Macau is no stranger to hosting a variety of colourful and entertaining cultural and arts festivals, and since 2012, the calendar for the first half of the year has been highlighted by The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival, organized by our sister publication, Ponto Final, and supported by the Macau SAR Government, the Macao Foundation and a number of private partners.
In this it’s seventh edition, the Festival will once again present a host of literary talent from around the world, and particularly from China and Lusophone countries. This year’s guest list includes author Suki Kim who lived undercover in North Korea for six months in 2011 to do research for her best-selling novel Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea’s Elite. North Korean defector and human-rights activist Hyeonseo Lee, former CIA agent and fiction author James Church, as well as Michael Breen, who has lived on the Korean Peninsula for more than three decades, complete a group of Korea-related voices taking part in the Festival.
Authors Peter Hessler and Leslie T. Chang from the U.S., Jung Chang from the U.K., and Han Dong and A Yi from China will bring a fascinating China focus to the Festival. And Portuguese-speaking authors Julián Fuks (Brazil) and Ana Margarida de Carvalho (Portugal) will head up a representation of renowned Lusophone authors.
In this issue’s Closer Look, we speak in-depth with just three of this year’s guest writers, Suki Kim, Leslie T. Chang and Peter Hessler, and preview some of the other great highlights set to take place at this year’s event, to be held from March 10 to 25, at the Old Court Building.
Staying in the art world, we visit Macau artist Crystal Chan in New York city where she recently completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the School of Visual Arts, and is now presenting her first solo show in New York, I am my own landscape.
Our Portfolio section features the work of another local artist Kay Chang, with highlights from her current exhibition Innocencepedia, in which she explores her own imagination on the often taboo topic of sex and sensual pleasure.
Moving to lifestyle, this month’s Home Affairs takes us to the beautiful and spacious double apartment of Regina Tam. And we get to know General Manager of Grand Lapa Hotel and Chairman of France Macau Business Association, Rutger Verschuren in our monthly Q&A feature.
Finally, we close this issue with an interview with Holocaust survivor Werner Reich, who at the age of 90, recently visited Macau to speak to its youth about the importance of standing up to evil in the world.
Happy reading!
