Media Clippings

Ten Indonesian Writers selected for Emerging Writers Program

Apr 30, 2024 / UWRF News
Yayasan Mudra Swari Saraswati is thrilled to announce the talented Indonesian writers selected for the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival 2024 Emerging Writers Program. From 449 submissions, ten Indonesian writers were chosen by the curating team of literary figures Dee Lestari, Faisal Oddang, and Putu Juli Sastrawan for their exceptional and original stories. These writers will now participate in a mentorship program, including the publication of their work in the annual anthology and being featured at the 2024 Festival this October.

Right Where They Have Always Been

Apr 04, 2024 / ArtReview by Max Crosbie-Jones
Why aren’t the literary scenes of Southeast Asia getting more regional and global traction?

Try as international book publishers might, Southeast Asia’s literary scenes cannot easily be distilled to a marketable essence – or bound together. Take the S.E.A. Write Award, for example, a prestigious literary accolade that was, until recently, presented annually at Bangkok’s storied Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Since 1979, novelists from across the ASEAN region have gathered for a ceremony that is arguably as infuriating as it is inspiring: no scheme for translating each country’s winning novel into any other language exists. As a result, an award that seeks to expand readership and foster a sense of literary unity in diversity is, in fact, a recurring reminder of how Southeast Asia’s manifest pluralism, its myriad languages and motley cultural histories, hinders such intraregional exchanges. Southeast Asia in this context is an unedifying construct: a winning Thai or Indonesian novel will still only be read in Thai or Indonesian, and so the literary worlds of participating nations remain siloed from one another.

How’s Indonesian poetry today?

Feb 15, 2024 / TFR by Rahma Yulita
What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word “poetry”? For some, it might be famous poets like Chairil Anwar, Sapardi Djoko Damono, or even Rupi Kaur. Others might think of works such as "Aku" by Chairil Anwar which still occasionally returns to the spotlight in this modern life.

Rarely will people think about what poetry is, because nowadays, poetry seems to be placed in a box that can only be enjoyed almost exclusively.

Poetry is a part of literary work which is generally created to express the writer's feelings, be it anxiety, sadness, or happiness. That is why poetry comes in beautiful, imaginative words.

Indonesian book giant turns to tech to fight piracy

Jan 06, 2024 / Nikkei Asia by Randy Mulyanto
Indonesian conglomerate Kompas Gramedia's book publishing unit is optimistic that blockchain technology can help it fight persistent online content piracy, as it also works to overcome challenges including lifting reading levels and reducing regional pricing discrepancies in the sprawling island nation.

The company's storied history began in 1963, and six decades later it has eight business pillars: retail and publishing; media; education; event and venue; printing and packaging; property; hospitality; and digital. It has a network of over 100 Gramedia stores selling books and other goods including stationary across Southeast Asia's largest economy.

Adi Ekatama, publishing director of the company's Group of Retail & Publishing (GoRP) division, is responsible for six book publishers including Gramedia Pustaka Utama (GPU) -- the largest and oldest and which will celebrate its 50th anniversary in March. It has produced over 25,000 books since its founding in 1974.

GoRP published 1,865 books last year -- compared to 1,912 titles throughout 2022.

A part of history

Dec 10, 2023 / Inside Indonesia by Keith Foulcher
When Inside Indonesia was launched in November 1983, the events of 1965/66 were still fresh in the Indonesian nation’s collective memory. The official interpretation of those events – that the Army had foiled an attempted coup by the Indonesian communist party (PKI) and its supporters, incarcerating tens of thousands of PKI members and sympathisers in the name of national security – was well-entrenched in the workings of state institutions and popular attitudes. Any challenge to this orthodoxy, including attempts to uncover the suppressed history of the widespread massacres that accompanied the Army’s rise to power, risked reprisals from an increasingly authoritarian state. Nevertheless, a lively climate of dissent continued to feature in Indonesian intellectual debate and expression in literature and the arts. It was given added impetus by the quietly assertive and courageous contributions of a cohort of ‘ex-tapols’, former political prisoners who had been ‘returned to society’ – if not unconditionally ‘released’ – in the period from 1976 to 1979, after sustained international pressure on the New Order government.

UNESCO Designates The Birthdays Of 2 National Heroes As International Days

Dec 02, 2023 / Observer
UNESCO closed its 42nd General Assembly in Paris, Wed (22/11) with the announcement that the birthdays of two Indonesian heroic figures, Keumalahayati and AA Navis, to be celebrated internationally.

The decision took into account UNESCO’s purpose and philosophy in the fields of education, culture, natural sciences, social sciences and humanity, as well as gender representation. The proposal also met the criteria of receiving support from at least two countries and has a major impact on the country or the world.

In the beginning was the word – and the word was UWRF

Nov 01, 2023 / Pearls and Irritations by Duncan Graham
Was this year’s Ubud Writers and Readers Festival worthwhile? My word – the people of the book had a literary communion.

Almost two hundred speakers (gleaned from a list four times longer) handled challenging ideas mainly with aplomb. Not all was fiction – human rights were prominent throughout.

A lively analysis of the Gaza crisis by two articulate writers who knew their stuff – Australian investigative journalist Antony Loewenstein and American ‘private diplomat’ Michael Vatikiotis – gave the audience a nuanced understanding of the tortured region’s complex history.

Hearts ‘reignite’ for 20th Ubud program

Oct 31, 2023 / Books+Publishing
Ubud Writers & Readers Festival (UWRF) recorded over 15,000 festival attendees for its 20th-anniversary festival program, held from 18–22 October 2023 in Ubud, Indonesia.

Festival director Janet DeNeefe said, ‘We are extremely grateful that, twenty years after the inception of the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, we were able to reignite the love for arts and literature in the hearts of every festival-goer during the four-day event’.

The program featured panel discussions, special events, masterclasses, book launches, film screenings, arts exhibitions, and fringe events in Denpasar and Singaraja. ‘The festival once again served as a vibrant platform for cross-cultural, creative, and intellectual exchange, bringing people together through the power of storytelling,’ DeNeefe said.

Ubud Writers & Readers Festival

Oct 28, 2023 / Saturday Paper by Alison Croggon
South-East Asia’s most significant literary event, the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, is a chance to not only nurture local writers but also to reflect on global issues.

It’s a day after landing in Bali. I’m slightly jet lagged, still reeling from the sensual shock of South-East Asia – the smell of petrol, incense and clove cigarettes, the exuberant foliage, the humid heat. As part of a packed audience under a bamboo canopy at Taman Baca, the central site for the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, I’m listening to Bangladeshi–American writer and perfumer Tanaïs.

“Perfume,” Tanaïs says, reading from their book In Sensorium: Notes for my people, “is a way to wrest back our bodies from the hard damage of colonisation.” It’s a startling comment, but during a riveting conversation with their interlocutor, writer, poet and artist Eva Fernandes, they unpack their case. How colonialism is an ideology that privileges sight over all other senses, how the intimate senses of the body – touch, smell, taste – are rendered lesser, feminine, base, other. How they have used scent to access memory, both personal and ancestral, and how they create perfumes as a way both to remember trauma and to heal it. “After everything,” they tell us all, “the memory of scent remains.”

Indonesia, Malaysia boycott Frankfurt Book Fair after Palestinian voices ‘shut down’

Oct 19, 2023 / Arab News by Natalia Laskowska Sheany Yasuko Lai
Writers from Indonesia and Malaysia have stood in support of their countries’ decision to withdraw from the largest international book fair in Frankfurt following the organizer’s public support for Israel.

Both countries were ready to participate in the fair that started on Wednesday when an awards ceremony to celebrate Palestinian writer Adania Shibli was called off last week. Shibli was going to be honored with the prestigious LiBeraturpreis for her novel “Minor Detail,” which tells the true story of the rape and murder of a Palestinian girl by Israeli soldiers in 1949.

The cancelation of the award ceremony coincided with the ongoing Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which started after the Gaza-based militant group Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.