4
Mar

The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival returns to its original March date

Press Release

 

From March 8 to 17, Casa Garden will host the 13th edition of The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival. This is a return of the event to spring, after a forced move to fall during the pandemic years. The highlight of this edition of The Script Road will be the celebration of the poetry of Li Bai and Luís de Camões. Among the guests, Chinese author Dong Xi, winner of the 11th Mao Dun Prize for Literature, and American novelist Chang-era Lee, finalist of the Pulitzer Prize, are the most notable names. In an event that also marks the 50th anniversary of the Portuguese Carnation Revolution of 1974, writer and journalist João Céu e Silva, author and illustrator Fido Nesti and guitarist Marta Pereira da Costa are among the representatives from the Portuguese-speaking world.

 

“We’ve always felt that it makes the most sense to hold the Macau Literary Festival in March, as it’s the time of year when the events calendar is not so packed. That’s why, at the first opportunity, and after several editions held in October and November due to the pandemic, we decided to return the festival to its original date,” says Ricardo Pinto, director of The Script Road.

 

This year’s edition of the Macau Literary Festival, and the previous one, held just five months ago, have in common the celebration of the fifth centenary of the birth of poet Luís de Camões. Casa Garden, located nearby the poet’s famous grotto, will be visited by Kenneth David Jackson, professor at Yale University and author of several Camonian studies. Brazilian illustrator Fido Nesti will also evoke the work of Camões through his adaptation of the epic poem ‘Os Lusíadas’ for children.

 

Another great name of universal poetry will be remembered at the opening event of the festival. The life and work of Li Bai is the subject of a photography exhibition by Xu Peiwu, a Chinese artist who over the last decade has traveled the same paths where the poet walked more than a thousand years ago, recording the landscapes that inspired him as he wandered through vast and scattered regions of China. They are images “of enormous beauty and density, which allow us to contemplate a naked and captivating China”, says João Miguel Barros, the exhibition’s curator. At the opening session, publisher Carlos Morais José will also present the book ‘Li Bai – A Via do Imortal’, by António Izidro.

 

The first weekend of the festival, from March 8 to 10, will host the presentation of several other works. San San, one of the most awarded young Chinese writers, will present her anthology of short stories ‘Late Spring’, which was among the strongest candidates for the 2023 Literary Prize from Douban, China’s online social network with a large footprint in literary circles. American James Zimmerman, a lawyer who has lived in the Chinese capital for more than 25 years, is coming to Macau to present ‘The Peking Express’, an investigative work that tells the story of the Great Railway Robbery of 1923, an event that set the course for China’s two-decade civil war. And New Zealand-born author Ian Gill, who is the child of his parents’ war-time romance in a prison camp in Hong Kong, will discuss his book ‘Searching for Billie’, a journalist’s quest to understand his mother’s past that leads him to discover a vanishing China.

 

Another notable guest to hear speak will be Ma Ka Fai, Hong Kong writer and filmmaker, professor of creative writing at City University and author of dozens of bestselling books of essays. ‘Once upon a time in Hong Kong’ is his debut novel.

 

The 50th anniversary of the Portuguese April 25 democratic Revolution will also be commemorated during the first days of the festival. João Céu e Silva will present to the Macau public his work ‘The General who started April 25 two months before the captains’ –the never-before-told story of how General António Spínola brought down the old regime.

 

An exhibition on the 50-year career of photographer António Mil-Homens – who began his journey with photography precisely on April 25, 1974, when he covered some of the most significant episodes of the revolution – will take place during the week at the Portuguese Bookshop Gallery, before the panels return to Casa Garden for the second weekend of the Festival.

 

Macau cuisine will be the central theme of the sessions on Friday, March 15. Authors Graça Pacheco Jorge and Annabel Jackson, both of whom have publications on this topic, will be joined by Professor Barrie Sherwood, from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, for a discussion on the current state of Macanese gastronomy and related cultural identity issues. ‘The Macanese Pro-Wrestler’s Cookbook’, written by Prof. Sherwood will be presented to local audiences at the session.

 

The program of Saturday March 16 will be dominated by women’s writing, featuring a proposed dialogue combining writers from Macau, Hong Kong, and Mainland China. ‘The Girl Who Dreamed: A Hong Kong Memoir of Triumph Against the Odds’, by Sonia Leung, has been described as an important milestone in the literature of the neighboring city, as never before have the first-person experiences of poor immigrants from the Mainland, who arrived in Hong Kong in the 1980s, been narrated in such detail from the perspective of a young woman.

 

The penultimate day the festival will also welcome two big names in this year’s program. Dong Xi, who in addition to the 2023 Mao Dun Literature Prize has also been awarded the Lu Xun Prize, will share his vast experience in the world of creative writing with several Macau authors. “As one of today’s most representative writers, Dong Xi is recognized for his unusual ability to tell stories in his own narrative language,” said Yao Jingming, deputy director of The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival.

 

Chang-rae Lee, an American writer of Korean origin, and himself a creative writing teacher at Stanford University in California, will be presenting his latest novel, ‘My Year Abroad’, which is partly set in Macau. His writing often explores themes such as immigration, assimilation, Korean history, the experience of Asian-Americans, and dystopian America. Among several other distinctions, the author was awarded the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Prize for first fiction for his novel ‘Native Speaker’.

 

Saturday’s program comes to an end with a concert by Marta Pereira da Costa, widely acclaimed as one of the most virtuoso Portuguese guitar players of her generation. In Macau, she will be backed on stage by João José Pita. Other performances will be promoted in collaboration with Bookand, an independent local bookstore and café.

 

Traditionally, the last day of the festival is largely reserved for visual arts publications – and this year will be no exception. Local photographer João Miguel Barros and Halftone association will reveal their most recent productions in Casa Garden. Additionally, Portuguese academic Duarte Drumond Braga will be presenting his study of Camilo Pessanha’s ‘China and Macau’, recently released in Portugal. And Peter Rose, an American lawyer turned author, is launching his first novel, ‘The Good War of Consul Reeves’, which is set against the backdrop of the Pacific War in Macau and the efforts of the lonely British diplomat to help the fight against the Japanese. The novel was published by Blacksmith Books, a prolific publishing house based in Hong Kong.

 

As in previous years, the Macau Literary Festival has the support of the Macau Government, through the Cultural Development Fund, as well as several other public and private institutions in the region. The Orient Foundation is once again hosting the event in Casa Garden. In addition to the official program, the festival guests will also visit local schools and associations.

 

The event’s detailed program will be released to the media in the coming days.

 

For more information, please contact:

Aska Cheong: +853 6622 3215

Kathine Cheong: +853 6688 2821

 

Media.macauliteraryfestival@gmail.com | Info.macauliteraryfestival@gmail.com

18
Sep

“Guerrilla Samba” by Luca Argel, History of Brazil in three acts

“Guerrilla Samba”, by Luca Argel

HISTORY OF BRAZIL IN THREE ACTS

 

Music and literature intersect in this “samba opera”, created by the Rio de Janeiro-based artist based in Porto. Luca Argel’s “Samba de Guerrilha” can already be heard around the world.

Samba de Guerrilha is a multi-disciplinary show, which crosses Luca Argel’s music with real time illustration by António Jorge Gonçalves and with the word, narrated by the luso-angolan actress Nádia Yracema. It has started in 2016, and grew over 5 years until it became a record. It was born as a concert-workshop about the political history of samba. Off stage, it took the form of written articles, seminars, radio shows, until finally becoming Luca Argel’s 4th album.

Samba de Guerrilha is a journey through time, where we meet stories and characters from the fight against racism, slavery and inequality. We hear the narrative in the form of samba, but a samba that, this time, is permanently testing the limits of its musical possibilities, a reinvented, electrified samba, born an ocean away from tradition.

According to Luca Argel, Samba de Guerrilha was conceived as “a samba opera” divided into three acts, through which the History of Brazil is told. Composed of daring versions of samba classics, which reveal themselves to be an “interesting instrument of historical research”, the record is based on the premise of demonstrating how old issues from colonial times and the early years of Brazil as a nation, especially slavery, continue, even today, to condition the lives of millions of people, in the form of racism, poverty and all kinds of social discrimination.

The first act begins to the sound of Samba do Operário, a theme written by the mythical Cartola in partnership with a Portuguese from Alfama, called Alfredo, who settled in the Mangueira slum in flight from the dictatorship of Salazar. The tracks are preceded by a narration which historically and socially contextualises each moment – in the voice of the Luso-Angolan rapper Telma Tvon. The contrast between the singing voice, of a white Brazilian man, and the narration, of a black African woman, is “very symbolic”, and works very well.

The second act recalls the abolition of slavery, but the two jongos (a musical style that preceded samba) that follow show how everything stayed almost the same, or worse, leading to the exodus to the big cities, where marginalisation continued, as can be seen when listening to Direito de Sambar or Agoniza mas Não Morre. The third act reveals João Cândido, a black sailor who, in 1910, led the Revolta da Chibata, against the physical punishments still in force in the Navy. The “black admiral” would be immortalized in the samba of the same name, banned by censorship because the admiral’s rank could not be associated with the word “negro”. But without people like him, Uma História Diferente, the samba chosen to close the record, would never have been written.

 

14/10/2023

Venue: BROADWAY THEATRE, BROADWAY MACAUTM

Duration of the show: 1h 40m

Subtitled in Chinese & English

Show Ticketing Counter at Broadway Macautm

Ticketing: +853‭ ‬8883‭ ‬3383 / broadwaymacau.com.mo / ‬showticket@galaxyentertainment.com

‬Buy online

The artists

 

Luca Argel was born in 1988 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and has a degree in music from UNIRIO and a master’s degree in Literature from the University of Porto. He has poetry books published in Brazil, Spain and Portugal, one of which was a semi-finalist for the Oceans Prize 2017.

Between working as a vocalist and composer, whether in collective projects or soundtracks for film and dance, and signing radio programs dedicated to Brazilian music, he has been developing his solo career at a consistent and growing pace with hits such as “Samba de Guerrilha” and “Anos Doze”.

António Jorge Gonçalves (Lisbon, Portugal, 19 October 1964) is a Portuguese comic book author, cartoonist, visual performer, illustrator, set designer and teacher. He is the author of several Graphic Novels, and has collaborated with several writers – Rui Zink, Ondjaki or Mário de Carvalho – in creating books where text and image relate in an exploratory way. He has received in 2013 the National Prize for Illustration (Portugal) for the book “uma escuridão bonita” (with Ondjaki).

He has done set and costume design for several theatre plays. Through the method of Real Time Digital Drawing and the manipulation of objects in Transparency Overhead Projector, he has created shows with musicians, actors and dancers. He wrote and directed the film/show Lisboa quem és tu? to be projected on the walls of São Jorge Castle in Lisbon.

 

Nádia Yracema was born on July 3, 1988, in Luanda, Angola. She started learning and acting with the Coimbra University Theatre, completing her training in the 2007/2008 school year, while pursuing a degree in Law at the University of Coimbra. She joined the acting course at the Lisbon Theatre and Film School in 2012.

She has often performed in theatre productions, working with Portuguese and international directors. She is also actively engaged in several social bodies that foster collaborative work in film, theatre and performance. In 2018, she took part in the international project École de Maîtres.

19
Jul

Macau Literary Festival accepts submissions to it’s 8th Short Story Competition

The 8th edition of The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival Short Story Competition is now accepting texts in Chinese, Portuguese and English. The stories should be delivered at the premises of the newspaper Ponto Final, at Travessa do Bispo, No. 1C, 6th Floor, Macau, up to 8pm of November 30, 2019; or by email to shortstories.thescriptroad@gmail.com.

The competition will have similar rules to the ones applied in previous years. The winners (one for each language – Chinese, Portuguese and English) will be chosen by writers who visited The Script Road before, with a pre-selection being done by a jury composed by representatives of the festival’s organization and other invited members.

The Macau Literary Festival keeps the MOP 10.000 prize money for each of the winners and, as in previous editions, awarded texts will be published in a book – in three languages – alongside with the ones written by the authors who visited Macau during the latest edition of The Script Road.

The rules for the competition are available at www.thescriptroad.org. The contest continues to be open to all participants who write in Chinese, Portuguese or English. All short stories must be somehow about Macau.

The next book of The Script Road Short Stories and Other Writings collection will be published and presented during Macau Literary Festival 9th edition, in March 2020.

ABOUT THE FESTIVAL

The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival was founded in 2012 by Ponto Final newspaper. The festival is the first grand meeting of literates from China and Portuguese-Speaking Countries ever to be organized in the world. The Script Road also welcomes guests from other geographies and brings to city renowned writers, publishers, translators, journalists, musicians, filmmakers and visual artists. Macau Literary Festival is supported by the Cabinet of the Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture, Macau Cultural Affairs Bureau, Macau Government Tourist Office and Macau Foundation, as well as for several private entities, with SJM – Sociedade de Jogos de Macau being one of its main sponsors.

MEDIA CONTACT
Macau Literary Festival Press Office
press.thescriptroad@gmail.com

 

The Script Road Short Story Competition Regulations

The Script Road short story competition is accepting works in three languages
(Chinese, Portuguese or English). The final jury will consist of renowned writers
who’ve visited the Festival’s previous edition. They will be the ones to decide who
the winners are.

1. Submissions:
a) The competition is open to all people without any restrictions on age, nationality or
residence. But,
b) The immediate families of members of the organization and members of the jury
cannot compete, nor can any persons connected with 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 totally
original and may be in Chinese, Portuguese or English.
c) The text should have a maximum of 3500 words in Portuguese and English, and
6000 words in Chinese. Texts exceeding these limits will automatically be excluded
from the contest.

3. Deadline and submission format
a) The stories should be delivered at the premises of the newspaper Ponto
Final, at Travessa do Bispo, No. 1C, 6th Floor, Macau, or by email to
shortstories.thescriptroad@gmail.com, up to 8pm of November 30, 2019.
b) The works sent by post-office must bear the stamp with a dispatch date on or
before November 30, 2019. Projects must be delivered in a sealed envelope
containing the inscription on the outside “The Script Road Short Story competition.”
Participants should place four copies of each story on A4 paper inside the envelope.
The text should be formatted in 12-point, 1.5-line 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 CD with the short story soft-
file, all the contact information (full name, email and telephone number), as well as a
photocopy of any identification document.
c) For the stories sent by email, participants should attach the soft copy of the story,
as well as a digital copy of their ID and contact information. All stories should be sent
before 8pm (Macau time), November 30, 2019. The format of the story should be the
same as mentioned in item b).

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 language. This committee will make a first pre-selection of
five or more texts, which are then to be put forward for consideration by the final
jury. Renowned writers who attended the Festival’s previous editions will be the ones
to choose the winners.
b) The jury reserves the right not to award any winner if the works submitted do not
have the desired quality or are not in accordance with the scope and theme of the
contest.
5. Awards
a) The winning stories (one in each language) will be translated into two other
languages and published in a book to be presented at the following 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 previous edition of the
festival. The winners will, in this way, see their works published alongside names of
the jury writers themselves and other authors.
b) Winners (one in each language) will receive prize money of MOP 10,000.
6. Final Provisions
a) Submitting texts to the competition implies full acceptance of this regulation.
b) Works submitted in the contest will not be returned to their authors.
c) The Script Road reserves the right to publish for the period of three years, in the
original and translated versions, the distinguished works in the competition as well as
any other works sent by the participants and not awarded, either in book format or in
periodical publications associated with the Festival. The copyright for the first
publication (in books and periodical publications) belongs to the editor and the
subsequent to the respective authors.

13
Mar

Programme Seat Reservation

Free Admission, please reserve your seat here:

https://goo.gl/forms/jGCNwW4fPfwjWVB53

 

1) PERFORMANCE | 表演

SOPHIA |《索菲亞》

15 MARCH, FRIDAY | 三月十五日 9.00 PM

Navy Yard No.2 | 海事工房2號

 

2) FILM SCREENING | 電影放映

Nobody Nose |《迷局伏香》 (Group C | C組)

16 MARCH, SATURDAY | 三月十六日 9.00 PM – 11.00 PM

Wing Lok Cinema | 永樂戲院

 

3) FILM SCREENING | 電影放映

Melville in Love |《戀愛中的梅爾維爾》

18 MARCH, MONDAY | 三月十八日 6:30 PM

Portuguese Consulate Auditorium | 葡國領事館禮堂

 

4) FILM SCREENING | 電影放映

Whitman, Alabama |《自我之歌》- 從詩歌到電影

19 MARCH, TUESDAY | 三月十九日 9.30 PM – 11.00 PM

Cinematheque Passion | 戀愛•電影館

 

5) FILM SCREENING | 電影放映

Empire Hotel |《帝皇酒店》 (Group C | C組)

20 MARCH, WEDNESDAY | 三月二十日 9.00 PM – 11.00 PM

Wing Lok Cinema | 永樂戲院

 

6) FILM SCREENING | 電影放映

San Va Hotel: Behind the Scenes |《新華大旅店 – 幕後》 (Group B | B組)

22 MARCH, FRIDAY | 三月二十二日 6.30 PM – 7.45 PM

Cinematheque Passion | 戀愛•電影館

 

7) FILM SCREENING | 電影放映

Pe San Ié |《比山耶》

22 MARCH, FRIDAY | 三月二十二日 9.00 PM – 11.00 PM

Cinematheque Passion | 戀愛•電影館

 

8) PERFORMANCE | 表演

Ode Marítima

23 MARCH, SATURDAY | 三月二十三日 9.00 PM – 10.00 PM

Dom Pedro V Theatre | 崗頂劇院

 

Remarks

** Total number of seats is subject to availability. First come first served.

** Please fill in the form for seat reservation, and arrive 15 mins in advance to secure your seat allocation.

** Reserved seats will only be held until 15 minutes prior to the start of the performance.

 

12
Mar

China-Portuguese-Language-Countries: A bridge named poetry

For the first time, poetry will be the central theme and dominant genre of The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival. The festival will be held from March 15 to 24. The event pays homage to Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen in the year that would mark her hundredth anniversary. Her son, journalist and writer Miguel de Sousa Tavares, will be in Macau. Poet and translator José Luís Peixoto will launch a translation to Portuguese of a work by Chinese poet Jidi Majia, marking the encounter between the Chinese and Lusophone cultures through poetry.

During the event, poets from Portuguese-Speaking-Countries, Macau, and China will talk about their works and about the current state of poetic production and the role of poetry in the contemporary world.

The Script Road will also showcase other venues of artistic expression (painting, theatre, performance, cinema) with poetry as a central point of inspiration.

2019 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of American poets Walt Whitman and Herman Melville, as well as the 100th anniversary of the birth of Portuguese authors, who wrote his poems in the local creole language, Patuá. Special tributes will be paid to them all in a series of discussion panels, performances, film screenings and exhibitions involving local and international guests.

The homage to Adé will include a poetry recital in Patuá by the group Doci Papiaçam di Macau and the launch of a Dictionary of Macau Creole.

The Script Road will also make a point to celebrate the 100-year-anniversary of the 1919 May 4th New Literature Movement in China, by highlighting the contribution of some of its most iconic writers such as Hu Shi, Lu Xun, and Zhu Ziqing, Bing Xing and Lin Huiyin.

Local poetry association The Outer Sky will join the event represented by its members Bruce Lou, Elvis Mok, Jojo Wong, and Pansy Lau. The Macau-based theatre group Rolling Puppets will stage their puppet-theatre show, “Drug”, at the Navy Yard over the last three days of the festival. The show is a renewed adaptation of Lu Xun’s novel “Drug” published in 1919.

The Script Road will present Pedro Lamares “Maritime Ode”, which will be entirely read in a Macau stage. The long poem, considered central in the work of Álvaro de Campos, is seen as a masterpiece of Portuguese poetry.

The Taiwan band Wednesday & Bad to the Bone will play in the closing ceremony of the festival. After the band’s show, there will be a party.

Last but not least, Portuguese 2017 Eurovision Singing Contest winner Salvador Sobral will visit Macau for the first time, and will perform at The Script Road Concert scheduled for March 17.

Besides the Old Navy Yard’s Contemporary Art Center in the Inner Harbour, The Script Road will hold public sessions in diverse other venues, such as Art Garden, Albergue da Santa Casa, the Center for Creative Industries (Creative Macau), IPOR, Cinemateque Passion and Portuguese Bookshop.

 

21
Feb

BE A VOLUNTEER

Macau Literary Festival will be held from 15th to 24th March. Wanna join us andmeet the authors from around the globe? You are welcome to become part of this significant initiative. What are you waiting for? Sign up to join our volunteer team today!Registration: https://reurl.cc/Q46Ap

11
Feb

Poetry centre-stage at the 8th Macau Literary Festival in March

For the first time, Poetry will be the central theme of The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival. In its various forms, it will be the connection for dozens of invited guests, in celebration of the very human capacity to imagine, create and communicate.

The Festival will be held from March 15 to 24, and will be mostly based at theOld Navy Yard’s Contemporary Art Centre, in the Inner Harbour.
2019 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of American poets Walt Whitman and Herman Melville, as well as the 100th anniversary of the birth of Portuguese authors Sophia de Mello Breyner Andersen and Jorge de Sena, and Macanese poet Jose dos Santos Ferreira (Adé), who wrote his poems in the local creole language, Patuá. Special tributes will be paid to them all in a series of discussion panels, performances, film screenings and exhibitions involving local and international guests.

During its 10-day programme, the Festival will welcome prominent poets such as Jidi Majia, the vice-president of the Chinese Writers Association, Bei Dao, Yan Ai-Lin, Chris Song, Yam Gon, Chen Dong Dong, Shu Yu, Huang Fan, Lu Weiping, Na Ye, Tan Wuchang and Hsiu He, most arriving from mainland China, with others from Taiwan and Hong Kong.
From Portuguese-speaking countries, the attendance of José Luís Tavares from Cape Verde, Pedro Lamares from Portugal, Hirondina Joshua from Mozambique, Gisela Casimiro from Guiné-Bissau, and Eduardo Pacheco from Angola, has already been confirmed.

Local poetry association The Other Sky will join the event represented by its members Mok Hei Sai, Lou Kit Wa and Wong In In. The Macau-based theatre group Rolling Puppets will stage their puppet-theatre show “Drug”, at the Navy Yard over three days, which is a renewed adaptation of Lu Xun’s novel “Drug” published in 1919.

Last but not least, Portuguese 2017 Eurovision Singing Contest winner Salvador Sobral will visit Macau for the first time, and will perform at The Script Road Concert scheduled for March 17.
Other guests, including musicians, novelists, and filmmakers will be announced soon.
Alongside the Contemporary Art Center at the Old Navy Yard, the Art Garden, Albergue SCM, Macao Creative Industries Center, IPOR, Cinematheque Passion and the Portuguese Bookshop will be some of the other venues of the Script Road.

7
Nov

The Script Road 6th Short Story Competition – Regulations

The Script Road short story competition is accepting works in three languages. The final jury will consist of Dorothy Tse (Chinese language), Raquel Ochoa (Portuguese) and Peter Gordon (English), renowned writers who’ve visited the Festival’s previous edition. 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 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 totally original and may be in Chinese, Portuguese or English.
c) The text should have a maximum of 3500 words in Portuguese and English, and 6000 words in Chinese. Texts exciding this limits will automatically be excluded from the contest.

3. Deadline and submission
a) The stories should be delivered at the premises of the newspaper Ponto Final, at Travessa do Bispo, No. 1C, 6th Floor, Macau, or by email to shortstorycompetition@thescriptroad.org, up to 8pm of December 31, 2017. b) The works sent by mail must bear the stamp with a dispatch date on or before December 31, 2017. Projects must be delivered in a sealed envelope containing the inscription on the outside “The Script Road Short Story competition.” 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 CD with the short story soft-file, all the contact information (full name, email and telephone number), as well as a photocopy of any identification document.

c) For the stories sent by email, participants should attach the soft copy of the story, as well as a digital copy of their ID and contact information. All stories should be sent before 8pm (Macau time), December 31, 2017. The format of the story should be the same as mentioned in item b).

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 language. This committee will make a first pre-selection of five texts, which are then to be put forward for consideration by the final jury. Renowned writers who attended the Festival’s previous editions will be the ones to choose 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 6th edition of the festival. The winners will, in this way, see their published works alongside names of the jury writers themselves and other authors.

b) Winners (one in each language) will receive prize money of MOP 10.000.

6. Final Considerations
a) Participation in the competition implies full acceptance of this regulation.
b) All information is available at www.thescriptroad.org
c) Entries in the contest will not be returned to their authors.
d) The Script Road reserves the right to publish for the period of three years, in the original and translated versions, the distinguished works in the competition as well as any other works sent by the participants and not awarded. The copyright for the first publication (in periodical publications and book) belongs to the editor and the subsequent to the respective authors.

20
Mar

Writers from Macau, Brasil and Portugal are the winners of the Short Story Competition in Chinese, Portuguese and English

Loi Chi Pang, from Macau – with The Absurdity of the Chicken –, Adi Berenice Gues e Silva, from Brasil – with The Sea Inside – and João Carvalho da Silva, from Portugal – with Aether – are the winners of The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival’s fifth annual Short Story Competition in Chinese, Portuguese and English languages.

Local writer Loi Chi Pang wins the prize for a second time. The first time was in 2014 with the short story Little Shop.

Each author will receive a monetary prize of MOP 10,000 and will have their texts published into Chinese, Portuguese and English in Five Senses, the 5th edition of The Script Road’s Short Stories and Other Writings. Five Senses has been launched this afternoon, at the Festival’s closing session, which took place at the Old Court Building.

The Five Senses book published in the three languages – Chinese, Portuguese and English – includes the winning texts of the short story competition together with works by writers such Ricardo Adolfo, Ernesto Dabó, Marcelino Freire, Carol Rodrigues, Felipe Franco Munhoz, Bengt Ohlsson, Liu Xinwu and Chan Koonchung, amongst other guests of the Macau Literary Festival’s 2016 edition.

Chan Koonchung, Ricardo Adolfo and Bengt Ohlsson served as the contest judges and selected the best stories from over 70 submissions in Chinese, Portuguese and English.

16
Mar

The 5th Script Road Short Story book Five Senses will be launched Sunday, March 19

The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival will launch Five Senses, the 5th edition of The Script Road’s Short Stories and Other Writings on Sunday, March 19, at the Old Court Building. The winners of the 5th Script Road Short Story competition will also be announced during a literary session starting from 7:30 pm.

This year’s book features short stories by writers such as Portuguese Ricardo Adolfo, Bissau-Guinean Ernesto Dabó, Brasilians Marcelino Freire, Carol Rodrigues and Felipe Franco Munhoz, Swedish Bengt Ohlsson and Chinese Liu Xinwu and Chan Koonchung, along with other authors who participated in the Macau Literary Festival’s 2016 edition.

The short story book Five Senses will also feature the texts of the winners of The Script Road 5th Short Story Competition in the three existing categories – Chinese, Portuguese and English. The winning texts were selected by a jury composed by Chan Koonchung, Ricardo Adolfo and Bengt Ohlsson among over 70 short stories submitted.

 

6
Mar

Free downloading of Clément Baloup’s Mémoires de Viet kieu, in English

The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival and Clément Baloup are offering fans a glimpse of the graphic artist’s acclaimed and awarded works.

The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival and the comic author Clément Baloup are offering free downloads for a period of two weeks (until March 19) of an exclusive extract translated into English of the author’s graphic memoir Mémoires de Viet kieu (Leaving Saigon – Viet Kieu Memoir), which focuses on Asian immigration issues.

Leaving Saigon – Viet Kieu Memoir tells the true story of Vietnamese refugees who fled from 30 years of war (1945 – 1975), involving France and the US.

The book, partially based on Clément Baloup’s family story, includes the testimonies of 50 witnesses.

 

 

5
Mar

The Script Road is officially open

The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival had its official opening on Saturday, 4 March, at the Old Court Building.

 

Macau SAR Government Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture Dr Alexis Tam Chon Veng was in attendance at the Official Opening Ceremony and Inauguration of the Script Road Exhibitions, on Saturday, March 4, at the Old Court Building. President of the Macau Foundation Administrative Council, Mr Wu Zhiliang; President of the Cultural Affairs Bureau, Mr Leung Hio Ming; Director of the Macau Government Tourism Office, Ms Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes; and President of the Macau Pen Club, Mr Li Guangding, were also among the high-profile figures attending this year’s inaugural festivities.

The Script Road was honoured to have among its official guests the Deputy Director-General of the Department of Culture and Education of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the MSAR, Mr Zhao Chuan Dong; the Consul-General of Portugal in Macau and Hong Kong, Mr Vítor Sereno; the Consul for Culture and Public Relations of the Republic of Korea in Hong Kong, Mr Yu Byung-chae; the Consul-General of the United States of America in Hong Kong and Macau, Mr Kurt W. Tong; the Consul of Australia to Hong Kong and Macau, Mr Damien Dunn; and the Education Attaché of the Consulate-General of France in Hong Kong and Macau, Ms Servane Gandais.

 

For a more detailed look at the Festival’s Schedule visit: http://thescriptroad.org/schedule/

2
Mar

The Script Road cuts the ribbon this Saturday, 4 March, on an exciting 16 days of events

Dick Ng, Filipe Melo, Philippe Graton, Clément Baloup, Clara Law, Eddie Fong, Lo Yi-Chin, Rodrigo de Matos, Wong Ka Long and Chen Li will be among the invited talent attending The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival’s grand opening this Saturday, 4 March, at the Old Court Building. Consuls-general of some of the countries represented by writers attending the Festival will join in the celebrations, as the Official Opening Ceremony and Inauguration of the Script Road Exhibitions commence at 3pm.

The much-anticipated 6th edition of The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival kicks off this Saturday afternoon with the renowned comic book authors Dick Ng, Filipe Melo, Philippe Graton and Clément Baloup, who will deliver a talk on “Illustrating Words – The Art of Comics” at 4pm. Lo Yi-Chin, a celebrated author from Taiwan, will then take the stage at 5:30 to discuss “The Labyrinth of Contemporary Chinese Fiction”.

President of the Macau Foundation Administrative Council, Mr Wu Zhiliang; President of the Cultural Affairs Bureau, Mr Leung Hio Ming; Director of the Macau Government Tourism Office, Ms Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes; Deputy Secretary-General of the Permanent Secretariat of Forum Macau – appointed by Portuguese-speaking Countries – Mr Vicente de Jesus Manuel; and President of the Macau Pen Club, Mr Li Guanding, will be in attendance at the Official Opening Ceremony and Inauguration of the Script Road Exhibitions, scheduled to begin at 3pm in the Old Court Building.

The Script Road is also pleased to include among its guests of honour the Deputy Director-General of the Department of Culture and Education of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the MSAR, Mr Zhao Chuan Dong; the Consul-General of Portugal in Macau and Hong Kong, Mr Vítor Sereno; the Consul for Culture and Public Relations of the Republic of Korea in Hong Kong, Mr Yu Byung-chae; the Consul-General of the United States of America in Hong Kong and Macau, Mr Kurt W. Tong; the Consul of Australia to Hong Kong and Macau, Mr Damien Dunn; and the Education Attaché of the Consulate-General of France in Hong Kong and Macau, Ms Servane Gandais.

The 2017 Festival’s debut afternoon will continue to unfold at the Old Court Building with Daniel de Roulet giving a talk on “Atomic Books – Hiroshima, Fukushima and Other Disasters” at 6:30pm followed by historical fiction novelists João Morgado and Raquel Ochoa at 7:30pm, elaborating on the topic “Stories with History”. The opening day culminates in a poetry session at The Script Road Café (Old Court Building) titled “The Poet’s Café”, featuring Chen Li, António MR Martins, Rai Mutsu, Wang Jiaxin and other, local poets.

For a more detailed look at the Festival’s Schedule visit: http://thescriptroad.org/schedule/

 

ABOUT THE MACAU LITERARY FESTIVAL

The 6th edition of the Macau Literary Festival will take place from 4–19 March 2017 and will be based at the Old Court Building — a former Government office erected in 1951 and located in the city centre — where a book fair will remain open throughout the event. A new anthology of short stories about Macau, published in three languages (Chinese, Portuguese and English), will be released during the Festival.

The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival was founded in 2012 by local newspaper Ponto Final — a periodical currently celebrating its 25th anniversary — and is based in the Macau Special Administrative Region (MSAR). The Festival began as the first and largest gathering of literati from China and the Portuguese-Speaking Countries ever organised in the world. In recent years, the Festival has gained in popularity, becoming an international event that welcomes renowned writers, publishers, translators, journalists, musicians, filmmakers and visual artists from various geographies and nationalities. The 2016 edition of the Macau Literary Festival brought together authors of 12 nationalities, including US writer Adam Johnson, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2012 novel The Orphan Master’s Son. In 2017, the Festival gathers more than 60 guests from over 20 regions and countries, among them two Man Booker Prize 2016 finalists.

The Macau Literary Festival has the support of the MSAR Government and Macau Foundation, as well as that of several private entities including the Festival’s Platinum Sponsor: SJM – Sociedade de Jogos de Macau. A number of private companies, local associations, schools and universities also support the literary event. The Diplomatic Missions of some of the countries represented by writers attending the Festival have also lent their support to The Script Road.

20
Feb

2016 Jabuti Award-winner Natália Borges Polesso joins The Script Road

 

The 6th edition of the Macau Literary Festival will feature Brazilian writer Natália Borges Polesso. Amora, her most recent book of short stories, earned Natália the Jabuti Award, the most distinguished literary honour in Brazil.

Natália Borges Polesso — award-winning Brazilian author and creator of the online comic strip A Escritora Incompreendida — will attend the 6th edition of The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival.

Natália is the author of the book Recortes para álbum de fotografia sem gente (2013), which was awarded the Açorianos de Literatura prize in the short story category in 2013. Her second book, Coração à corda (2015), presents a selection of poems and short narratives in prose poetry. Amora (2015), her most recent book of short stories, earned Natália another Açorianos de Literatura prize in 2016, along with the Jabuti Award in the short stories and chronicles category, as well as an Audience Award. Natália also writes a weekly column for the Caxias do Sul newspaper Pioneiro and pens the ongoing online comic strip A Escritora Incompreendida.

The Brazilian writer holds a PhD in Literary Theory from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (Porto Alegre), centred on the thesis Literature and the City: Metaphorical Cartographies and Insoluble Memory of Porto Alegre (1897-2013).

Macau’s largest literary event takes place from 4–19 March 2017 and will be based at the Old Court Building.

15
Feb

New on the Script Road schedule: Tony Award-winner Garry Hynes and a fascinating array of performing arts

Irish short story writer Claire Keegan, renowned Chinese literary editor Cheng Yongxin, poet and literary critic Tang Xiaodu, Mozambican novelista, poet and cultural activist Deusa d’África, Portuguese film director Sofia Leite and a number of local and international performing arts acts are among the latest additions to the Macau Literary Festival calendar. The 6th edition of Macau’s largest literary event takes place from 4–19 March 2017.

 

The first-ever female Tony winner for Best Direction of a Play (Beauty Queen of Leenane, Broadway, 1998), Galway native and founder of Druid Theatre Company Garry Hynes joins The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival.

Claire Keegan, an Irish writer known for her award-winning short stories, will also attend the Festival. Her first collection of short stories, Antarctica (1998), announced her as an exceptionally gifted and versatile writer of contemporary fiction. Her work began being translated into Chinese in 2011 and since then has enjoyed a warm reception from Chinese literary critics.

From Mozambique, The Script Road hosts Deusa d’África — nom de plume of Dércia Sara Feliciano — a young novelist, poet, and a cultural activist, born in 1988, and strongly influenced by the generation of writers from Gaza province who founded the magazine Xitende in the 1990s. Deusa d’África is currently Coordinator of the Xitende Cultural Association. She was awarded the Brazilian International Literary Competition’s ALPAS 21 Prize in 2011 and 2012 for her poetry book A Voz das Minhas Entranhas and short story collection O Limpopo das Nossas Vidas. Some of her poems have been translated into Sweedish.

Also accepting the Festival’s invitation this year is Harvest magazine Editor-in-Chief Cheng Yongxin. Known by his pen name, Li Cheng, he is one of the most famous literary editors in contemporary China. In the 1980s he published special, young author editions of Harvest that helped launch the careers of writers including Yu Hua (also one of this year’s Macau Literary Festival guest authors), Mo Yan, Su Tong and Ge Fei — today considered among the cream of the crop in contemporary Chinese literature.

Another Festival guest from China is poet and literary critic Tang Xiaodu, a senior editor at The Writers Publishing House and Editor-in-Chief of The Contemporary International Poetry.

The Festival also welcomes Portuguese journalist and film director Sofia Leite, who will present her documentary Cesária Évora: Nha Sentimento (2010) about the internationally acclaimed Cape Verdean singer, along with another of her films, A Lista de Chorin, the true story of Portuguese diplomats Sampaio Garrido and Teixeira Branquinho, credited with saving the lives of hundreds of Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary during World War II, while serving as Portugal’s ambassador and chargé d’affaires in Budapest in 1944.

From the very start, The Script Road has been an advocate for the performing arts, providing a platform where innovative artistic excellence and creativity engage with literature.

Now in its 6th season, the Macau Literary Festival is proud to host The Three Ladies of Macao (3LM), a play created by the Department of English at the University of Macau (UM). Conceived in Canada and written in Macau, 3LM draws inspiration from the idea of allegory in Robert Wilson’s The Three Ladies of London. An original play made in Macau, about Macau, and set in a 1960s Macau, it will be presented in the UM’s Black Box Theatre, where the 13-strong, international cast — all members of the University of Macau — will perform more than 20 roles. 3LM’s promoters said of the play: “In a Macau where churches thrive alongside brothels and lust trumps morality, and where Lucre’s expanding power terrorises and manipulates her peers, her followers and her fellow residents, one can still see the city’s inherent, simple goodness.”

The Festival also presents the poetry multimedia performance Das Palavras, by Portuguese theatre company d’As EntranhasColectivo Teatral founded by Vera Paz and Ricardo Moura in 1999. Das Palavras premièred on World Poetry Day in 2007 at the invitation of Portuguese musician and composer Rodrigo Leão. Poetry by the Portuguese author Al Berto plays a thematic role in Das Palavras. The poetry multimedia performance, which merges words, sound and images, also includes texts by other authors such as Sophia de Mello Breyner, Eugénio de Andrade, Alexandre O’Neill and Adília Lopes.

Portuguese visual artist António-Pedro, a resident of Macau from 1994 to 1997, brings his video-performance My Macau to the Script Road, set “somewhere between the past and the present”.

Also participating on the Festival lineup is João Miguel Barros, a Macau-based Portuguese lawyer and photographer who will feature his work in an exhibition titled “Between Gaze and Hallucination”.

 

ABOUT THE MACAU LITERARY FESTIVAL

The 6th edition of the Macau Literary Festival will take place from 4–19 March 2017 and will be based at the Old Court Building — a former Government office erected in 1951 and located in the city centre — where a book fair will remain open throughout the event. A new anthology of short stories about Macau, published in three languages (Chinese, Portuguese and English), will be released during the Festival.

The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival was founded in 2012 by local newspaper Ponto Final — a periodical currently celebrating its 25th anniversary — and is based in the Macau Special Administrative Region (MSAR). The Festival began as the first and largest gathering of literati from China and the Portuguese-Speaking Countries ever organised in the world. In recent years, the Festival has gained in popularity, becoming an international event that welcomes renowned writers, publishers, translators, journalists, musicians, filmmakers and visual artists from various geographies and nationalities. The 2016 edition of the Macau Literary Festival brought together authors of 12 nationalities, including US writer Adam Johnson, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2012 novel The Orphan Master’s Son. In 2017, the Festival gathers more than 60 guests from over 20 regions and countries, among them two Man Booker Prize 2016 finalists.

The Macau Literary Festival has the support of the MSAR Government and Macau Foundation, as well as that of several private entities including the Festival’s Platinum Sponsor: SJM – Sociedade de Jogos de Macau. A number of private companies, local associations, schools and universities also support the literary event. The Diplomatic Missions of some of the countries represented by writers attending the Festival have also lent their support to The Script Road.

9
Feb

Macau artist Eric Fok is the author of The Script Road 2017 official image

Eric Fok, the internationally known Macau’s artist is the author of The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival’s 6th edition official image. Macau’s largest literary event takes place from 4–19 March 2017 and will be based at the Old Court Building.

Eric Fok – renowned for his work by technical pen, which he uses to integrate ancient maps reproductions with new constructions – is the author of The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival’s 6th edition official image. His work embodies tradition and modernity, combining his signature with the festival’s theme and identity.

“Literary works drag us into the written word, reading transforms the text into a visual image for the reader. The open book in the image is just like as we are reading the poems about Macau’s past. The view of Praia Grande Avenue in the illustration is the one from the Old Court Building, where the festival takes place”, says Erik Fok about his work.

The talented and internationally known local visual artist, Eric Fok, already had a solo exhibition at last year’s The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival.

Born in 1990, Eric Fok Hoi Seng graduated from the Macau Polytechnic Institute with a major in Visual Arts. His work was already shown in several art channels in Macao, Mainland China, Hong Kong, U.K., Taiwan, Portugal, Japan and Italy (Bologna Illustration Exhibition – Bologna Children’s Book Fair, 2013), and it’s being collected by Macau Special Administrative Region Government’s Cultural Affairs Bureau, Museu do Oriente (Portugal), Fundação Oriente (Macau), University Museum and Art Gallery, Hong Kong, and other private collectors from Las Vegas, Italy, U.K., Singapore, Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. He is also the winner of the Fundação Oriente Art Award 2013.

6
Feb

Yu Hua, Brian Castro and two Man Booker Prize finalists at The Script Road

Man Booker Prize finalists Madeleine Thien and Graeme Macrae Burnet are among the guests authors for this year’s Script Road – Macau Literary Festival. The 6th edition of Macau’s largest and uniquely vibrant literary event brings various award-winning novelists, poets, filmmakers, musicians and visual artists together from 4–19 March 2017.

International award-winning Chinese writer Yu Hua and Australian Brian Castro — considered one of his country’s most imaginative novelists — are just two of the renowned talents attending The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival this year. Finalists for the 2016 Man Booker Prize Madeleine Thien — the daughter of Malaysian-Chinese migrants and one of Canada’s most highly regarded novelists — and Graeme Macrae Burnet — one of Scotland’s brightest literary stars and winner of a Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award in 2013 — also figure on the Macau Literary Festival roster.

Six years on since the Festival’s inaugural season, it has grown in size, content and range, continuing to focus on literature in Chinese and Portuguese, but also featuring prominent writers and creators from across the world.

The Macau Literary Festival has become one of the principal cultural events in the region, bringing together people of many nationalities, all of whom love literature, and affording them the opportunity of a friendly interaction with world renowned authors, Macau Literary Festival Director Ricardo Pinto said.

Yu Hua, author of the epic novel To Live (1992) and Brothers (2010), is hailed as “the most profound voice coming out of China today”. He is just one of the internationally acclaimed Chinese novelists attending this year’s festival. Zhang Yimou’s adaptation of To Live for the screen in 1994 contributed to the novel’s bestseller status and to Yu Hua’s worldwide celebrity. Yu Hua’s works have been translated into over 30 languages. In 2013 Yu Hua become a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times.

The 2017 Script Road – Macau Literary Festival guest list also includes the iconic contemporary children’s literature author Qin Wenjun. She has published 80 books since 1982 with many of those stories attaining great popularity in schools across China.

The Festival public will also have the opportunity to hear and interact with other renowned authors such as Zhang Yueran, who was born in 1982, in Jinan, Shandong Province, and began writing at the age of 14. In 2012, she was named one of the top 20 writers under 40 by Unitas magazine. She has been Chief Editor of Newriting since 2008.

Among the acclaimed Chinese guest authors is Ouyang Jianghe.  He has been a leading exponent of the Chinese New Poetry Movement since the 1980s and is also a prominent critic of music, art and literature and director of the editorial team for literary magazine Jintian (“Today”). Also in this category are btr — a writer and book, film and art critic living in Shanghai and the translator of Paul Auster’s The Invention of Solitude — and Wang Jiaxin — highly regarded not only for his poetry, but also for his essays.

Liu Waitong was born in Guangdong in 1975 and emigrated to Hong Kong in 1997. Through poetry Liu reflects on the past and present of Mainland China and Hong Kong. Also from Hong Kong are Dorothy Tse — award-winning author of So Black and co-founder of the Hong Kong literary magazine Fleurs de lettres — and Xu Xi — an Indonesian-Chinese raised in Hong Kong, author of several novels, including That Man In Our Lives (2016.)

The Festival also welcomes Lo Yi-Chin, whose books of fiction and poetry regularly feature on Taiwan’s top-ten literature lists. Among his awards are a First Prize in Fiction from the China Times Literary Award and a Taipei Literary Annual Award. One of his most important works is the novel Far Away, currently being translated into English. In this story the author recounts just how much the Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese have in common, despite being divided in so many ways.

Also from Taiwan is Chen Li. Hailed by literary critics as among the best representatives of contemporary Chinese poetry, he is the award-winning author of several books of poems. Together with his wife, Chang Fen-ling, he has translated over 20 volumes of poetry into Chinese including the works of Sylvia Plath, Pablo Neruda and Octavio Paz. Wang Cong-wei, Editor-in-Chief of Unitas, is another of the Festival’s prominent guests from Taiwan.

 

The Macau Literary Festival addresses the refugee and migration crisis exploring the meaning of multiculturalism and “mixed cultures”

This season the Macau Literary Festival aims to focus audience attention on some of the world’s most critical human rights issues.

The Festival will present authors and films addressing some of the world’s most critical human rights issues, including the refugee and migration crisis, Festival Programme Director Hélder Beja explains.

The Macau Literary Festival welcomes Sanaz Fotouhi, an Iranian-Australian author and General Manager of Asia Pacific Writers & Translators (APWT). She co-produced the documentary Love Marriage in Kabul and has worked on documentaries in Iran and Afghanistan including the award-winning Hidden Generation: Story of women self-immolation in Afghanistan. She has also published The Literature of the Iranian Diaspora: Meaning and Identity since the Islamic Revolution.

Clara Law, born in Macau and living in Australia since the 1990s, will screen her documentary Letters to Ali (2004), the story of an Afghan boy who seeks asylum in Australia. Producer and screenwriter Eddie Fong also joins the Festival.

The experience of being raised in a mixed-culture context will be explored by authors whose cultural heritage differs from the culture in which they were raised or currently reside.

Born in Hong Kong, the Australian novelist and essayist Brian Castro is of Portuguese, Chinese and English descent. He is acknowledged for his prose style and brilliant use of language, and his work has earned him wide critical acclaim and won many of Australia’s major literary prizes.

Also attending The Script Road are writer, poet and essayist from Goa, Jessica Faleiro, Kurdish author Ciwanmerd Kulek, and Korean Krys Lee, author of the short story collection Drifting House and the novel How I Became a North Korean.

 

Opening a door to the world of graphic novels

This year’s Festival offers a great opportunity to begin exploring the graphic novel genre — or for those readers already in the know, a chance to expand their horizons. Several authors of graphic novels — from France, Portugal, Australia and China — will be featured during the Festival.

Among them are names such as Philippe Graton — photographer, writer and author of comic books who decided to revive the Michel Vaillant BD series created by his father, Jean Graton, in 1957 — and Clément Baloup — son of a French mother and a Vietnamese father and author of Mémoires de Viet Kieu, focusing on issues of Asian immigration.

Thai-Laotian Australian Oliver Phommavanh, author of Thai-Riffic! and Con-Nerd, has been publishing books based on his experiences growing up in a migrant family in Sydney and is considered “a fresh and positive voice for multiculturalism”. From Shenzhen, China, comes comics artist Ziyuan Wu, also known as Dick Ng, renowned for his funny, nonsensical work.

Another major event on the Festival calendar is the attendance of Portuguese musician, film director and comic book author Filipe Melo. He directed the short film I’ll See You in My Dreams, winner of 12 awards, and wrote The Adventures of Dog Mendonça & Pizzaboy, a series of three graphic novels published by Dark Horse Comics. He often works with Argentinian artists Juan Cavia and Santiago Villa.

This year’s line-up also features such renowned names as American writer and translator Benjamin Moser — author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award — and from Hong Kong, Peter Gordon, Juan José Morales and James Shea. Invited by the Festival from Switzerland, Daniel de Roulet is a novelist who has been writing extensively about Japan.

The Festival also welcomes Grace Chia, a writer from Singapore, who has published several books including the novel The Wanderlusters, the short story collection Every Moving Thing That Lives Shall Be Food, and the poetry collections Womango and Cordelia. Chia is also the founder of Singapore’s first women’s online literary journal, Junoesque. She will be the Macau Literary Festival’s inaugural Writer-in-Residence at the Department of English, University of Macau, an initiative being launched this year (read more about this below).

New Zealand-born author Hannah Tunnicliffe, who has previously lived in Canada, Australia, England and Macau, is the author of several novels, the first of which, The Colour of Tea, is set in Macau. She is also founder and co-author of the blog Fork and Fiction.

 

The Literary Festival hosts the launch of acclaimed Portuguese musician and composer Sérgio Godinho’s debut novel

Portuguese poet, composer and singer Sérgio Godinho — one of his country’s most influential voices and musicians for the past 40 years — will launch his first novel, A Heart Too Perfect (Coração Mais que Perfeito), at the Macau Literary Festival.

Pedro Mexia, a prominent Portuguese columnist, translator, writer, poet, literary critic and political commentator, is welcomed by the Festival to talk about his work. Henrique Raposo — a writer and regular contributor to the Portuguese media — joins José Manuel Rosendo — the author of two books and a war correspondent who has covered international conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere — to debate the theme of refugees, immigration and terrorism.

Macau also welcomes Saramago Award-winner Bruno Vieira Amaral — cited by Literature Across Frontiers as one of the 10 new voices of European literature — and historical fiction novelists João Morgado and Raquel Ochoa. Ochoa is presenting a book on Manuel Vicente, the Portuguese architect who worked extensively in Macau.

A journalist and bestselling novelist in Portugal, José Rodrigues dos Santos returns to Macau for The Script Road. He is the author of seven essays and 16 fictional novels, some of them charting at no.1 in several countries, his total sales worldwide having exceeded three million copies.

Also attending the Festival is João Nuno Azambuja, winner of the 2016 Union of Portuguese-Speaking Capital Cities Literary Prize (UCCLA–New Talents). Azambuja is participating in the UCCLA’s Portuguese-Language Writers’ Summit, which will be held for the first time in Macau in partnership with The Script Road (read more about this below). Another of the Portuguese guests is poet António MR Martins.

The Festival also welcomes Abraão Vicente — an author from Cape Verde and his country’s current Minister of Culture and Creative Industries — as well as novelist Abdulai Silá from Guinea-Bissau. Author born in Angola, Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida, is also joining the Festival.

 

Celebrated painter and intellectual Konstantin Bessmertny is among the local guests who will host a literary session

Local and Macau-based writers and artists will also take to the stage, visit schools and universities, and host some of the Festival’s public sessions.

Audiences will have a unique chance to interact with one of Macau’s most internationally renowned artists, Russian-born Konstantin Bessmertny, who will host a literary session. Also participating in the Festival are professor, biographer and writer José Manuel Simões; Portuguese literature and post-colonial studies expert Inocência Mata; poet, novelist and columnist Rai Matsu; three-time Macau Literary Award-winner Lawrence Lei; and Executive Editor of Macau Literary Medley Eric Chau.

In the realm of the Visual Arts, the Macau Literary Festival will hold solo exhibitions by Hong Kong-born Australian artist John Young and by local talent Wong Ka Long, whose works are inspired by the Portuguese/Macau poet Camilo Pessanha.

In 2017 the Michel Vaillant BD series celebrates its 60th anniversary, and Philippe Graton inaugurates a Macau exhibition featuring some of the original prints from the album Rendez-vous à Macao (1983). Graton will also exhibit some of his work as a photographer.

On the Performing Arts calendar of this 6th edition of The Script Road are concerts by renowned musician Sérgio Godinho (15 March, Venetian Theatre) and by Taiwanese singer Christine C.C. Hsu (16 March, Venetian Theatre). Theatre company DEMO (Dispositivo Experimental, Multidisciplinar e Orgânico) will also make an appearance at one of Macau’s most iconic historical locations — to be announced soon — with a performance inspired by Camilo Pessanha.

The Macau Literary Festival partners with the University of Macau launching a Writers-in-Residence Programme

This year’s edition of the Macau Literary Festival celebrates the start of a new initiative: a Writers-in-Residence Programme organised in partnership with the University of Macau (UM) and its English Department. Singaporean Grace Chia has the honour of being the first author to participate in this two-week project, designed to promote the development of university students’ creative and writing skills.

The Macau Literary Festival aims to continue the Writers-in-Residence Programme as an ongoing series, in partnership with UM, bringing noted authors from various countries to the city and providing students with opportunities for extended learning.

 

The Macau Literary Festival cooperates with the Portuguese-Language Writers’ Summit and Cape Verde’s brand new Morabeza Literary Festival

The Macau Literary Festival has partnered with the Union of Portuguese-Speaking Capital Cities (UCCLA) to bring the Portuguese-Language Writers’ Summit to Macau. This literary summit has been held for the past seven years in various countries, most recently in Cape Verde in 2016, with this year’s hosting honours falling to Macau. The two organisations have collaborated to invite a number of the Portuguese-speaking authors who will attend the Festival.

Also in the course of this 6th edition of The Script Road, a partnership will be unveiled with the brand new Morabeza – Cape Verde Literary Festival, set to inaugurate its debut season at the end of 2017 in Cidade da Praia. The partnership provides for an author from Macau to participate each year in the literary event in Cape Verde, and vice-versa. Cape Verdean writer and current Minister of Culture and Creative Industries Abraão Vicente begins the partnership as this year’s emissary to The Script Road.

ABOUT THE MACAU LITERARY FESTIVAL

The 6th edition of the Macau Literary Festival will take place from 4–19 March 2017 and will be based at the Old Court Building — a former Government office erected in 1951 and located in the city centre — where a book fair will remain open throughout the event. A new anthology of short stories about Macau, published in three languages (Chinese, Portuguese and English), will be released during the Festival.

The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival was founded in 2012 by local newspaper Ponto Final — a periodical currently celebrating its 25th anniversary — and is based in Macau Special Administrative Region (MSAR). The Festival began as the first and largest gathering of literati from China and the Portuguese-Speaking Countries ever organised in the world. In recent years, the Festival has gained in popularity, becoming an international event that welcomes renowned writers, publishers, translators, journalists, musicians, filmmakers and visual artists from various geographies and nationalities. The 2016 edition of the Macau Literary Festival brought together authors of 12 nationalities, including US writer Adam Johnson, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2012 novel The Orphan Master’s Son. In 2017, the Festival gathers guests from over 20 regions and countries, among them two Man Booker Prize 2016 finalists.

The Macau Literary Festival has the support of the MSAR Government and Macau Foundation, as well as that of several private entities including the Festival’s Platinum Sponsor: SJM – Sociedade de Jogos de Macau. A number of private companies, local associations, schools and universities also support the literary event. The Diplomatic Missions of some of the countries represented by writers attending the Festival have also lent their support to The Script Road.

3
Jan

The Script Road Short Story Competition extends its deadline until January 31st

The 5th edition of The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival Short Story Competition has extended its deadline to January 31st, 2017. The stories in Portuguese, English or Chinese, should be sent to Rua de Camilo Pessanha, Nº 21, Macau. Alternatively, the participants can send the texts by e-mail to the address “press@thescriptroad.org”.

The contest will have similar rules to the ones applied in previous years. The winners (one for each language – Chinese, Portuguese and English) will be chosen by writers who visited The Script Road before, with a pre-selection being done by a jury composed by representatives of the festival’s organization. Authors Chan Koonchung, Ricardo Adolfo and Bengt Ohlsson – all guests of the Festival’s 2016 edition – will be the juries of the 2017’s Short Story Competition.

The Macau Literary Festival winners will take home, each, a MOP 10.000 prize and, as in previous editions, awarded texts will be published in a book – in the three languages – alongside with the ones written by the authors who visited Macau during the latest edition of The Script Road.

The rules for the competition are available at www.thescriptroad.org and at the Macau Literary Festival Facebook page. The contest is open to all participants who write in Chinese, Portuguese or English. All short stories must be focused in Macau.

The next book of The Script Road Short Stories and Other Writings collection will be published and presented during Macau Literary Festival 6th edition, in March 2017.

13
Oct

The Script Road 5th Short Story Competition – Regulations

The Script Road short story competition is accepting works in three languages and the final jury will consist of renowned writers invited for the Festival’s previous edition. 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 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 totally original and may be in Chinese, Portuguese or English.
c) The text should have a maximum of 3500 words in Portuguese and English, and 6000 words in Chinese. Texts exciding this limits will automatically be excluded from the contest.

3. Deadline and submission
a) The stories should be delivered at the premises of the newspaper Ponto Final, at Rua de Camilo Pessanha, Nº 21, Macau, up to 8pm of December 31, 2016.
b) The works sent by mail must bear the stamp with a dispatch date before December 31, 2016.
c) Projects must be delivered in a sealed envelope containing the inscription on the outside “The Script Road Short 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 CD with the short story soft-file, all the contact information (full name, email and telephone number), as well as a photocopy of any identification document.
e) The participants can send the texts by e-mail to the address “press@thescriptroad.org”, in this case there is no need to send by post.

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 language. This committee will make a first pre-selection of five texts, which are then to be put forward for consideration by the final jury. Renowned writers who attended the Festival’s previous editions will be the ones to choose 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 5th edition of the festival. The winners will, in this way, see their published works alongside names of the jury writers themselves and other authors.

b) Winners (one in each language) will receive prize money of MOP 10.000.

6. Final Considerations
a) Participation in the competition implies full acceptance of this regulation.
b) All information is available at www.thescriptroad.org
c) Entries in the contest will not be returned to their authors.
d) The Script Road reserves the right to publish for the period of one year, in the original and translated versions, the distinguished works in the competition as well as any other works sent by the participants and not awarded. The copyright for the first publication (in periodical publications and book) belongs to the editor and the subsequent to the respective authors.

13
Oct

Writers Chan Koonchung, Ricardo Adolfo and Bengt Ohlsson to be the juries of Macau Literary Festival 5th Short Story Competition

The 5th edition of The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival Short Story Competition is accepting texts in Chinese, Portuguese and English. The stories should be delivered at the premises of the newspaper Ponto Final, at Rua de Camilo Pessanha, Nº 21, Macau, up to 8pm of November 30, 2016.

The competition will have similar rules to the ones applied in previous years. The winners (one for each language – Chinese, Portuguese and English) will be chosen by writers who visited The Script Road before, with a pre-selection being done by a jury composed by representatives of the festival’s organization and other invited members. Authors Chan Koonchung, Ricardo Adolfo and Bengt Ohlsson – all guests of the Festival in its 2016 edition, last March – will be the juries for this 2016 edition.

The Macau Literary Festival keeps the MOP 10.000 prize money for each of the winners and, as in previous editions, awarded texts will be published in a book – in the three languages – alongside with the ones written by the authors who visited Macau during the latest edition of The Script Road.

The rules for the competition are available at www.thescriptroad.org. The contest continues to be open to all participants who write in Chinese, Portuguese or English. All short stories must be somehow about Macau.

The next book of The Script Road Short Stories and Other Writings collection will be published and presented during Macau Literary Festival 6th edition, in March 2017.

29
Mar

Zhou Younghua, Darío Bravo and Jane Camens are the winners of The Script Road 4th Short Story Competition

 

Local author Zhong Younghua (Chinese language), Brazilian writer Darío Bravo (Portuguese) and Australian author Jane Camens (English) are the winners of the 4th Short Story Competition launched by The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival. The three winners will receive a MOP 10.000 money prize each, and they are having their stories translated and published in three languages, alongside with the ones written by the authors who have visited the Festival in 2015.

 

The 4th Short Story Competition was the most participated so far, with more than 100 texts being submitted.

 

Mr. Blackrose, by Zhong Younghua, is the story of a gloomy Chinese man who regularly visits the same coffee shop in Macau, carrying a black rose and a number of dark secrets. The story was chosen as the winner by renowned author Wang Anyi. “I selected Mr. Blackrose from amongst the four finalists, because it is a piece of narrative possessing a certain level of skill and style, with a complete story, a logical structure, and fluid prose”, she explains. “The fictional space of the coffee shop creates the perfect environment for this story to unfold, hinting at the romantic transformation of an unbearable fate, so a cramped existence is finally able to open up, radiating with the pursuit of classical values”, Ms Wang adds. Wang Anyi says that “life in Macao is rarely represented in literature, and so these pieces have value in opening up these pathways”.

 

On the Portuguese-speaking competition, the award goes to Brazilian author Darío Bravo. His story, Green Persimmon, is about a man dealing with the past and the loss of someone he loves. Carlos André considers that this short story “surprises for the richness of the human portrait, by the perfection of the tracing, the mastery of the word, the strength of the imagination (…) A short story is like that: short. But when it is possible to accommodate so much inside it, as in Green Persimmon, being brief is everything”.

 

Australian writer Jane Camens, a guest of The Script Road this year, won the English-language competition with After Midnight, a story set on the night of Macau’s Handover to China, in December 1999.

 

The jury, Chinese author Yan Ge, says about this piece: “Guided by the story, the reader witnesses one day and two nights in the lives of the people of the time; the international correspondents, the Portuguese, the Chinese, and the Macanese. The story is insightful and genuine, lyrical and poignant. It shows a comprehensive picture of this grand farewell, as well as a personal journey of love and loss. The complexity and ambiguity of humanity should never be forgotten, especially in a time of transition”.

 

The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival will soon announce the rules and deadlines of the 5th Short Story Competition.

6
Mar

Portuguese piano player Mário Laginha joins Cristina Branco in Macau

 

The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival is pleased to announce that Portuguese piano player and composer Mário Laginha is joining fado singer Cristina Branco, together with other musicians, on stage at the Macau Cultural Centre on March 12.

The piano player, who is one of the most creative contemporary Portuguese jazz musicians, will have the opportunity, during the concert in Macau, to play one of his creations.

Laginha acknowledged since a child his above average abilities for playing the piano, but only decided to embrace a career in music after hearing Keith Jarrett on TV in the 70’s.

In Macau, along with Cristina Branco, Laginha will showcase her versions of classics from Chico Buarque, such as “Construção” or “Sabiá” (with music from Tom Jobim), and also poems by Maria do Rosário Pedreira and Fernando Pessoa.

During the concert all songs will be translated into English and Chinese.

5
Mar

Macau Literary Festival has just started at the Old Court Building

 

The 5th Edition of The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival has kicked off today at the Old Court Building with the presence of the Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture, Dr. Alexis Tam in a Opening Ceremony where all our Main Supporters, Sponsors and Supporters also joined in a celebration of literature and culture..

 

“We are already in the 5th Edition of the Festival, which not only reflects our respect towards literature, but it is also a way to open the door to the world, so that people can know and understand better the charms of the cultural diversity of this city. This way, all the world can take a look and witness the human nature, that is not only abundant but also sterile”, said Yao Feng, vice-director of The Script Road, and an organizer along with Hélder Beja, also vice-director, and Ricardo Pinto, Director of the Macau Literary Festival.

 

This year – and for the first time – The Script Road pays tribute to two writers from the past: Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu in the 400th anniversary of his death and Portuguese poet Camilo Pessanha, who lived and died in Macau 90 years ago.

 

For this edition, which is the more international edition of all, The Script Road will receive writers from all continents – such as China, Portugal, Ireland, Australia, Spain, Wales, Sweden, Philippines, U.S., Brazil, Guinea Bissau, etc.

 

The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival is happening from March 5 to 19, with its main base at the Old Court Building.

15
Feb

Macau Literary Festival confirms attendance of Pulitzer Prize winner Adam Johnson and screening of latest film from Ivo M. Ferreira

The Script Road is pleased to announce that Letters From War, receiving its world premiere today at the 66th Berlin Film Festival, will be screened on opening day of the Macau Literary Festival (March 5, 7.30pm, UA Galaxy Cinemas), marking the Asian Premiere of this latest production from director Ivo M. Ferreira.

Letters From War (Cartas da Guerra) is based on a book published in 2005 by renowned Portuguese author António Lobo Antunes. The epistolary book brings together letters the young doctor and aspiring author wrote to his wife in 1971 upon being drafted into the Portuguese Army and posted to Angola during the Colonial War. The film is presently in competition for the Golden Bear at the Berlinale. The venue for the film screening at the Macau Literary Festival is sponsored by Galaxy Entertainment Group.

Also featuring in this year’s edition of the Festival is author Adam Johnson, winner of the 2015 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction for his collection of short stories Fortune Smiles and the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel The Orphan Master’s Son (2012), an epic tour de force in which the writer provides a riveting portrait of North Korea. The New York Times described the book as “a daring and remarkable novel, a novel that not only opens a frightening window on the mysterious kingdom of North Korea, but one that also excavated the very meaning of love and sacrifice”.
The Orphan Master’s Son is a New York Times Bestseller and was chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year (2013) by the Financial Times, The New Yorker and the Washington Post, among others.

The Macau Literary Festival is sorry to inform the public that Dominican American author Junot Díaz has said he will not be able to take part in this year’s festival, due to personal reasons. The Pulitzer Prize winner did however affirm his interest in taking part in the Festival in the future.

2
Feb

Cristina Branco, João Caetano and Yao Shisan at The Script Road Concerts in March

 

Cristina Branco, João Caetano and Yao Shisan will appear as guest performers in The Script Road Concerts – part of the Macau Literary Festival beginning this March. These names are highlights on a performing arts programme that will also feature António Fonseca and the Foshan Cantonese Opera Troupe, two acts that will showcase productions of classics from the literatures of Portugal and China, respectively: Os Lusíadas and Peony My Beauty – an adaptation of The Peony Pavilion.

 

One of the most acclaimed voices in Portugal, Cristina Branco (March 12, Macau Cultural Centre) belongs to a generation of musicians that in the mid-1990s have found in fado their own way of expressing themselves (thereby contributing to an astonishing reinvigoration of the traditional song form of Portugal). Like them, Cristina has begun to define her own journey, in which respect for tradition walks hand in hand with a desire for innovation. For the singer, words have always been deserving of careful attention. Therefore, Cristina Branco is a singer of poets, amongst them the greatest in Portugal (Camões, Pessoa, David Mourão-Ferreira, José Afonso …) and abroad (Paul Éluard, Léo Ferré, Alfonsina Storni, Slauerhoff).

 

Chinese folk singer Yao Shisan (March 11, Macau Cultural Centre) achieved widespread fame in 2011 for his online release of the single “Blind”. His songs, sung in the local dialect of his hometown of Guiyang, Guizhou Province, have become very popular. In 2014, he sang for the ending song of the 51st Taiwan Golden Horse Award winning film Blind Message. Yao crafts folk songs about ordinary life, spiked with large doses of quick and clever humour, which have made him an instant favourite among Chinese music fans.

 

Sharing the evening with Yao Shisan is João Caetano (March 11, Macau Cultural Centre), a Portuguese musician born and raised in Macau. At the beginning of his career, Caetano became a member of the legendary jazz band Incognito and has been working with the likes of Leona Lewis, Dionne Bromfield, Mario Biondi, Tony Momrelle and Reel People. In 2013 Caetano launched a solo project exploring Portuguese roots and material in which fado and traditional music exert great influence.

 

CANTONESE OPERA AND PERFORMANCE

 

On the 400th anniversary of Tang Xianzu’s death, the Festival will pay tribute to this famous playwright from the Ming Dynasty, author of one of China’s best-loved classical operas, The Peony Pavilion. As one of this year’s special guests, The Script Road features the Foshan Cantonese Opera Troupe, who bring to Macau a segment of their exquisitely designed and meticulously crafted production Peony My Beauty – an adaptation of The Peony Pavilion (March 6, Dom Pedro V Theatre). Foshan Cantonese Opera Troupe will also showcase some highlights of other Classic Cantonese Operas.

 

From Portugal, António Fonseca (March 7, Dom Pedro V Theatre) presents his interpretation of Luís de Camões’s Os Lusíadas, an epic poem which the actor has fully committed to memory and that he will showcase in a two and a half hour compact. The project of memorizing the poem’s 8,816 verses took him four years to complete, showcasing his rendition for the first time in 2012, during the Portuguese city of Guimarães’s tenure as European Capital of Culture. In Macau, Fonseca will share his passion for a text he has been living with for more than seven years, an epic poem that interrogates rather than determines an idea of collective identity.

 

 

March 6

Peony My Beauty – an adaptation of The Peony Pavilion

Foshan Cantonese Opera Troupe

Dom Pedro V Theatre

20h00

MOP 50 – tickets available at the Portuguese Bookshop (from Feb 15) and the Old Court Building (from Feb 29)

March 7

Os Lusíadas

António Fonseca

Dom Pedro V Theatre

19h30

Free Entrance – free tickets (a maximum of two will be issued per person) available at the Portuguese Bookshop (from Feb 15) and the Old Court Building (from Feb 29)

 

March 11

Yao Shisan and João Caetano

Macau Cultural Centre

20h00

MOP 150

 

March 12

Cristina Branco

Macau Cultural Centre

20h00

MOP 150

 

Tickets soon available at the Macau Cultural Centre and at Kong Seng ticketing outlets as well as online at www.macauticket.com or by dialing +853 2855 5555.

For further information please refer to www.thescriptroad.org.

21
Jan

Macau Literary Festival celebrates Camilo Pessanha and Tang Xianzu in 2016

The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival is back for its 5th edition, scheduled to happen from March 5 to 19, 2016, with its base at the Old Court Building. The festival, founded by local newspaper Ponto Final in 2012 as the first grand meeting of literates from China and Portuguese Speaking Countries ever to be organized in the world, is bringing more than 40 renowned guests to town – writers, filmmakers, actors, visual artists and musicians.

 

For the first time, the Festival will pay a tribute to two writers from the past. On the 400th anniversary of his death, Tang Xianzu 湯顯祖 is remembered as one of the first Chinese authors to have contacted with foreigners in Macau, a city he visited in 1591. Tang, a very famous playwriter from the Ming Dynasty and the author of The Peony Pavilion, wrote a number of poems about Macau, immortalizing the city in his works.

 

Portuguese poet Camilo Pessanha is the other author to deserve the Festival’s attention, 90 years after his death. The author of Clepsidra, who lived and died in Macau, left a valuable legacy still being very much studied these days. The Script Road is inviting some of the most renown scholars specialized in Pessanha’s works to join the programme this year – Paulo Franchetti, Daniel Pires and Pedro Barreiros.

 

A WIDE RANGE OF AUTHORS

Renown Chinese writer Chan Koonchung 陳冠中, author of The Fat Years, a novel published in 16 countries, is one of the highlights amongst the Chinese guests this year. Other confirmed names include Chen Xiwo 陳希我, Zhang Yueran 張悅然, Zhou Jia Ning 周嘉寧, Lolita Hu 胡晴舫, Wu Mingyi 吳明益, Shen Haobo 沈浩波, Zheng Yuanjie 鄭淵潔 and Yang Chia-Hsien 楊佳嫻.

 

On the Portuguese-speaking guest-list, writer and historian José Pacheco Pereira is one of the highlights. Proprietor of one of the most important private libraries in Portugal, author of Communist leader Álvaro Cunhal extensive biography, Pacheco Pereira is amongst the most influential intellectuals of our times in Europe. Also from Portugal, writers Rui Zink, Matilde Campilho, Paulo José Miranda, Pedro Mexia, Ricardo Adolfo, Graça Pacheco Jorge and Luísa Fortes da Cunha are amongst the confirmed names. Award winner Brazilian author Luiz Ruffato will visit Macau as well, just like Marcelino Freire, Carol Rodrigues and Felipe Munhoz. Ernesto Dabo, from Guinea-Bissau, completes the list of authors confirmed so far (see bios in attach).

 

GOING INTERNATIONAL

The 5th edition of The Script Road marks a big step in terms of giving the festival a more international feel, something the Organizers have been working on during these last few years. The 2016 Macau Literary Festival is welcoming authors from Ireland, Australia, Spain, Wales, Sweden, Philippines and the U.S. – some via regional / international collaborations, some exclusively invited by the Festival.

 

Dominican-American author Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize winner with The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in 2008, is joining the Festival in March, alongside his sarcastic and humoristic prose. Bengt Ohlson (Sweden), Jordi Puntí (Spain), Owen Martell (Wales), Jane Camens (Australia), Angelo Lacuesta (Philippines), Ana Maria Katigbak-Lacuesta (Philippines) and Marita Conlon-McKenna (Ireland) are other authors to be part of The Script Road this year.

 

A LOCAL TOUCH

As usual, local and Macau-based writers are a relevant part of The Script Road Programme. Amongst them are local writers Mu Xinxin 穆欣欣 and Carlos Morais José (also experts and admirers of the works of Tang Xianzu and Camilo Pessanha, respectively; renowned poet Un Sio San; scholar, literary translator and poet Carlos André and journalist and writer Mark O’Neill, who splits his time between Hong Kong, Macau and Mainland China.

 

CINEMA RULES

Local filmmakers also have a strong participation this year, with Tracy Choi, Emily Chan and Cheong Kin Man joining The Script Road to screen one film each.

 

Other than local directors, the Festival is bringing to Macau two filmmakers from Portugal. Luís Filipe Rocha, the man who’ve adapted Senna Fernandes’ book Love and Little Toes to cinema; and Sofia Marques, an award-winner documentary-maker, who will screen some of their works in town. A prominent Chinese director is expected to be confirmed soon.

 

THE ART OF SEEING

On the visual arts, the Old Court Building will be welcoming the works of a number of creators. Local artist Alexandre Marreiros is going to showcase some of his works. Eric Fok, known by depicting the old and the new Macau in his map-alike works, will present a solo exhibition; as well as Pedro Barreiros, showing some of his works about Macau – including a painting inspired by Camilo Pessanha. Chinese Hunan-born painter and calligrapher Ouyang Shijian is the other artist to showcase his works during the festival.

 

Performing arts and music concerts will also play a relevant role in this 2016 edition. All information about a number of acts is going to be released soon.

29
Jul

The Script Road 4th Short Story Competition – Regulations

 

The Script Road short story competition is accepting works in three languages and the final jury will consist of renowned writers invited for the Festival’s previous edition. 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 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 totally original and may be in Chinese, Portuguese or English.
c) The text should have a maximum of 3500 words in Portuguese and English, and 6000 words in Chinese. Texts exciding this limits will automatically be excluded from the contest.

3. Deadline and submission
a) The stories should be delivered at the premises of the newspaper Ponto Final, at Rua de Camilo Pessanha, Nº 21, Macau, up to 8pm of November 30, 2015.
b) The works sent by mail must bear the stamp with a dispatch date before November 30, 2015.
c) Projects must be delivered in a sealed envelope containing the inscription on the outside “The Script Road Short 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 CD with the short story soft-file, all the contact information (full name, email and telephone number), as well as 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 language. This committee will make a first pre-selection of five texts, which are then to be put forward for consideration by the final jury. Renowned writers who attended the Festival’s previous editions will be the ones to choose 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 4th edition of the festival. The winners will, in this way, see their published works alongside names of the jury writers themselves and other authors.

b) Winners (one in each language) will receive prize money of MOP 10.000.

6. Final Considerations
a) Participation in the competition implies full acceptance of this regulation.
b) All information is available at www.thescriptroad.org
c) Entries in the contest will not be returned to their authors.
d) The Script Road reserves the right to publish for the period of one year, in the original and translated versions, the distinguished works in the competition as well as any other works sent by the participants and not awarded. The copyright for the first publication (in periodical publications and book) belongs to the editor and the subsequent to the respective authors.

11
Feb

Macau Literary Festival brings writers Wang Anyi and Ondjaki to town

 

Filmmakers Ann Hui and João Botelho, and authors Wong Bik-wan and Francisco José Viegas are also part of this year’s programme, from March 19 to 29. Children literature is one of the highlights.

The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival is back for its 4th edition, scheduled to happen from March 19 to 29, 2015, with its base at the Old Court Building. The festival, founded by local newspaper Ponto Final in 2012 as the first grand meeting of literates from China and Portuguese Speaking Countries ever to be organized in the world, is bringing again more than 30 renown guests to town – writers, publishers, filmmakers, visual artists and musicians.

Chinese writer Wang Anyi, Chairwoman of Writers’ Association of Shanghai and author of novels such as The Song of Everlasting Sorrow, is amongst the star guests this year. On the Portuguese-speaking side, Angolan author Ondjaki, winner of the prestigious Jabuti Prize (2010) for his novel Avódezanove e o Segredo do Soviético, and the Saramago Prize (2013) for Os Transparentes is one of the most highlighted names.

“This is year, for the first time, we’re inviting the youngest readers to join the Festival, by having children literature writers highlighted at The Script Road. Overall, it’s going to be a festival aiming to have the attention of the youth, as it’s also noticeable by some of the musicians and visual artists we’ve invited”, says Macau Literary Festival Director, Ricardo Pinto.

Hongkongnese novelist Wong Bik-wan is also joining the Macau Literary Festival for a stage-performance, after winning the Dream of Red Chamber Award last year with the novel Children of Darkness. Acclaimed Chinese poet Xi Chuan and Taiwanese poet and Curator of the Taipei Poetry Festival, Hung Hung; one of the most famous children literature authors in China, Yang Hongying; renown younger writers Yan Ge (White Horse) and Murong Xuecun (Leave Me Alone – A Novel of Chengdu) complete the confirmed list of Chinese-speaking authors to attend the event.

“The 2015 Macau Literary Festival is going to bring a stunning line-up of Chinese authors. For Mainland Chinese authors, Wang Anyi is one of the best contemporary novelist in China. We are also delighted to have the renowned critical writer and New York Times columnist Murong Xuecun as well as the young novelist Yan Ge, who has already published ten novels, to join this year. In addition we are glad to present the Hong Kong well-known author Wong Bik-wan, the Taiwanese poet and screenwriter Hung Hung and also the Macau local award-winning author Joe Tang. For children literature, this year the festival is bringing you the Chinese children’s favourite author Yang Hongying, who has been nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award in 2014”, says The Script Road Vice-Director, Yao Jing Ming.

From Portugal, The Script Road is welcoming novelist and former Culture Secretary of State, Francisco José Viegas (Longe de Manaus); Saramago Prize winner João Tordo (As Três Vidas, O Bom Inverno), poet, children literature writer and acclaimed literary editor Maria do Rosário Pedreira (Poesia Reunida, A Minha Primeira Amália); and novelist and award-winning children literature writer David Machado (O Fabuloso Teatro do Gigante, Noite dos Animais Inventados).

Moving to Brazil, The Script Road is brining poet and acclaimed comedian as part of the group Porta dos Fundos, Gregório Duviver, author of A Partir De Amanhã Eu Juro Que A Vida Vai Ser Agora.

“The group of Lusophone writers we’re bringing to Macau this year is again quite relevant. They’re award-winning authors, popular and well received by the critic, as well as translated to other languages. Both poetry, with Maria do Rosário Pedreira and Gregório Duvivier; and novel, with Ondjaki, Francisco José Viegas, João Tordo and David Machado, are very well represented. Plus, most of these authors are also writing in different genres and many of them publishing books for younger audiences that we really want to attract this year”, says The Script Road Vice-Director, Hélder Beja.

Local writers will also take the stage and visit schools and universities. Novelist and children literature Joe Tang is one of the invited guests to form part of the programme. Macanese Cecília Jorge, whose writing about Macanese cuisine became popular along the years, is also joining this year’s Literary Festival, as well as Rogério Beltrão Coelho, author and publisher working for many years on Macau’s literature.

As in previous years, the festival will promote talks, book launches, workshops and a series of different activities open to everyone.

The 3rd volume of the collection The Script Road – Short Stories and Other Writings will be launched during this year’s edition. Invited guests from the 2014 edition will see their stories, poems and essays published alongside with the winners of The Script Road Short Story Competition, to be announced at the festival’s press conference, in early March.

LITERATURE AND CINEMA TOGETHER

Another highlight of The Script Road’s 4th edition is the film programming, with acclaimed filmmakers Ann Hui and João Botelho coming to Macau to show their latest films.

Ann Hui, who was awarded last year as Asian Filmmaker of the Year at Busan International Film Festival, is showing The Golden Era, a biopic drama about 1930s author Xiao Hong, one of the most important female writers in 20th century China, starring Tang Wei and Feng Shaofeng.

Portuguese director João Botelho is bringing two films with him: Os Mais, adaptation of one of the most relevant novels in Portuguese Literature, written by Eça de Queiroz; and Filme do Desassossego, where Botelho searches for inspiration in Fernando Pessoa’s remarkable poetic voice.

Miguel Costa, also coming from Portugal, will be showing No Divã, a film starring Paulo Pires, Baastet Cabeleira and Maestro António Victorino d’Almeida. Victorino d’Almeida, himself a writer, musician and famous TV broadcaster, is also a guest of this year’s festival, promises to delight local audiences with his words but also with his universal music, by giving two concerts.

The Macau Literary Festival will also hold three solo visual arts exhibitions this year. Ge Zhen, one of Mainland China’s most relevant contemporary painters, Tyrone Ho, Architect and renowned comic artist from Hong Kong, and João Fazenda, an internationally acclaimed illustrator from Portugal, will all join the event.

SCRIPT ROAD UNITES MUSIC AND POETRY AT THE VENETIAN MACAO

Lyrical flow and sonic intensity join forces on The Venetian® Macao’s Cotai Arena stage March 21st, 8pm, as The Script Road brings Macau a triple bill, heavy on the hip hop, featuring Hong Kong’s legendary LMF and the gab-gifted Gabriel o Pensador from Brazil. Macau’s own boisterous Blademark leads the charge.

Sponsored by Sands China Ltd. for the third consecutive year, The Script Road Concert has become one of the most highly-anticipated events on the Macau Literary Festival programme and a fixture in Macau’s cultural calendar which is yet another strong testament to Sands China’s continuing contribution to the development of arts and culture in Macau. Events like The Script Road Concert aim to enrich the cultural landscape of Macau and to facilitate cultural exchange.

Headlining the equinoctial event is a tireless Cantonese hip hop collective. Courageous in the face of controversy, they’ve been standing up for their beliefs and their community and culture since the early 90s. LMF is a large group with a stirring stage presence that features four emcees plus an award-winning turntablist and full rock band. They reformed in 2009 after a six-year hiatus following the release of their last album finalazy. This reunion also marked the ten-year anniversary of their debut release, LazyMuthaFucka which sold 100,000 copies worldwide which was an unprecedented triumph for a Hong Kong indie band. This pioneering posse has given voice to a generation of disenfranchised Hong Kong youth with an energetic blend of metal and funk, underpinning hip hop lyrics that cultivate self-worth and critique the establishment in equal measure.

Social and moral critique have another vehicle in the vocabulary of Brazilian rapper Gabriel o Pensador. The Thinker’s beginnings date back to the early 90s, as well, when his first, self-titled album garnered attention for the caustic wit in tracks like “Lôrabúrra” (Dumblonde), “Retrato de um Playboy” (Portrait of a Playboy) and “Lavagem Cerebral” (Brainwashing). Over the next twelve years he would release another six albums and expand his renown both at home, opening for U2’s Brazilian tour in 1998, and overseas, winning legions of fans on the Portuguese festival circuit. Following a seven-year respite from the recording studio, Gabriel has “returned to hip hop” with Sem Crise which features electronic tracks and heavy stylistic flirtation with such Brazilian musical styles as forró and baião. Of the fifth track, “Linhas Tortas” (Crooked Lines), which traces the long arc of his career and his sources of inspiration, Gabriel says, “I break out in gooseflesh whenever I sing it live.”

Live performances are bread and butter for a band like Blademark. One of Macau’s most prolific and hardest working musical acts, they are celebrating their tenth anniversary this year. It is their boundless energy that keeps them fresh as well as being the key ingredient in their metal sound that has been infused with elements of rap, funk and melodic rock. An international quartet, representative of cosmopolitan Macau, Macanese founder and front man Fortes Pakeong Sequeira and bassist Raymond Nogueira were joined in 2013 by Japanese guitarist Akitsugu Fukushima and Canadian drummer Darren Kopas. Their potent set will set the stage for an inspiring night of rhythm and rhyme.

Tickets for the 8 p.m., Mar. 21, 2015 performance of The Script Road Concert at the Cotai Arena go on sale Tuesday, Feb. 17 via Cotai Ticketing, and can be purchased from HKD/MOP 200 until Feb 28, and MOP 300 from March 1 till March 21. Tickets can be booked online at www.cotaiticketing.com, or by phone at +853 2882 8818 (Macao) / +852 6333 6660(HK) / 4001 206 618 (China). Tickets are also available through Hong Kong Ticketing (customer service fee applies), online at www.HKTicketing.com or by phone at +852 3128 8288, and via Macao Kong Seng Ticketing Network, online at www.macauticket.com, by phone at +853 2855 5555, or in person at selected retail outlets (for locations, visit: www.macauticket.com/TicketWeb/ServiceStations.aspx). Tickets are also available at the Portuguese Bookshop.

1
Jul

3rd Short Story Competition

3rd Short Story Competition – The Script Road, Macau Literary Festival

The Script Road short story competition is accepting works in three languages and the final jury will consist of renownedwriters invited for the Festival’s previous editions. 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 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 totally original and may be in Chinese, Portuguese or English.

c) The text should have a maximum of 3500 words in Portuguese and English, and 6000 words in Chinese. Texts exciding this limits will automatically be excluded from the contest.

3. Deadline and submission

a) The stories should be delivered at the premises of the newspaper Ponto Final, at Rua de Camilo Pessanha, Nº 21, Macau, China (no postal code needed), up to 8pm of the day October 30, 2014.

b) The works sent by mail must bear the stamp with a dispatch date before October 30, 2014.

c) Projects must be delivered in a sealed envelope containing the inscription on the outside “The Script Road Short 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 CD with the short story soft-file, all the contact information (full name, email and telephone number), as well as 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 language. This committee will make a first pre-selection of five texts, which are then to be put forward for consideration by the final jury. Renowned writers who attended the Festival’s previous editions will be the ones to choose 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 second edition of the festival. The winners will, in this way, see their published works alongside names of the jury writers themselves and other authors.

b) Winners (one in each language) will receive prize money of MOP 10.000.

6. Final Considerations

a) Participation in the competition implies full acceptance of this regulation.

b) All information is available at www.thescriptroad.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 works in the competition as well as any other works sent by the participants and not awarded. The copyright for the first publication (in periodical publications and book) belongs to the editor and the subsequent to the respective authors.

25
Mar

Session with Yan Geling

The fourth afternoon of the Macau Literary Festival gathered together the best chinese novel writer, Yan Geling, and the writer Li Guanding.

In this presentation of Yan Geling’s last book, about Macau and the gambling world, she stated that writing for her “is a supplement and an extension of psychology. It’s a method that uses words to describe what human beings think about themselves.”Worried about the new writers of Macao, Li Guanding, considers that Macao’s writer are very descriptive, which he thinks is something that has to change.The audience has showed interest about Yan Geling’s new book and also asked for a few autographs.

23
Feb

Script Road leads renowned musicians to The Venetian Macao

Indie queen Cat Power, bossa nova poet Arnaldo Antunes, singer-actress Tian Yuan and folk-rock heroes Omnipotent Youth Society take to the Cotai Arena stage at The Venetian Macao.

Macau’s Annual Literary Festival, The Script Road, now in its third year, once again promises the city a star-studded weekend of music at the The Venetian Macao’s Cotai Arena, on March 29 and 30. American singer-songwriter Cat Power and Brazilian rock and bossa nova legend Arnaldo Antunes pair off Saturday, while China’s hottest indie band, the Omnipotent Youth Society (萬能青年旅店), and singer-actress-novelist Tian Yuan (田原) team up Sunday for two Script Road Concerts set to serenade audiences over the last weekend in March.

Sponsored by Sands China Ltd. for the second consecutive year, and featuring two of the most highly-anticipated performances of this year’s Macau Literary Festival, The Script Road Concerts are another strong testament to Sands China’s ongoing contribution to the development of arts and culture in Macao. Events like The Script Road Concerts aim to enrich the cultural landscape of Macao and to facilitate cultural exchange.

First in a foursome of musical acts whose artistry relies as much on the word as it does on tone is songsmith Arnaldo Antunes, erstwhile vocalist and lead lyricist of seminal Brazilian rock band the Titãs, partner to Marisa Monte in the hit collaboration Tribalistas and award-winning poet and solo artist since 1992. With a presence “at oncequiet and impressive, violent and smooth, refined and pop,” Antunes “embraces both the legacy of Bossa Nova” and “the romantic music of the 50s, and rock and post-rock already merged with reggae and funk” (Bomb Magazine). Last year’s Disco became the 13th solo release in 20 years to feature his warm bossa baritone, singing sharp lyrics with intimacy and the spontaneity of speech.

Antunes takes to the Cotai Arena stage at 8pm on March 29, Saturday, in advance of Cat Power, stage name of American indie chanteuse Chan Marshall. The acclaimed singer-songwriter scored a spectacular return to form with her latest record, Sun. A “passionate pop album of electronic music, filtered through a singer-songwriter’s soul” (Consequence of Sound), it features new songs that are “a contemporary splash to the face” (Pitchfork). The first album of original Cat Power material in six years, Sun was written, performed and produced entirely by Marshall, who calls the record “a rebirth”. Very well-received by her fans, Sun opened at number 10 on the Billboard 200, making it the highest charting Cat Power album to date.

The following evening of March 30 sees Wuhan native Tian Yuan open an earlier Sunday concert, at 7pm. The velvet-voiced pixie, well known to moviegoers for her HK Film Award-winning screen debut as the lesbian love interest of Josie Ho in the 2004 film Butterfly, began her musical career in 2001 at the tender age of 16, fronting the acclaimed band Hopscotch. Equally at home writing novels and singing in English or Mandarin, Tian released her self-titled solo debut in 2010 with a collection of songs in both languages.

Following Tian’s performance Sunday evening comes the sophisticated psychedelia of the Omnipotent Youth Society (OYS), who forge trumpet and string-laced folk-rock anthems featuring “powerful, poetic lyrics and infectious hooks” (TimeOut Shanghai). Their songs, rooted in the industrial dystopia of their hometown, Shijiazhuang, resonate powerfully with the everyman and have earned them legions of fans who know all the words by heart. Dark horse winners of Band of the Year at the 2011 Chinese Music Media Awards (an honour usually reserved for mainstream pop acts), the quartet released their first and only album to date in 2010, having already honed their sound playing together for 16 years.

***********************************************

The Script Road Concerts

Venue: Cotai Arena, The Venetian Macao

Concert 1 – March 29, 8pm

Arnaldo Antunes (貓女魔力)

Cat Power (貓女魔力)

Concert 2 – March 30, 7pm

Tian Yuan (田原)

Omnipotent Youth Society (萬能青年旅店)

Tickets for The Script Road Concerts go on sale Friday, Feb. 28 at all Cotai Ticketing box offices, and can be purchased for HKD/MOP 350. Tickets can be booked online at www.CotaiTicketing.com, or by phone at +853 2882 8818 (Macao) / +852 6333 6660 (HK) / 4001 206 618 (China). Tickets are also available at the Portuguese Bookshop.

21
Feb

Press Release

The 3rd annual Script Road – Macau Literary Festival is scheduled to take place from March 20 to March 30, once again bringing to town a number of renowned poets, novelists, translators, journalists and visual artists. Jiang Fangzhou, a young writer and journalist with enormous prestige in China, will be one of the authors in attendance. The prominent Portuguese writer and journalist Clara Ferreira Alves is also coming to Macau. Other guests will be announced at the press conference, set for Wednesday, Feb. 26 at 3:30pm in the IACM Library.

This year, The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival, an event organised by the Portuguese-language newspaper Ponto Final and by the Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Macau SAR Government, will adhere to much the same model as it did in previous editions. The programme consists of numerous conferences and talks open to the public in various venues, university visits, close contact with local secondary schools, a book fair, visual art exhibitions, musical performances and film screenings.

Now in its third year, The Script Road will once again bring to Macau some of the most eminent literary names in the Portuguese-speaking world, Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. There will also be a Spanish-language author joining the festival. Local Macau authors will have a strong showing in the event, as well.

One of the most important moments in the Festival will be the presentation of its second annual anthology of short stories, essays and poems inspired by Macau. Guest writers, who visited Macau last year for the Festival’s 2nd edition, wrote many of the works collected in this new book. Also collected in the anthology will be the winning stories from The Script Road 2nd Short Story Competition. The names of the winning authors will be announced at the press conference.

Joining The Script Road organising committee, with Ponto Final and the Macau Cultural Affairs Bureau, are the Macau Pen Club, the University of Macau and the Macau Polytechnic Institute.

19
Jul

2nd Short Story Competition

2nd Short Story Competition – The Script Road, Macau Literary Festival

The Script Road short story competition is accepting works in three languages and the final jury will consist of the writers Bi Feyiu (Chinese), Rui Zink (Portuguese) and Han Shaogong (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 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 totally original and may be in Chinese, Portuguese or English.
c) The text should have a maximum of 3500 words in Portuguese and English, and 6000 words in Chinese. Texts exciding this limits will automatically be excluded from the contest.

3. Deadline and submission
a) <strong>The deadline was extended.</strong> 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 <strong>October 31, 2013</strong>.
b) The works sent by mail must bear the stamp with a dispatch date before October 31, 2013.
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 CD with the short story soft-file, all the contact information (full name, email and telephone number), as well as 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 language. This committee will make a first pre-selection of five texts, which are then to be put forward for consideration by the final jury. Bi Feyiu (Chinese), Rui Zink (Portuguese) and Han Shaogong (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 second edition of the festival. The winners will, in this way, see their published works alongside names of the jury writers themselves and other authors.
b) Winners (one in each language) will receive a prize money of MOP 10.000.

6. Final Considerations
a) Participation in the competition implies full acceptance of this regulation.
b) All information is available at www.thescriptroad.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 works in the competition as well as other works sent by the participants. The copyright for the first publication (in periodical publications and book) belongs to the editor and the subsequent to the respective authors.

11
Mar

The Script Road Festival gets off to a strong start with a lively discussion

 

1 First Panel March 10With a number of distinguished guests, everything is possible at this second edition of the Macau Literary Festival – The Script Road, where “the concern to consolidate the project merges with the will to make progress”, the Director of the Macau Literary Festival –The Script Road, Ricardo Pinto, said during the official opening of the literary and cultural event, that will enliven Macau until March 16, with literary debates, art exhibitions and concerts.

Now with greater involvement of public bodies such as the Cultural Institute and Macao Foundation, “the festival gains critical mass and ventures into new areas”, with the presence of French authors, a poetry competition as well as a short story competition, a book fair, theatre, artists in residence and music concerts. “As others have said before, that which I have already done is of no interest to me now: I only think about that which I have not yet done. That’s the spirit that drives us. Yes, this festival will not be like the first one”, said Ricardo Pinto.

The Director started his speech with a tribute to the architect Manuel Vicente and described the “great loss for Macau which was the death yesterday (Saturday) of Manuel Vicente, rightly regarded as ‘The Architect of Macau'”. Ricardo Pinto went on to describe him as a “man of a great intelligence and a unique sense of humour” who helped “many generations to think Macau, he made ​​many people love Macau”.

The Vice President of the Cultural Institute and Deputy Director of The Script Road, Jing Yao Ming, thanked the guests from around the world for their presence and stressed that Macau is a place of rich cultural diversity, “its writers come from different countries and backgrounds and have different cultures” and proposed the question “how can we define the literature of Macau?”. Jing Yao Ming added that “there are still disputes and these disputes will continue,” and challenged the participants “maybe our invited experts of the literary world can discuss and answer this question”.

The representative of Macao Foundation at the ceremony, Zhong Yi Seabra de Mascarenhas, said that “Macao Foundation believes that, today, our town is increasingly feeling the influences of globalization”, adding “to this end the Macau Literary Festival – The Script Road has created, not only a meeting place for different cultures, but also new opportunities to show the world what is being done in Macau today, namely in the world of literature”.

“Placing Macau in contemporary literature is one of the founding ideas of the Macau Literary Festival – The Script Road” said the Deputy Director of the festival, Hélder Beja, who presented the festival’s first book in the collection of stories and essays. Entitled First things First, this book resulted from the first edition of the festival and is “a happy synthesis of those unforgettable moments when Macau rediscovered itself through The Script Road” added Ricardo Pinto. The opening ceremony also saw the awarding of prizes to some of the short story competition winners present at the ceremony, Susana Gonçalves, Kelvin Costa, Célia Matias and Lawrence Lei.

The first panel of the Festival, Writers’ Influences and Perspectives in a Globalised World, moderated by Agnes Lam, featured enthusiastic participation by several guests, including Pan Lei from Macau, Mauro Munhoz from Brazil, the Chinese authors Bi Feiyu and Yi Sha, the Timorese Luís Cardoso, the Portuguese author Dulce Maria Cardoso and Angolan writer José Eduardo Agualusa. The “history of mankind is a history of encounters and disencounters and what is important is for these encounters to be done in peace and with respect for one another, as we are doing here today at this literary meeting. I have a deep dislike of the idea of pure cultures, as much as I dislike the idea of frontiers and police, I dream that one day all the border police turn into architects and build bridges”, said José Eduardo Agualusa. Luis Cardoso spoke of his role as a “Timorese diplomat in the world” during the struggle for independence of East Timor against Indonesia and the importance of the relationship between Timor and Macau. “Many Macanese were exiled to Timor during the colonial period and many Macanese married Timorese, had children and many Timorese fought for the independence of East Timor”, said Luis Cardoso.

On the topic of cultural globalization the author Dulce Maria Cardoso said that “What we are talking about here is a political issue, which is citizens being more open to the world”.

After the dynamic discussion the official opening of the Book Fair in the Praça da Amizade (Hotel Sintra Square) took place, providing a unique opportunity for the public to meet the authors and get autographs. The opening day ended with a dynamic concert by Croatian jazz singer Ines Trickovic.

“It’s good that tangible works result from The Script Road” director Miguel Gonçalves Mendes

The opening day began with the premiere of the film “Nada tenho de meu – work in progress” by Miguel Gonçalves Mendes, and after a discussion with the audience the director said that it would be good if the Macau Literary Festival – The Script Road resulted in tangible projects like this film, that brought together three writers, actors and directors. Miguel Gonçalves Mendes is already working on another project, taking advantage of his return to Macau to film the Portuguese writer Valter Hugo Mãe for a new project called “O sentido da vida”, in co-production with Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles.

“I Love Macau”, T (H) REE and Bernardo Devlin in pre-opening concert on Saturday

Praça da Amizade was the location for the pre-opening event of The Script Road, with a small sample of the book fair and concerts, which took place on Saturday night, anticipating a week filled with many events. “I have love for Macau” the musician Wilson Tsang, from the cultural project T (H) REE, said, a project which gathers musicians from Portugal and several Asian countries. The T (H) REE project, along with the Portuguese musician Bernard Devlin, took the stage, animating the night before the official opening of the event.

1
Mar

Joanna Wang to headline Sands China Script Road Concerts

 

Taiwanese singer-songwriter Joanna Wang (王若琳) will perform live in Macau on Friday, the 15th of March at the Venetian Arena. The concert is one in a series of musical events belonging to the 2nd Annual Macau Literary Festival – The Script Road.

Joanna Wang has a relaxed, smoky voice and an emotional range that belie her tender age, drawing comparisons to Astrud Gilberto and Diana Krall, with some hailing her as Taiwan’s answer to Norah Jones. The Taipei native was raised in Los Angeles and sings most of her original lyrics in English, but her rise to stardom began in Asia with a slew of “Best Newcomer” honours (2008 Singapore Hit, Sina and Beijing Chinese Pop Music Awards) and a “Best Newcomer” nomination at Taiwan’s 20th Golden Melodys.

Of her four albums, the latest, The Adventures of Bernie the Schoolboy (2011, Sony BMG Taiwan), exhibits her flair for songwriting, her folk-jazzy vocal stylings and a musical taste that is refreshingly offbeat for someone with so much success in the Asian pop mainstream, though not surprising given her professed range of influences, from the Beatles to Oingo Boingo.

The concert begins at 8:30pm with local rock band L.A.V.Y. in the supporting slot. A leader and mainstay of the Macau scene since 2007, L.A.V.Y. recently brought their pop rock songwriting talents to bear on a new release, My Lonely Journey (2012), featuring ten original songs mastered by Brit Pop guru Jon Astley of Close to the Edge (London).

The following evening, two outstanding acts from Portugal will share stage, Saturday, the 16th of March, to close the 2nd Annual Macau Literary Festival’s Sands China Script Road Concerts.

Dead Combo is a guitar and bass duo, renowned for their bewitching psychedelic Latin sound and fantasy-filled rockabilly aesthetic. Their discography boasts three “Records of the Year” in Portugal and one, Lusitânia Playboys (2008), honoured as “Record of the Decade”. They were featured in the Lisbon episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, and three of their records have reached the top 10 on the North American iTunes charts.

Camané is the undisputed “Prince of Fado”, a Portuguese music genre recently listed as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. He has released six million-selling albums, released in several European and Asian countries, and has been distinguished with several awards for his voice and talent. British biographer David Bret calls him “The greatest fadista since Amália Rodrigues and Maria da Fé.”

Joanna Wang and Camané’s performances will have subtitles in Portuguese, Chinese and English.

 

The Sands China Script Road Concerts

at Venetian Arena

 

CONCERT 1 :: March 15, 8:30pm

L.A.V.Y.

Joanna Wang (王若琳)

 

CONCERT 2 :: March 16, 8:30pm

Dead Combo

Camané

 

Tickets go on sale this weekend (Saturday, March 2) via the Venetian Box Office, www.cotaiticketing.com and the Portuguese Bookshop.

1
Feb

Back on the Road with more than 30 guests

The 2nd edition of The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival will be held from March 10 to 16 and will bring to the city more than 30 renowned writers, publishers, translators, journalists, musicians, filmmakers, visual artists and more.

This year the event will receive even further significant support from the Cultural Affairs Bureau of Macau and the Macau Foundation, who now co-organise the festival together with Ponto Final newspaper.

Following last year’s model, conferences and debates will take place alongside a book fair, art exhibitions, music concerts and film screenings.

The 2013 Festival programme will feature prominent contemporary Chinese writers including Bi Feiyu, winner of some of the highest literary awards in China; Han Shaogong, author of “A Dictionary of Maqiao” and translator of the work of Fernando Pessoa; Hong Ying, one of the best internationally known Chinese writers; and Yi Sha, a controversial contemporary poet. Other names such as Sheng Keyi, Qiu Huadong, Pan Wei, Wang Gang, Huang Lihai, Li Shao Jun and Taiwanese poet Xi Murong are also very influential writers in contemporary Chinese literature – and all of them will be joining the festival.

On the Portuguese-speaking side, The Script Road is inviting Dulce Maria Cardoso, one of the greatest novelists of her generation; Rui Zink and Ricardo Araújo Pereira, who work with language and humour in a very special way; Francisco José Viegas, former Portuguese Culture Secretary of State, writer and publisher; Valter Hugo Mãe, recent winner the PT Prize, one of the most prestigious literary prizes for Portuguese-speaking authors; writer and journalist Alexandra Lucas Coelho; journalist and translator Carlos Vaz Marques; publisher Bárbara Bulhosa; and, with the support of Casa de Portugal, novelist Deana Barroqueiro.

José Eduardo Agualusa, an Angolan author and one of the best-known Portuguese-speaking contemporary African writers, will also join this festival edition, as will Luís Cardoso, probably the most important literary voice from East Timor. From Brazil the poet Regis Bonvicino and Paraty Festival director Mauro Munhoz have already been confirmed to take part. Paloma and Cecília Amado, daughter and granddaughter of Jorge Amado (1912-2001), one of the greatest Brazilian novelists of all time, are coming to Macau to pay homage to his work by showing a documentary and a fiction film based on his life and on one of his books, respectively.

A number of local writers, including poet Fernanda Dias, Tong Mui Siu, Chek In, Lou Mou and Wong Man Fai, are also among the invited guests, representing the Macau literary scene.

The Script Road has also decided to gradually open the event to other Asian and Latin writers, and that’s why this year we welcome French authors Antoine Volodine and Claude Hudelot, who have both already developed affinities with Macau, China and the Lusophone world.

One of the highlights of the festival’s programme will be the launch of a book of short stories set in the territory. At last year’s edition of The Script Road audiences were invited to take part in a short story competition, judged by a panel composed of the visiting international authors at the event: Su Tong, José Luís Peixoto and Xu Xi, one from each language, Chinese, Portuguese and English. From more than 30 entries, a number of stories were chosen for publication and the winners will be announced at the Festival’s press conference.

These short stories will be published together with stories written by last year’s guest writers, such as José Luís Peixoto, Lolita Hu, João Paulo Cuenca, Jimmy Qi and Rui Cardoso Martins. This year the Festival is again inviting all visiting authors to write about Macau.

The Script Road will feature some cinematic highlights. The award-winning film The Last Time I Saw Macau, by João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata will have its Chinese pre-premier at the festival, before being presented at the Hong Kong International Film Festival. This is probably the most important and awarded film about this city made in the last decades.

The Chinese filmmaker Wiseman Wang will bring us Journey to the South, a road movie where a truck driver crosses China, heading south to Guangdong province, trying to earn money to solve family issues.

Macau-based director Ivo Ferreira will also screen his new film, On The Dragon’s Flake, and historian and sinologist Claude Hudelot will present Hou Bo, Xu Xiaobing, Mao’s Photographers, a documentary he directed together with Jean-Michel Vecchiet.

As with last year’s festival, music will again play an important part in the 2013 event. Portugal’s finest traditional music will be performed by celebrated fado singer Camané. The Portuguese folk musical band Dead Combo, one of the most interesting music projects in Portugal and which gained international acclaim after appearing on Anthony Bourdain’s world popular TV Show No Reservations, is also confirmed to take to the stage.

The Script Road will host two artists-in residence based at the Orient Foundation; Chen Yu from China and Theodore Mesquita from Goa. The two painters, from very different backgrounds, will follow the same brief: to create works that reflect their experience of Macau. As well as creating new art, they will also be exhibiting previous works in the lower gallery of the Orient Foundation.

Another exhibition, curated by the local artist Alice Kok, will be held at the Old Court Building where a number of local creative authors will work on the theme Beyond Words.

In cooperation with the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau, the Festival aims to establish a strong connection with local schools and universities, giving young readers a chance to get in touch with the guest authors.

This year’s festival has the support of the Macau University (UMAC), the Pen Club, the Institute for Civic Affairs (IACM), the Macau Tourism Bureau, the Macau Education and Youth Affairs Bureau, the Society of Arts and Letters, IPOR, the Orient Foundation, Macau Closer, the Portuguese Bookshop and Casa de Portugal as well as other public and private entities.

1
Feb

AUTHORS DISCUSS WHY THE WRITERS MIGHT BE MORE IMPORTANT THAN POLITICIANS

 

On the third day of the literary festival, a group of fours writers from Portugal, Hong Kong, China and Macau were challenged to say if writing these days could still be a political tool.
Portuguese best-selling author and journalist José Rodrigues dos Santos, who wrote among other works “The Wrath of God”, which deals with Islamism and extremism, has no doubt that “all art is political in a way, and all art has to be meaningful”, he defended.

An experienced reporter who covered many war zones from Iraq to Libya, author dos Santos claimed that as a novelist, he feels “more truthful when you write a novel,” as he is not restrained by the journalistic codes of delivering news. “Fiction is a very powerful tool to tell the truth,” he stated, adding that “writing is about freedom, and you have to say politically incorrect things to move things forwards.

Chinese author Jimmy Qi agreed and underlined that the writer “can be very political but it’s not a politician.” Qi’s opinion goes in fact further, defending that writers are in fact more important than politicians as their words resist the test of times. “. Without the writing of the bible, where would God be? And where would Confucius be?

In this sense, Macau’s writer and artist António Conceição Junior, who recently published “Conversas do Chá e do Café” (Tea and Coffee chats) “words are sacred and when we profit from someone’s’ knowledge, we are reliving the authors experience and benefiting from it.” That is why he sees the man as a political animal, who must act as political. “I cannot understand art for the sake of art. It always serves a purpose. The writer has like an agenda – which gives him the urge to write, to communicate,” he added.

This debate was concluded with the poignant testimonies of 87 years old Marvin Farkas, an American living in Hong Kong since 1954. This man of many lives was a Broadway star before coming to Hong Kong where he was filmmaker, working with stars like Orson Well,s and later a regional and war reporter, spending 12 years covering the Vietnam war. “I started to write at the age of 77 so I can speak my mind freely,” he said during the presentation of his memoirs “an Eastern Saga.”

The afternoon of this Tuesday was dedicated to the topic “Translation: limits and Possibilities.” Macau academic Yao Jin Ming, author of poetry and Chinese translator of Portuguese poet Eugénio de Andrade, stated that before the act of translating, “translators have to fall in love for the work. It’s a love process.” “Then, they will be able to translate,” he added.

Prestigious writer Su Tong, author of “Rice” , “My Life as an Emperor,” and “Wives and Concubines”, with many of his books translated in different languages, described the translator as “a friend.” “When I do not understand a foreign language, I have to have a translator. He is therefore a friend and authors should respect him,” he said.

Writer José Luis Peixoto, one of the most translated Portuguese authors in no less than 20 idioms, alerted for the risks of distortion of the original work that translation could cause. But these changes can also operate in favour of some books. “I read (Brazilian author) Paulo Coelho and was not impressed. But people tell me that his books in French are quite good,” he said with a smile.

Asked about the language policy in Macau after the handover, the director of the Portuguese Oriental Institute, Rui Rocha explained that despite the official bilingual status of the territory, the reality showed that the Portuguese is not compulsory at Chinese schools and that the learning of Mandarin is also problematic in Portuguese ones. “That’s the state of the affairs,” he added.

The third day was also dedicated to two documentaries dealing with the plight of Chinese migrants in the world. Mozambican journalist and filmmaker Yara Costa presented “Why are they here? Chinese stories in Africa”, a film taking place in Mozambique island, Lesotho and Ghana, showing the relationships and tensions of Chinese immigrants with local populations.
Last, but not least, filmmaker Ivo Ferreira showcased his 2009 documentary “Go with the Wind”, about the emotional dilemma of Chinese immigrants in Portugal and Spain and the home they left behind.

To wrap up Tuesday, famous Portuguese fado singer Aldina Duarte gave a concert at the University of Macau, where she paid tribute to Fado, the Portuguese traditional song, which was recently recognized by UNESCO as intangible heritage of humanity.

31
Jan

The Script Road kicks off

The Script Road, the first ever Literary Festival organized in the Special Administrative Region of Macau, started this Sunday with Lusophone writers asking for a new beginning in the relationship between the Portuguese speaking countries and China.“I think this initiative of inviting lusophone writers to Macau has to be echoed somehow in Brazil. I will make a point to do that. We have to exchange more than iron, petrol and soya with China,” said Brazilian writer João Paulo Cuenca, during the first session of the festival, entitled “Portuguese-speaking countries and China: A Romance” (Portuguese word with double meaning: romantic liaison and novel).The idea was supported by the Portuguese writer and journalist Rui Cardoso Martins, who defended that “the new relationship between East and West has to be based on words.” “It’s good to arrive from Portugal where everyone speaks about nothing but the crisis, to Macau, where the money seems to go up in the sky.”Portuguese awarded journalist and best-selling writer José Rodrigues dos Santos reminded the audience that the current Chinese economic prowess led to the recent acquisition of the Portuguese Electric Group EDP, “the first relevant Chinese deal in Europe, not surprisingly in Portugal”, the first Western country to established a solid relationship with China, he added.
“The Chinese language is great, with many millions speaking it, but the Portuguese language is also great, because is our motherland is our language (like Portuguese Poet Fernando Pessoa said), then we are all Brazilians, Cape-Verdeans, Mozambicans and Macanese,” dos Santos stressed.Mozambican filmmaker Yara Costa, who recently produced a documentary about Chinese immigrants living in Africa, explained that beyond all the Chinese investment on infrastructures, which is welcomed by African governments, there’s a deep misunderstanding (based on stereotypes), between the local population and the immigrants. “The Mozambicans think for instance that many Chinese newcomers are ex-prisoners looking for a new break whereas the Chinese immigrants are convinced that Mozambicans carry the HIV virus and should therefore never approach them more than necessary,” she revealed.Literature can therefore break prejudices, open new doors and create links. 2009 Man Asian Literary prize Su Tong explained how the reading of late Portuguese Nobel Laureate José Saramago awakened in him “an emotional attachment to Portugal, a country that I never visited and yet, I long for it.”

The weeklong festival, which ends on February 4th, includes debates, workshops, movie screenings, art exhibitions and musical shows. But the literary debate is king. “The objective of the literary festival is to reignite the pleasure of reading and writing and I am sure that many in Macau will be inspired by these visiting authors,” said the director of the Script Road, Ricardo Pinto.

The festival started in fact with a master class and workshop led by Hong Kong writer Xu Xi. The author also presented her latest novel, “Habit of a Foreign Sky,” which was shortlisted for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize.