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MACAU LITERARY FESTIVAL SHORT STORY COMPETITION

 Regulation

Macau was for centuries fertile ground for literary creation. Through here many have passed – and written about this place – different men and women. The short story competition that is now present intends to help revitalize the act of writing about Macau – in Chinese, Portuguese and English.

The Script Road short story competition will accept works in three languages and the final jury will consist of the writers Su Tong (Chinese), José Luís Peixoto (Portuguese) and Xu Xi (English). They will be the ones to decide who the winners are.

1. Addressees:
a) The competition is addressed to all people without any constraints of age, nationality or residence.
b) The immediate families of members of the organization and members of the jury cannot compete, nor can any persons connected with newspaper Ponto Final, the Sociedade de Artes e Letras and the organization of The Script Road festival.

2. Presentation of the stories
a) All stories must have Macau as a backdrop, as the theme. They should, in some way, be about Macau.
b) Each entrant may submit up to two stories maximum. Entries must be original and may be in Chinese, Portuguese or English.
c) The text should have a maximum of five thousand words in Portuguese and English, and ten thousand words in Chinese.

3. Deadline and submission
a) The competition stories should be delivered at the premises of the newspaper Ponto Final (Avenida do Infante D. Henrique, No. 43-53A, Macau Square Building, 13K,) up to 20h of the day May 31, 2012.
b) The works sent by mail must bear the stamp with a dispatch date before May 31, 2012.
c) Projects must be delivered in a sealed envelope containing the inscription on the outside “The Script Road story competition.”
d) Participants should place four copies of each story on A4 paper inside the envelope. The text should be formatted in 12-point, 1.5line spacing and Arial font, in the case of short stories in English and Portuguese, and SimSun in the case of the stories in Chinese. Entrants must also include in the envelope a photocopy of any identification document.

4. Competition Jury
a) The jury will initially consist of a group of people invited by the organization of the Script Road and by members of the festival organizers. There will be a jury for the competition in each of the languages. This committee will make a first pre-selection of five texts, which are then to be put forward for consideration by the final jury. Su Tong (Chinese), José Luís Peixoto (Portuguese) and Xu Xi (English) are the three writers who will select the winners.
b) The jury reserves the right not to award any winner if the work submitted does not have the desired quality or is not in accordance with the scope and theme of the contest.

5. Award
a) The winning stories (one in each language) will be translated into other languages and published in a book to be presented at the next edition of The Script Road. The book, with editions in Chinese, Portuguese and English, will bring together the tales of Macau written by authors invited to the first edition of the festival. The winners will, in this way, see their published works alongside names of the jury writers themselves and other names such as Jade Y. Chen and José Rodrigues dos Santos.

6. Final Considerations
a) Participation in the competition implies full acceptance of this regulation.
b) All information is available at www.rotadasletras.org
c) Entries in the contest will not be returned to their authors.
d) The Script Road reserves the right to publish, in the original and translated versions, the distinguished work in the competition. The copyright for the first publication (in periodical publications and book) belongs to the editor and the subsequent to the respective authors.

‘We would also be thrilled if AP Writers were well represented at the conference . . . I personally hope to see interesting features on writing, literature and translation.’   Silvia Martinez, Project Coordinator,  XIX Biennial Conference, Asian Studies Association of Australia, University of Western Sydney. 

 Deadline for submissions of abstracts (individual paper or panel proposals): Tuesday 28 February, 2012

Confirmed Keynote Speakers

Professor Lily Kong – Vice-President (University and Global Relations), and Acting Exec Vice-President (Academic Affairs), Yale-NUS College, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Professor Ji-Hyun Lim – Professor of History, Director of the Research Institute of Comparative History and Culture, Hanyang University, Seoul

Professor Prasenjit Duara – Raffles Professor of Humanities, Director, Asia Research Institute, and Director of Research, Humanities & Social Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Call for Individual or Panel Presentations

In the past few decades massive economic, political, social and cultural transformations have taken place in the region known as Asia. In the process, it has acquired an increasingly prominent place in the world. Whether or not this ‘rise of Asia’ merits talk about a coming ‘Asian century’, it is clear that the historical context for the study of Asia has irrevocably changed.

Four major considerations are at play here. First, increasing globalisation has led to growing interpenetration and interdependence between different parts of the world. This problematises prevailing boundaries, not least those between ‘Asia’ and ‘the West’. Cross-border interactions and transnational connections across and beyond the region are now vital determinants of local and national conditions in all parts of Asia. As a consequence, now more than ever, such local and national situations cannot be meaningfully studied without consideration of the constitutive role of the broader regional and global context. At the same time, studies of global significance must increasingly include studies of what is occurring in Asia.

Second, economic development throughout the region has given rise to the emergence of complex and vibrant new societies for which descriptors as ‘traditional’ or ‘postcolonial’ are inadequate, and whose understanding can no longer be pursued through using Western modernity as a benchmark. These societies are becoming modern in their own ways, requiring new concepts and tools for analysis.

Third, these recent transformations have led to a burgeoning interest in studying Asia among scholars who do not call themselves ‘Asianists’, for example in cultural and media studies, gender and sexuality studies, and human and urban geography. Thus, while specialist area studies and the disciplinary cores of political science, history, languages and so forth remain central, intellectual engagement with Asia has widened considerably.

Fourth, and crucially, as modern Asian societies mature there are new generations of Asian scholars who conduct research and scholarship on and within their own societies, establishing their own, intraregional scholarly networks. For these scholars, Asia is not ‘other’, as is still often the case for Western scholars.

In short, as Asia becomes an increasingly prominent, complex and self-confident region in the world, the meanings and potentials of ‘knowing Asia’ require fundamental rethinking at multiple levels. The conference will encourage reflection on the implications of these shifts on the field of Asian studies, both in Australia and internationally. In this light, we are seeking panel proposals which are organised around themes. At the same time, the conference will be open to general papers as well as area-specific panels.

Possible themes (not exclusive, and in no particular order) include:

•  ‘Chindia’ in the 21st century: myth or reality?
• New Asian hegemonies?
• Transnational Asia: the role of English
• Transport, mobility and tourism
• Australia – Asia interactions
• Translating texts, translating culture
• Nations and their boundaries in a global age
• Gender, sexuality and queer studies
• The politics of heritage, nature and the environment
• Sport and society in Asia
• Urban cultures and social transformation
• Asian regionalism
• Race, ethnicity and multiculturalisms
• Technology and society
• Media and popular culture
• Asian modernities
• Cultural diplomacy and cultural policy
• Religion and secularism
• Asian Studies in Australian universities.

Paper and Panel Proposals

Paper and panel proposals addressing the conference themes are invited. Proposals spanning one or more themes are especially welcome.

Individual paper proposals (200-300 words)

Panel proposals (200 words for the panel concept and 200-300 words on each panel paper)

Please submit your abstract online (opens in new window). Should you have any problems submitting your abstract online, forward to s.martinez@uws.edu.au

Notification of acceptance will be 15 March 2012.

The 19th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) will be held on the Parramatta Campus of the University of Western Sydney, Wednesday 11 to Friday 13 July, 2012, hosted by the University’s Institute for Culture and Society, the School of Humanities and Communication Arts, and the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Muslim Societies.

The Script Road

For more information, click HERE.

Conversations Across Borders

Paired writers decide between themselves whether to respond to the prompt with a single piece or with individual pieces that speak in conversation with one another. There are no minimum or maximum length guidelines.

Completed work is hosted on the Conversations Across Borders website.  Each participant is asked to write a narrative describing the social and creative process he or she went through.

Conversations Across Borders is doing four separate writing prompts this year. After each prompt, they will  ask participants to partner with a new writer.

The prompts:  

Winter (Jan 1-March 31): Water

Spring (April 1-June 30): Air

Summer (July 1-Sept 30): Fire

Fall (Oct. 1-Dec. 31): Earth

To apply to take part in this initiative, click HERE.

The academic journal Asiatic (http://asiatic.iium.edu.my/), based at the International Islamic University Malaysia, is calling for papers for three special issues.

Fakrul Alam, Professor of English at the University of Dhaka will guest edit an issue in June on ‘Expatriation, Immigration and Return in Recent South Asian Fiction’. The journal also invites author interviews, review articles and book reviews relevant to the issue. The deadline for submissions for the June issue is April 30, 2012.  Send articles to Professor Alam at falam57@gmail.com.

The September special issue will be themed around ‘The Poetry and Poetics of Popular Culture in the Asia-Pacific Region’. For this issue, Asiatic invites papers on poetry and poetics and their relations and connections to popular culture in all its forms in the context of Asia-Pacific/Australasian region, keeping in mind that poetry’s presence and influence can be found in all forms of pop culture and everyday life. Self-reflective papers based on poets’ own poetry are welcome. Papers must be submitted for peer-review by April 30, 2012. For more information about the issue, see the journal’s submission guidelines or contact Mohammad A Quayum (mquayum@gamil.com).

 (http://asiatic.iium.edu.my/submission.htm)

The special December issue is themed ‘Nature and Culture: The Asian Landscape’ and will focus on how we perceive and interact with the land around us varies from place to place and people to people. The deadline for submission is 1 August 2012 and you can email queries, abstracts and articles to the guest editors of the issue: Dr. Sim Wai Chew, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (wcsim@usa.net) or Dr. Paoi Hwang, Durham, UK (paoi.hwang@gmail.com).

Manu Joseph & Tarun Tejpal at the 2011 festival

DSC Jaipur Literature Festival is the largest literary festival in Asia-Pacific, and India’s most prestigious celebration of national and international literature. It includes readings, talks, debates, performances, children’s workshops and interactive activities held in the beautiful heritage property, Diggi Palace in the Rajasthani capital of Jaipur.

Entering its fifth year, JLF draws writers and readers from across India and the world. ‘The brightest, most brilliant, funny, moving  and remarkable authors come to Jaipur every January’.

The Festival is free and open to all. For information click HERE to go straight to the festival website.

The  Programme for the HSBC Galle Literary Festival 2012 can be found HERE.

The festival promises lively sessions with diverse writers from around the world, including  Aminatta Forna, Romesh Gunesekera, Nayantara Sahgal, Shashi Tharoor, Joanne Trollope, Richard Dawkins, Tom Stoppard, D.B.C Pierre, Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish and John Boyne.

The banking group HSBC is now the festival’s name sponsor.  Tickets will be on sale in early January 2012.