INDONESIA’s capital Jakarta will again host the fourth annual Asean Literary Festival (ALF) in August 2017 as the regional Southeast Asian bloc celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. Now in its fourth year, the ALF was established by prominent Indonesian novelist Okky Madasari and former editor of … [Read more...]

The fifth edition of the Makassar International Writers Festival 2015, a four day affair of panels, workshops and performances, was held in the port city of Makassar, in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The theme for this year‘s festival was ‘Knowledge and the Universe.’ While most of the workshops … [Read more...]

Faisal Oddang, 23, remembers how he loathed writing assignments at school. But at some stage in his early youth, he decided he liked writing. Since then, he has worked his way up to become an accomplished writer. Erni Aladjai, 32, by contrast, has been writing and sending entries to writing … [Read more...]

“In one corner, a Balinese is weighing chili and rice on his scale A Bugis man is selling new and second-hand clothes In poorly lit alleys, laughter and seductive voices drown out one another Business looks good, life never asks for less, it is never wild enough.” — Translated from “Di Pasar … [Read more...]

To this day, American literature remains a huge part of the Philippine education system. The Silliman University National Writers Workshop—the most prestigious and oldest of its kind in Asia—was patterned after the Iowa Writers Workshop by Edith and Edilberto Tiempo. With this looming influence, … [Read more...]