefe has had remarkable success in attracting top Western and Asian writers to Ubud, such as Amitav Ghosh, Kiran Desai, Michael Ondaatje and Richard Flanagan.
Last year Harper’s Bazaar listed the Ubud event as one of the six best literary festivals in the world.
The six-day festival will run from October 14-19.
MARGOT LANG
Source: http://www.thewest.com.au/
Entry Filed under: Bali Tourism News
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