FESTIVAL UPDATES

Writers Rana Dasgupta, Andrew Greig, Chiew-Siah Tei and moderator Farish Ahmad Noor are unable to participate in the festival. 

We have therefore invited the writers Andre Vltchek and Zakariya Amataya to complete the festival.

Andre Vltchek was born in Leningrad and is a novelist, filmmaker, photographer and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts from Bosnia and Peru to Sri Lanka, DR Congo and Timor Leste. He is the author of Nalezeny, published in Czech and Point of No Return which has been translated into French by Yago. His book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific, Oceania, is published by Lulu. His most recent book is Indonesia - The Archipelago of Fear (Pluto), a provocative portrayal of post-Suharto Indonesia. He wrote and produced a documentary film about the 1965 Indonesian massacres, 'Terlena – Breaking of The Nation', which featured Pramoedya Ananta Toer, as well as a film on Dadaab, the biggest refugee camp in the world, 'One Flew Over Dadaab'. His latest film, 'The Rwandan Gambit' will attempt to reverse the official narrative of 1994 by exposing the Rwandan and Ugandan plunder of DR Congo. He is currently working on a film and book on his recent conversation with Noam Chomsky at MIT. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and Africa. 

* Andre will participate in the sessions, "My Democracy" at 10.30am on 25 November and "Show Me the Money!" at 2.00pm on 25 November

Zakariya Amataya is a poet, translator and fiction writer. Born in the southern province of Narathiwat’s Bacho, he attended the Islamic College in Bangkok and later spent five years in India studying Islamic Sciences, Arabic Language and Literature before returning to Thailand to study Comparative Religion at Mahidol University. Zakariya’s first translation book, Duay-Jit-Winyarn-Aun-Piemsook, (Happy Soul) is translated from the Arabic work of Sayyid Qutb. Since 2004 his translated works and poems have been published regularly in newspapers and journals. No Women in Poetry, his first collection of poems, received the 2010 S.E.A. Write Award for Thailand. He studies literature, writes and translates poetry and conducts poetry readings and events. He built his own website, www.thaipoetsociety.com, as a communal channel for poetry forums and critics. In 2011 he attained an artist in residence program by Doris Duke Foundation For Islamic Art and University of Hawaii. For now he is working for his second compilation of poems and writing a novella.

* Zakariya will participate in the sessions, "Imaginary (Home)Lands" at 2.00pm on 24 November and "Wayang Kata VIII" at 8.00pm on 24 November 

* Tan Twan Eng will also be participating in the session, "Imaginary (Home)Lands" at 2.00pm on 24 November