Reading the Room
Store closures and shrinking attention spans be damned. The Hong Kong International Literary Festival is back for its landmark 25th edition.
Film nerds and so-called vinyl afficionadoes frequently – and loudly – lament the death of physical media, and indeed when major media conglomerates can remove films and television series you “purchased” at a whim (leaving it there isn’t making the stock price go up! Clutch your pearls) it’s hard not to see their point. It makes you wonder if maybe you shouldn’t have ordered that 22-disc Blu-ray set of [fill in the blank] when you had the chance. The same can be said of music; seriously, do you know the titles of the tracks on an “album” anymore? Of course that doesn’t mean there are no more movies, TV or music, and fortunately, books are a little less under threat of being digitally disappearanced. We can put our books on a reader and keep them away from the itchy fingers of (probably) Amazon after we buy them. Which is what the 25th Hong Kong International Literary Festival (HKILF) is here for, to help us all find that next great enlightening, moving, infuriating, hilarious, terrifying read for a weekend on the sofa, a beach holiday or simply a 45-minute commute.
Yes, we’ve all heard how no one reads anymore, how everything has to be Instagram post-length, and how revolutionary it was that Twitter (remember that?) bumped its character count to 280. But as the world spirals into what feels like chaos, real writing by real thinking people is more critical than ever – be it for escapism, education or empathy. HKILF kicks off on March 1, and in its own words, this year pivots on Inspiring Generations, and on literature’s ability to shape conversations about the world, “across time, place, and experience.” The fiction, non-fiction, kidlit and poetry writers gathered this year span the globe, age and gender and will be in town (or leaving their flats) for readings, performance, talks, journal launches, workshops and city tours.
There’s something for everyone from among the 60+ events featuring 65+ writers on tap this year but a few caught our eye. From the list of talks and panels, Building Belonging Across Communities (March 1, 1pm) welcomes Chicago rower, writer and social changemaker Arshay Cooper (A Most Beautiful Thing) to discuss how even though Chicago and Hong Kong couldn’t be more different, invisibility need not be a state of being, and that there is indeed strength in the collective. At the other end of the spectrum, Daughter of the Moon Goddess author Sue Lynn Tan (March 1, 11:30am) discusses making genre accessible in Mythology, Fairy Tales & Fantasy. Amitav Ghosh is among the world’s most pre-eminent climate change writers, as well as one of our greatest analysts of empire, environment and history. He talks about his latest book at Amitav Ghosh: Ghost-Eye (March 5, 7pm, above right). Liam Pieper, Liann Zhang and Siang Lu tackle the hot button topic of going viral for all the wrong reasons – which seems to happen to someone famous every day – at Fame, Fiction and the Age of Online Judgment (March 7, 3pm). And Writing the Body: Examining Women’s Interior Stories (March 8, 3pm) welcomes Hong Kong writer and art critic Ysabelle Cheung, cartoonist Kaitlin Chan and The Impossible City: A Hong Kong Memoir author Karen Cheung in a conversation exploring their processes and representation of the female body. In a world where a bad sex in fiction award was a thing, and invariably punished women, examining the intersection of literature and identity is a going concern.
On the workshop front, anyone from the Americas may be familiar with drum circles among some First Nations. Hope across the Atlantic and get the persepctive from Africa through African Drum Storytelling (March 1, 11am), which illuminates how drums, amazingly and rhythmically, drive narratives. Artists Guy Delisle and Beatrice Alemagna run Drawing the Literary World (March 1, 1pm), which focuses on the role of illustration in storytelling – and includes a live demo. Finally, Adan Jimenez (the forthcoming Xocolatl) and Felicia Low-Jimenez’s (Tiger Girls) Comic Writing Workshop (March 7, 11:30am, above left) has everything budding comic artists will need to know in order to conquer Marvel.
But what’s a lit fest without some lit launches? Hong Kong literary titan Xu Xi (Habit of a Foreign Sky) hosts the launch of the Hong Kong Literary Review (March 5, 5pm), with Volume 1: Voices, a new journal of “bold, original writing from Hong Kong and beyond.” Women in Publishing Hong Kong launches its Imprint 24 with drinks at Imprint 24: Women’s Voices (March 4, 7pm), and the Hong Kong Writers Circle hosts Coming of Age: How We Grow Together as Writers (March 7, 8pm) to launch its annual anthology of local writing.
If you’d rather grab a bite or a drink or both to talk lit, there are heaps of breakfasts, lunches and cocktails to fit the bill. Celebrate International Women’s Day at one of Hong Kong’s coolest watering holes – Call me Al – with a cocktail conversation at IWD: Women, Words, & Wine (March 3, 6:30pm). Journalist Marga Ortigas (above right) and children’s writer Stephanie Sy (A Roof!) lead a happy hour mixer that welcomes the city’s literary community. No stage, no programme. Just casual conversation about writing. Ortigas gets back at it the nexty day with her lunch event named for her essay collection, WTF: Woman Turning Fifty (March 4, 12 noon), and then Pulitzer Prize winner Hernán Díaz (above left, Trust) and Pieper discuss wealth, power, legacy and real life narratives over breakfast in Manufactured Truths: Who Controls the Story? (March 5, 10am). The next night is HKILF’s unofficial birthday bash, the marquee Nightcaps & Narratives at the China Club (March 6, 8:30pm) where Díaz and Xu join Emma Pei Yin (When Sleeping Women Wake), Paul French (Midnight in Peking) and poet Anthony Tao (We Met in Beijing) for “an intimate evening of reflection, memory, and storytelling about place; an event celebrating the festival’s 25 years of inspiring generations of readers, writers, and storytellers.” Fingers crossed we get another 25.
Hong Kong International Literary Festival
Where: Fringe Club, Eaton Hotel, Asia Society, Africa Center, Wyndham Social, others
Hours: March 1 to 8, various hours 9:30am to 11pm
Closed: N/A
Details: Admission Free to $698; 25th anniversary special event $888