The 11th edition of The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival will be held over the first two weekends of December: from December 2 to 4, at the Portuguese Bookshop; and from December 9 to 11, at Macau Art Garden. The event will pay tribute to several literary geniuses from the past, while showcasing the latest works by local authors, such as Cheong Kin Han, Lawrence Lei, Rui Rocha and Carlos Morais José.
The 11th edition of The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival opens on Friday, December 2, starting at 6:30 pm with the presentation of the latest works by a number of local Chinese authors. Lawrence Lei focuses on the pandemic in his latest novel, Masked Faces (半張臉), while Cheong Kin Han chooses the equally topical issue of miscarriage as the theme of her debut novel, Yin (陰性). Both works won awards at the 13th Macao Literary Awards. For his part, Wong Teng Chi will introduce his new collection of plays, Apposite Performance (適切的表演), presenting a script reading performance based on his works, and exploring themes such as social observation, identity and gender issues. The session will take place at the Gallery of the Portuguese Bookshop, where the opening ceremony of the Festival will also be held at 5:30 pm.
The Portuguese Bookshop will host the Festival from December 2 to 4. On Saturday, December 3, thefirst sessions are aimed at children and will start at 11 am. This year, the team from Jubilee Bookstore brings to the Festival the works of illustrator Yang Sio Maan. Her latest illustration book Wild Words is a wilderness nature dictionary published in the UK. Part-time author Tony Lam will then present the story of Morgan and his adventures in a cave underneath A-Ma Temple in Morgan’s Magical Medallion.
The afternoon sessions will start with a reflection on the important contribution of literature to history, against the backdrop of the 500th anniversary of the first full publication of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of the most important classics in Chinese literature. Speakers include Wang Di and Wang Sihao of the University of Macau and moderator Yao Jingming.
Afterwards, it will be time to talk about the plague and other epidemics that have shocked humanity time and time again. In a dialogue around Gothic fiction – to which Daniel Defoe’s Diary of the Plague Year was a precursor 300 years ago – Nick Groom and William Hughes, academics from the University of Macau, will explain how terror and horror literature can help us better understand and contextualize the recent Coronavirus pandemic.
This will be followed by a tribute to the 100th anniversary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, two of the most important literary milestones of the modernist movement. The session is led by Glenn Timmermans, yet another representative of Macau’s academic community at The Script Road.
Saturday’s programme ends with the launch of the second edition of Macau – O Livro dos Nomes (Macau – The Book of Names), by Carlos Morais José, now including 88 texts on love, jealousy, abandonment and indifference, accompanied by an equal number of photographs of places in Macau by Sara Augusto. Some of these works will also be exhibited in the Gallery of the Portuguese Bookshop.
Children’s literature returns to the Portuguese Bookshop on Sunday December 4 starting at 11 am. The publisher Mandarina will showcase its latest title, Em Casa (At Home), presented by Catarina Mesquita; the recently created publisher Lits will unveil its first children’s book, O Menino que Queria Ver o Mar (The Boy Who Wanted to See the Sea), a short story by António Correia, posthumously published; and Andreia Martins will show to the children’s audience Uma Casa com Asas (A House with Wings).
In the early afternoon, authors from several Portuguese language speaking countries – Krishna Monteiro, Manuel da Costa, Hélder Macedo, among others – will get together in an online session to talk about their contributions to a new bilingual anthology of Lusophone short stories, translated into Chinese. A Viagem (Journey), as this project is called, is published by IPOR and all Portuguesespeaking countries are represented.
Next, there will be the evocation of the centenary birthdays of José Saramago and Maria Ondina Braga. The tribute to Saramago will present books by Miguel Real and José Luís Peixoto that detail the career of the only Portuguese writer so far distinguished with the Nobel Prize for Literature: As Sete Vidas de Saramago (The Seven Lives of Saramago), a biography of the author; and Autobiografia (Autobiography), a novel in which Saramago is the main character. The session will also be attended by the Chinese Macau artist Kay Zhang, who will talk with renowned Macau architect and artist Carlos Marreiros about her artistic project inspired by Saramago’s Blindness.
The day will end with the screening of a documentary about Portuguese writer and ex-resident of Macau, Maria Ondina Braga, preceded by an introduction by Professor Vera Borges. The film, O que vêem os Anjos (What Angels See), was directed by Tiago Fernandes, who will be interviewed by Hélder Beja.
A Room of One’s Own: a two-year project on Women Conditions
On the second weekend of the Festival, December 9 to 11, The Script Road will take place at Macau Art Garden, where its two-year-project “A Room of One’s Own” will be launched. Based on Virginia Woolf’s work, the project entails a series of talk sessions, workshops, concerts and performances to explore the theme of “Women Conditions”. The first talk of the weekend starts with Macau University professors Agnes Lam and Glenn Timmerman, together with Dr. Natalie Si, a Jungian Psychoanalyst (IAAP) who will explore from Virginia Woolf’s work, the notion of women’s literature and its psychological implications.
The talk will be followed by a concert performance on the rooftop of the Art Garden, in which Hong Kong meditative musician Paul Yip, Macau poets M. Chow and Isaac Pereira, and local modern ballet dancer Tina Kan will carry out a joint creative venture crossing over the poetic words of Virginia Woolf, the poets’ recitals in their own words and the dancer’s choreography moving through the instrumental vibrations coming from the musician.
From December 10 to 11, a two-day workshop of “A Room of One’s Own” will take place, also at Macau Art Garden. The workshop will be conducted by professor Agnes Lam and psychotherapist Jojo Lam. Two outstanding women from Macau’s literary and performing arts sector are invited to host a series of two-day experiential workshops from a female perspective. The workshop will combine literary and theatrical elements from social and therapeutic experiences, aimed at women and men participants interested in women’s conditions and issues, as well as those interested in the arts, to learn more about themselves, society and drama therapy through literature. The drama therapy workshop is an experiential way of exploring the many positions and complexities of women in society through literature, storytelling, metaphor and visual touch.
Separate from this project, but still at Macau Art Garden, a poetry session, the launch of two books and the presentation of publications related to photography will close this year’s edition of the Macau Literary Festival.
The poetry session will be held on Saturday, December 10, with poems by José Craveirinha, T.S. Eliot and many other poets from different times and places being read. On Sunday December 11, Mário Sin and other fellow adventurers will recall the second Macau-Lisbon Raid, which is now the subject of a comic book; Shee Va will present Uma Breve História Cultural do Chá da China (A Brief Cultural History of Chinese Tea) by Rui Rocha; João Rato and several other amateur photographers of the territory will show their recently released book, Macau: My Story; and Halftone magazine will unveils its fourth edition, which includes portfolios by João Nuno Ribeirinha, David Lopo, Dinamene, Sofia Mota, Alina Bong and Barry Tsang.
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For more information please contact:
Viviana Han
viviana.thescriptroad@gmail.com
+853 6869 8513
