A talented cast

Returning for its 6th year, The Script Road - Macau Literary Festival welcomes award-winning authors Yu Hua, Brian Castro, two Man Booker 2016 finalists, and many more.

by Catarina

Arts, Closer Look, Featured
February 14, 2017

Returning for its 6th year, The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival welcomes award-winning authors Yu Hua, Brian Castro, two Man Booker 2016 finalists, and many more.

In its sixth edition, this year’s The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival, Macau’s largest literary event, brings together various award-winning novelists, poets, filmmakers, musicians and visual artists from over 20 countries, from March 4 to 19.

International award-winning Chinese writer Yu Hua and Australian Brian Castro – considered one of his country’s most imaginative novelists – are just two of the renowned talents attending the Festival this year. Finalists for the 2016 Man Booker Prize Madeleine Thien – the daughter of Malaysian-Chinese migrants and one of Canada’s most highly regarded novelists – and Graeme Macrae Burnet – one of Scotland’s brightest literary stars and winner of the Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award in 2013 – will also be present.

Six years since the Festival’s inaugural season, the event has grown in size, content and range, continuing to focus on literature in Chinese and Portuguese, but also featuring prominent writers and creators from across the world.

“The Macau Literary Festival has become one of the principal cultural events in the region, bringing together people of many nationalities, all of whom love literature, and affording them the opportunity of a friendly interaction with world renowned authors,” says Macau Literary Festival Director Ricardo Pinto.

This season, the Macau Literary Festival aims to focus audience attention on some of the world’s most important humanitarian issues, exploring the meaning of multiculturalism and “mixed cultures”.

“The Festival will present authors and films addressing some of the world’s most critical human rights issues, including the refugee and migration crisis,” Festival Programme Director Hélder Beja explains.

The experience of being raised in a mixed-culture context will be explored by authors whose cultural heritage differs from the culture in which they were raised or currently reside.

For the first time, the Festival will also offer an opportunity to explore the graphic novel genre, with several authors of graphic novels from France, Portugal, Australia and China featured during the event.

With events taking place around the city, the Festival will once again be based at the Old Court Building, where a book fair will remain open throughout the event. A new anthology of short stories about Macau, published in three languages (Chinese, Portuguese and English), will be released during the Festival.

Continuing in it’s customary tradition, this year’s Festival will include art exhibitions, performing arts, film screenings and live concerts, all featured in our Closer Look section this month. Enjoy!

This year’s edition of the Macau Literary Festival celebrates the start of a new initiative: a Writers-in-Residence Programme organised in partnership with the University of Macau (UM) and its English Department. Singaporean writer Grace Chia has the honour of being the first author to participate in this two-week project, designed to promote the development of university students’ creative writing skills. The Macau Literary Festival aims to continue the Writers-in-Residence Programme as an ongoing series, in partnership with UM, bringing noted authors from various countries to the city and providing students with opportunities for extended learning.

This year, the Macau Literary Festival has also partnered with the Union of Portuguese-Speaking Capital Cities (UCCLA) to bring the Portuguese-Language Writers’ Summit to the city. This literary summit has been held for the past seven years in various countries, most recently in Cape Verde in 2016, with this year’s hosting honours now falling to Macau. Also in the course of this 6th edition of The Script Road, a partnership will be unveiled with the brand new Morabeza – Cape Verde Literary Festival, set to inaugurate its debut season at the end of 2017 in Cidade da Praia. The partnership provides for an author from Macau to participate each year in the literary event in Cape Verde, and vice-versa. Cape Verdean writer and current Minister of Culture and Creative Industries, Abraão Vicente begins the partnership as this year’s emissary to The Script Road.

The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival was founded in 2012 by local newspaper Ponto Final, currently celebrating its 25th anniversary. The Festival began as the first and largest gathering of literati from China and Portuguese-speaking countries ever organised in the world. In recent years, the Festival has grown in popularity, becoming an international event that welcomes renowned writers, publishers, translators, journalists, musicians, filmmakers and visual artists from various geographies and nationalities.