Asia-Pacific Writing Partnership

Metropoli d’Asia , an Italian publishing house specialising in contemporary Asian fiction, and Indonesia’s Khatulistiwa Literary Award (KLA) have announced a new joint literary Award, the Khatulistiwa Metropoli D’Asia Award.

A jury in Italy will select the winner from a shortlist of seven Indonesian novels selected by the Khatulistiwa Literary Award selection panel. The winner will be announced on 9 November 2009. The prize is 3.000€ and world rights acquisition (except in Indonesia) and translation into Italian.

All books considered for the prizes are culled from books published within the twelve months starting from June of the previous year to July of the awarding year. All books in the categories considered must be written in Indonesian and published originally in Indonesia.

An anonymous panel of judges will be selected by a coordinator and the main criterion for the nomination is literary innovation.

The KLA is an annual literary award established in 2001 by Indonesian writer Richard Oh and Takeshi Ichiki from Plaza Senayan.

‘We were grumbling about how impoverished our writers were,’ said Oh, referring to co-founder and then president director of Plaza Senayan, Takashi Ichiki.

‘Our involvement in Khatulistiwa is one of our major missions here, our social contribution under education,”" current Plaza Senayan president director Shuichi Oishi told a Jakarta newspaper.

Richard Oh decries the fact that most works by Indonesian writers have not been translated.
‘There is no concerted effort by the government to promote these writers abroad,’ he writes on his blog, adding that attempts by a few private enterprises, such as Lontar Foundation, to put out master works of established writers often face an impasse in distribution outside of Indonesia ‘…because of various reasons, I assume, but foremost of which I believe is funding to participate in international book fairs.’

Oh notes also that ‘there are no genuine efforts from (Indonesian) writers themselves to seek translation of their works. There’s a sense that their works are done, let the others worry about them. The young generation of writers is less complacent.

When told only three percent of world literature is published by the publishing giants in New York and London, the Indonesian writer Eka Kurniawan (Beauty is A Wound), dubbed recently as ‘heir to Pramoedya’, said, ‘Then we should try to be good enough to fit into that three percent.’

Metropoli D’Asia’s CEO Andrea Berrini of will attend the Singapore Writers Festival (24 Oct-1 Nov 2009) where Metropoli d’Asia is running a joint called “Discovering New Writers, Finding New Readers: An International Perspective” with the Singapore publisher Ethos Books. Panelist will be Andrea Berrini, David Fedo, Tiziano Fratus, and Alvin Pang.

Metropoli d’Asia / Ethos Books intend to launch a literary award for a novel from Singapore.

Some of this information is taken from a blog on Richard Oh’s website.

Comments are closed.