If, like us, you can’t start the weekend without knowing what the literary world’s been up to this past week, we’ve got your back. We have dispatches from Central America, the United States and Indonesia with a real tasting board of talks, events and new publications. Wherever you’re based, we’re … [Read more...]

“INDONESIAN arts and literature is the star of the writer’s festival, to showcase them to the world,” says Ubud Writers & Readers Festival (UWRF) founder and director Janet DeNeefe. For the 14th year running, Bali will play host to one of Southeast Asia’s most important literary events. UWRF … [Read more...]

“FOR 50 YEARS, Asean was no more than a slogan and a series of meetings of elites. If we want to be a real community, we have to work at the grassroots level,” said Indonesian novelist Okky Madasari on Monday. The Asean Literary Festival (ALF), which was held from Aug 3 to 6 – the same weekend as … [Read more...]

This month ASEAN celebrates its 49th anniversary. What does it mean for us? For almost half a century, ASEAN has been a big illusion fed to all of us. In school we were taught about ASEAN and told that we were “ASEAN people”, without ever understanding what that meant or using the term outside of … [Read more...]

Cyber-literature is a thing nowadays in which readers are able to have real-time interaction with authors, feeding them with praise or “blahs.” The digital platform may bring inspiring writers to stardom or stop them at first try at posting a short story, but its popularity in Indonesia has not yet … [Read more...]