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Showing posts from November, 2009

An Affair to Remember

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for the original article, click here to go to garuda magazine MY LIFE IN BALI The completion of another festival. A year's hard work over in four days of uber excitement. Highlights? There were so many but one of the highlights was, for me, Wole Soyinka. Hailing from Nigeria, Wole Soyinka is the first African to receive a Nobel Prize. He is best-known as a playwright and poet and is considered one of contemporary Africa's greatest writers. Not since Rabindranath Tagore has a Nobel Laureate visited Indonesia and I am personally thrilled that he finally accepted our invitation, via the persistence of one festival director, as he stated in the press conference. Getting Wole Soyinka into the country was not exactly straightforward but thanks to Imran Cotan (thank you Bapak!) and the team at the Department of Foreign Affairs, he landed in Denpasar without any complications or fuss; Wole's wispy and distinctive white hair showing no sign of bother. The burden of a N

Ubud Writers & Readers Festival: A Star-Studded Event

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For the original article, click here: garuda magazine October means authors for me these days. Until mid-October I cannot think of anything but the Ubud Writer & Readers Festival that orbits around this time and after it finishes I am already thinking about the following year's event. So I guess if you do your mathematics, it adds up to pretty well every month of the year. No wonder I am tired! Sigh! But the event has become a drug for me, an addictive substance of the literary kind that flows through my veins, day and night. I can't give it up. Each festival brings new surprises and this year is no exception. Alongside leading names such as Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Vikas Swarup of Q&A meets Slumdog Millionaire fame, Seno Gumira Ajidarma, Fatima Bhutto niece of the late Benazir Bhutto, Hari Kunzru, Lloyd Jones and Sonya Hartnett are a whole host of young, emerging artists who are no less inspiring or talented. Here are some of the best…… This year we a

La Gazette De Bali

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L’ubud writers festival frappe encore Qui sont donc ces « Dangerous Women » ? Femmes écrivains passionnées, esprits aiguisés au parler vrai, la langue bien pendue et culottée, ainsi de la Népalaise Sushma Joshi, seule femme journaliste pendant le conflit civil où plus d’une fois elle avoue avoir eu chaud aux fesses. Lee Su Kim, auteure malaisienne de « Nyonya au Texas » dénonce de son côté, non sans humour, l’ignorance des Américains qui lui demandent si chez elle on vit « encore dans les arbres » et si elle « descend d’une tribu », à quoi elle répondra en riant sous cape que oui elle descend « de la tribu des Nonyot » (parties intimes). Shamini Flint originaire quant à elle de Singapour, la peau sombre et d’un humour hilarant, ancienne avocate d’affaires, quitte l’entreprise quand elle constate que « les plus grands malfaiteurs sont les avocats eux-mêmes. » Elle prend la tangente et utilise son savoir du milieu judiciaire pour écrire... des polars. Elle y dénonce les incohérences de l

VOW: 49 Women we love

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I've been VOW ed! Check out the rest of the 48 women...

ECS Living: A Room of One's Own

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