International festival on children’s and youth literature

The following was received from Miriam Gabriela Möllers, the festival’s programme manager and vice director.

Running from 24 September to 5 October, the 8th annual festival presents nineteen authors and illustrators from all over the world.

This year‘s guests include

• the celebrated British author of books for young people Malorie Blackman (UK)
• the multi-facetted author Anne-Laure Bondoux (France), the holder of the Hans Christian Andersen prize Wolf Erlbruch (Germany)
• Timothée de Fombelle (France), whose adventure novel  “Tobie Alone” provoked great interest
• the illustrator and artist Piet Grobler (South Africa)
• the author, politician and Massai clan member Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton (Kenya)
• the graphic artist and poet Ted van Lieshout (Netherlands)
• the children‘s book author, translator and publisher Beatrice Masini (Italy)
• Meg Rosoff (USA/UK), whose debut novel ”How I live now“ made her into one of the most important English-language authors of books for young people
• the actress (and one of the youngest guests of the festival) Veronika Rotfuß (Germany
• the comic-book artist and illustrator Thé Tjong-Khing (Indonesia/Netherlands)
• Einar Turkowski (Germany), whose first picture book was “It was dark and eerily quiet”
• the “great realist in the world of young people’s novels” Mats Wahl (Sweden).

In addition, we are pleased to present authors and illustrators who have not yet been translated into German, and whose texts will be translated specially for the festival: guests will include the children‘s and young person‘s author Viktor Canosinaj from Albania, the designer and picture-book maker Stian Hole from Norway, the Spanish author of books for young people, university lecturer and editor Xosé Antonio Neira Cruz, the Iranian picture-book artsist Farshid Shafiee as well as the bestselling Japanese fantasy author Nahoko Uehashi.

Furthermore, guests from the programmes “Literatures of the World”, “Focus Africa” and “Reflections” will read for children and young people: Azouz Begag (France), Amma Darko (Ghana), Lebogang Mashile (South Africa) und Natalka Sniadanko (Ukraine).

Supported by presenters, actors and intepreters, they will meet children and young people aged 5-20 – and adults too, of course.   Once again the “Children’s and Youth Literature” festival will present the events series “Author Readings and Workshops for Children”, free-time activities “After School and at the Weekend” as well as “Children’s and Youth Literature for Adults”.  These range from traditional readings and meetings with authors at the main events site to themed writing, poetry and illustration workshops; from creativity projects (with several sessions) in theatres, museums, libraries, schools and other cultural facilities all over Berlin to literary parties for the whole family, and workshop-discussions for (young) adults.

The cover image of the booklet depicts the picture-book artist THÉ TJONG-KHING (Indonesien/Niederlande) with, in the background, his illustration to the story “De gelaarsde kater“ (t: Puss in Boots ), taken from the book of tales “En ze leefden nog lang en gelukkig“ (And they lived happily ever after) by Henri Van Daele.

Tibet World Day

The following text is based on a message we just received. The image on the right, however, is ours; it is the cover of Song of the Snow Lion, MANOA’s issue on Tibet.

Once again World Tibet Day is approaching. As you are aware, July 6 is the birthday of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and is observed as World Tibet Day by Tibetans and their supporters worldwide.

Founded in 1998 by Richard Rosenkranz, a Pulitzer Prize nominee in history, World Tibet Day was created with three main goals:

• first, to create an annual worldwide event to help restore essential freedoms for those living in Chinese-occupied Tibet;
• second, to increase awareness of the genocidal threats to the Tibetan people; and
• third, to celebrate the unique beauty and value of Tibetan culture and thought.

The Tibetans have started their revolt against the brutal Chinese regime, whose repressive actions resulted in the deaths of more than 200 Tibetans this year and, even more significantly, in the deaths of over one 1.2 million Tibetans since the Chinese invasion began in 1950. The Chinese government continues to suppress those who dare to express their opinions. We believe that World Tibet Day is an opportunity for those who live in free countries to show their solidarity with the six million Tibetans living under military rule.

We are asking you and/or your organisation to join us in observing July 6 (Sunday) as World Tibet Day in your locality/country. Please send us a small note at info@worldtibetday.org on what you plan to do on this day.

Please go to our website for helpful ideas on staging the event, and for a Message on WTD from HH the Dalai Lama. Thank you.

Team World Tibet Day

Indian Cartoonists on Tibet (Auroville, March 16–31, 2008)

Pavilion of Tibetan Culture and Friends of Tibet invite you to Indian Cartoonists on Tibet, a travelling exhibition from Friends of Tibet which will be on display at the Pavilion of Tibetan Culture, (next to Bharat Nivas) Auroville, Pondichery. This exhibition of selected cartoons on the Tibet issue (1950–2005) and the tumultuous Indo-China relations will feature the following Indian cartoonists: Shankar, Ranga, OV Vijayan, RK Laxman, Ravi Shankar, Mario Miranda, Rajinder Puri, Prriya Raj, Yesudasan, Nanda Soobben, Abe Gowda, Kaak, Madhu Omalloor, Balu, Thommy, Ponnappa, Morparia and Prakash Shetty.

The inaugural presentation at 5:45pm on Sunday, March 16, 2008), features Claude Arpi (French Tibetologist and the author of The Fate of Tibet) and Sethu Das (president, Friends of Tibet).

Friends of Tibet is a people’s movement to keep alive the issue of Tibet through direct action. Our activities are aimed at ending China’s occupation of Tibet and the suffering of the Tibetan people. Friends of Tibet supports the continued struggle of the Tibetan people for independence.

Books by Contributors to Crossing Over: Partition Literature from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh

Readers of MANOA may be interested in other published works by the contributors of Crossing Over. The following is a list of selected works available to English-language readers:

• Aangan (Inner Courtyard) by Khadija Mastur
  (Kali for Women, 2000)
  “Narrated in the intimate anger of a young women’s journal-keeping voice this novel explores the politics of sex and class through the lives of women compelled to live their lives in the seclusion of the inner courtyard or aangan.” (Amazon.com Editorial Review)
• Attar of Roses and Other Stories of Pakistan by Tahira Naqvi
  (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1997)
• Boyhood Days by Rabindranath Tagore, translated by Radha Chakravarty
  (Penguin Global, 2008)
  Chakravarty translates Rabindranath Tagore’s recollection of his growing up years in nineteenth-century Kolkata and his early love for music and poetry.
• Bruised Memories: Communal Violence and the Writer by Tarun K. Saint
  (Seagull, 2002)
  “Poems, short stories, memoirs, essays and a panel discussion together probe how it feels when violence erupts, turning neighbors into enemies and home into an alien land.” (Amazon.com Editorial Review)
• Conversations on Modernism by Sukrita Paul Kumar
  (South Asia Books, 1990)
• Cool, Sweet Water by Khadija Mastur
  (Oxford University Press, 1999)
  “Mastur’s work, marked by a scathing, uncompromising realism, reveals a deep concern for the lives of ordinary people, especially women, who have been passed by in the rush for modernization.” (Amazon.com Editorial Review)
• An Evening of Caged Beasts: Seven Postmodernist Urdu Poets, translated by Asif Farrukhi and Frances W. Pritchett
  (Oxford University Press, 1999)
  Seven poets seek to re-invent poetry and create a new mood in the Urdu poetry from Pakistan.
• The Films of Buddhadeb Dasgupta by John W. Hood
  (Orient Longman, 2005)
• In the Shadow of the Sun by Prafulla Roy
  (Roli Books Pvt. Ltd., 2004)
• Mapping Memories, edited by Sukrita Paul Kumar
  (Katha, 1998)
• Narrating Partition by Sukrita Paul Kumar
  (Indialog, 2004)
• Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and Its Critics by Frances W. Pritchett
  (University of California Press, 1994)
  “Pritchett’s beautiful reconstruction of the classical Urdu poetic vision allows us to understand one of the world’s richest literary traditions and also highlights the damaging potential of colonialism.” (Amazon.com Editorial Review)
• The Other Side of Silence by Urvashi Butalia
  (Duke University Press, 2000)
  “Butalia’s book is remarkable for the author’s critical analysis of her own experiences as well as of the existing literature, and for her skillful demonstration of how the memory of Partition continues to affect India today.” (Publisher’s Weekly)
• Partition Dialogues: Memories of a Lost Home by Alok Bhalla
  (Oxford University Press, 2006)
  “Alok Bhalla explores the concept of boundaries and homes through his interviews with six well-known novelists from India and Pakistan” (Publisher’s website)
• Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man by Krishna Dutta
  (Pub Overstock Unlimited Inc, 2000)
  “This moving, essential biography of one of the century’s great artists profiles an individualist who brought East and West into receptive emotional and intellectual contact.” (Publisher’s Weekly)
• Satyajit Ray, The Inner Eye: The Biography of a Master Film-Maker by Andrew Robinson
  (I. B. Tauris, 2004)
• Sleepwalkers by Joginder Paul, translated by Sunil Trivedi and Sukrita Paul Kumar
  (Katha, 2002)
• Speaking Peace: Women’s Voices from Kashmir by Urvashi Butalia
  (Kali for Women, India, 2002)
  Through interviews, personal reflective pieces, and extracts from reports and books, this books draws a picture of the varied experiences of women in the Kashmir conflict.
• Tamas by Bhisham Sahni
  (Penguin Books, 2001)
  Originally written in Hindi, this novel was noted internationally for its portrayal of the riots during the Partition.
• Translating Partition edited by Ravikant and Tarun K. Saint
  (Katha, 2001)
• Without Margins: Poems and Art by Sukrita Paul Kumar
  (Promilla, 2005)

—Contributed by Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson

Crossing Over: Partition Literature from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh

Crossing Over, the summer 2007 issue of MANOA, marks the sixtieth anniversary of one of the most significant events of the twentieth century: when India achieved its independence from Great Britain and was partitioned into two countries, Pakistan and India.

The issue was launched on August 23 in New Delhi, India, at the American Center, U.S. Embassy, and on October 22 in Honolulu, Hawai‘i, at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Cosponsored by Zakir Husain College, Delhi University, the August launch featured a panel of writers and scholars moderated by Sukrita Paul Kumar, guest editor of Crossing Over. The panelists were film director and writer Gulzar; writer and editor Urvashi Butalia, of the feminist publishing house Zubaan; scholar Shail Mayaram, of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies; and scholar and writer C. M. Naim, of the University of Chicago. Those attending the event included teachers and students from many colleges in Delhi.

Sponsors of the event in October included the UHM Center for South Asian Studies and the UHM English Department.

The publication of MANOA is supported by grants from the Hawai‘i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Award-winning fiction in winter 2006 issue

Where the Rivers Meet, the winter 2006 issue of MANOA, includes award-winning fiction by Alexis Wright and Roger McDonald. Wright is represented by an excerpt from Carpentaria, the novel that won the 2007 Miles Franklin Literary Award, Australia’s most prestigious literary prize. A writer, researcher, and social commentator, she is one of Australia’s best-known indigenous writers and is a member of the Waanyi nation of the southern highlands of the Gulf of Carpentaria.

“Bullock Run,” Roger McDonald’s contribution to Where the Rivers Meet, was recently selected for inclusion in the 2008 edition of Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, the prestigious American anthology series edited by Laura Furman. McDonald is the author of two books of nonfiction, Shearers’ Motel and The Tree in Changing Light, and of seven novels, 1915, Slipstream, Rough Wallaby, The Slap, Water Man, Mr Darwin’s Shooter, and The Ballad of Desmond Kale, which won the 2006 Miles Franklin Award. He lives near Braidwood, on the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales.

Awards

In January, the Association of American University Presses recognized MANOA for design excellence. Two issues, Blood Ties: Writing across Chinese Borders and Varua Tupu: New Writing from French Polynesia, are to be included in the 2007 Book, Jacket, and Journal Show, which will premiere at AAUP’s annual meeting in June and tour the country.

In April, the Pele Awards were presented by the Hawai‘i chapters of the American Advertising Federation and the American Institute of Graphic Arts for work created in Hawai‘i. (Jurors are from outside the state and are affiliated with these two national organizations.) Of the 850 entries from 109 entrants, 55 received first-place Pele awards. In the category of publication design, Barbara Pope Book Design received an award for Varua Tupu.

At a ceremony in May, the Hawai‘i Book Publishers Association presented the Ka Palapala Po‘okela Awards for books published in 2006. Books were nominated in thirteen categories, and Varua Tupu—edited by Frank Stewart, Kareva Mateata-Allain, and Alexander Dale Mawyer—was the winner in the excellence-in-literature category. Barbara Pope, MANOA’s designer and art editor since its inception, received the John Dominis Holt Award for “an extended history of Excellence in Hawai‘i Book Publishing.”

Kyoto Journal

Kyoto Journal offers thought-provoking cultural perspectives from Asia. A non-profit, all-volunteer production now in its 19th year, KJ has been shortlisted ten years in a row for the Utne Independent Press Awards. In 2006, it was again nominated in the category of International Coverage. In 2004, the journal was nominated for General Excellence, Design, and Cultural/Social Coverage. Previous nominations were for Art & Design Excellence (award winner, 1998), Local/Regional Coverage, Writing Excellence, Design, General Excellence, and Best Essays. For full details of the latest issue, see number 65.

El Léon Literary Arts

New books from El León Literary Arts include Bluebird in My Window and draite a u méure by Frank Dituri and Locke 1928 by Shawna Yang Ryan.

Incorporated as a nonprofit public benefit corporation in California in 2001, El León Literary Arts was established to promote and strengthen the arts and education. Publishing fiction, poetry, or texts with graphics of high quality that are unlikely to be published in the current commercial marketplace, El León seeks to keep alive a rich diversity of written voices.

El León’s publisher is author Thomas Farber, who is also Senior Lecturer in English at the University of California, Berkeley.

Reading by U Sam Oeur on April 10

“Sacred Vows,” a bilingual reading in Khmer and English by U Sam Oeur, will be held Tues., April 10, 2007, at 3:30 p.m. in Kuykendall 410, on the UH-Manoa Campus.

U Sam Oeur grew up in a Cambodian farming family. After studying in the U.S., he served in the Cambodian government. When Pol Pot assumed power in 1975, U Sam Oeur, along with his wife and son, survived the killing fields in six forced-labor camps by feigning illiteracy.

His highly acclaimed book of poetry, Sacred Vows, recalls the terror of those years and the beauty of Cambodia’s resilient culture. U Sam Oeur’s reading style is mesmerizing, emotionally charged, and operatic, combining song and chant and a full range of tones.

This event is sponsored by UHM Center for Southeast Asian Studies, TinFish, MANOA, Manoa Foundation, and UHM Dept. of English.