Literary festivals have sprung up in cities and towns across the globe in an attempt to address the need for writers to congregate to share their words and for audiences to be inspired. Kuala Lumpur has hosted two large-scale international literary festivals in 2004 and 2007, and a smaller one this year in June to great success. Therefore, when the decision to create a literary festival in George Town, Penang was initiated earlier this year, the immediate words that came to mind were ‘history’ and ‘heritage’. These two words are distinct; one perhaps more tangible than the other, but the certainty is that both cannot exist without the other. George Town is a place of heritage as it is of history, and writers have written about it in many ways over different eras, but it is the stories that have come out of this landscape, spurred out of the imaginations and pens of writers, that resonate with us.
As a spring board to the first literary festival here, we have invited some of Malaysia’s finest writers, whose words have inspired many of us, and whose literary facts and fictions have been celebrated the world over. We hope that this festival will be an inspiring and invigorating one, both to our writers and to audiences alike, in the hope that George Town will continue to come alive in the words of writers and for those words to live on in the hearts and minds of those who have come to love Penang.
Bernice Chauly, 2011
Bernice Chauly is a writer, poet, photographer, actor and filmmaker who worked extensively in the arts for over 20 years. She graduated with a B.Ed in TESL and English Literature from the University of Winnipeg, Canada and her work has been screened, exhibited and published locally and internationally. She has published two collections of poems going there and coming back (1997), The Book of Sins (2008), a collection of short stories, Lost in KL (2008) and a critically-acclaimed memoir, Growing Up With Ghosts (2011).
In 2005, she started Readings and Readings@CeritAku, platforms for live literary performances in Kuala Lumpur, now in its seventh year. She also co-edited Readings from Readings - New Malaysian Writing (2011), its first anthology. In June 2011, she organized a successful international literary festival in KL, “Writers Unlimited Tour KL/Makassar” which partnered with Writers Unlimited, the literary festival from The Hague, Netherlands. She has performed in literary festivals in India, Indonesia, Hong Kong, South Africa, Singapore, Suriname, the Dutch Antilles and the Netherlands.
