APWT – ‘A Profoundly Important Organization’

Asia Pacific Writers and Translators, a regional literary network started a decade ago at the Griffith Asia Institute, recently brought together some 140 writers, creative writing teachers, literary agents, translators and publishers for its eighth international conference, ‘Against the Grain.’

“APWT is the largest, longest-running, functioning literary network that I know of in south-east Asia and the Pacific,” said celebrated Filipino author, journalist and teacher of creative writing Jose Dalisay.

Professor Dalisay teaches at the University of the Philippines, one of the hosts of the 2015 conference. In his keynote address at UP he surprised those international delegates who weren’t aware the Philippines has led the region in teaching creative writing in the academy. The Philippines has held national annual writing workshops for at least 50 years. Unlike most countries in Asia, the archipelago offers writing programs from the bachelor’s to the PhD level in several major universities.

Professor Dalisay opened the way to a better understanding of contemporary Filipino literature talking of ‘a new wave of writing produced by young, brash, and brilliant writers’ who are less connected to the Philippine’s old Spanish literature than to (Japanese author) Murakami, ‘less to newsprint than to Wattpad.’ This new literature “reaches deep into our rich trove of myths and mystic beliefs, into our varied ethnolinguistic traditions,” he said. He stressed that this is happening not only in English but also in Filipino and major regional languages. A fascinating follow on conference panel on regional literatures explored the ‘parallel realities’ of regional writers.

“If you want to know what’s going on in Asia Pacific literature then APWT is definitely the way to go,” Professor Dalisay said.

APWT’s conferences have become an annual event with a regular following, many of the attendees funding their own participation, and some coming from well beyond the region. This year the forum welcomed a delegate from Iceland – Rúnar Helgi Vignisson, a multi award-winning author and translator who is director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Iceland.

The network’s multifaceted conferences include half a dozen masterclasses, book launches, readings and dinners in addition to the keynotes and panels. These are held in a different country every year, although the 2012 gathering in Bangkok was so successful the city’s governor hosted the conference for a second year running.

The first small international meeting took place in 2007 in Indonesia, partly funded by the International Centre of Excellence in Asia-Pacific Studies. The following year a full conference was held with several university hosts in New Delhi and, thereafter, in Hong Kong, Perth, Bangkok, Singapore and, this October, in Manila. Next year the network meets in Guangzhou, China, hosted by Sun Yat-Sen University.

This year, the British Council and the Japan Foundation sponsored authors, including Romesh Gunesekera who gave a keynote on ‘The Dangerous Art of Fiction’ and award-winning manga authors Satoshi Kitamura, Muhammad (‘Azer’) Reza and Roland Kelts who agued manga is literature. Other years, the Prince Claus Fund for the Netherlands, a strong cultural diplomacy initiative, has supported delegates from developing countries.

Australian author Philip McLaren who is also an adjunct professor at Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology Sydney, bemoaned the lack of funding support from Australia. “If Australia really wants to belong to Asia, we need representation here,” he said. “It’s very expensive for struggling artists to finance themselves to come.”

Professor McLaren, who delivered the keynote on the third day (‘Grasping the Indigenous Literary Nettle and Owning It’), was among the delegates who paid for their own participation.

“For me, Asia Pacific Writers and Translators is four days of privileged access to different ways of thinking,” said Kate Griffin, program manager of the Writers Centre Norwich that works hand-in-hand with the British Centre for Literary Translation. Ms Griffin, who spoke on a panel ‘Gained in Translation,’ has travelled from the UK to attend two APWT conferences.

Among the regular self-funded attendees is UK-based Qaisra Shahraz whose novel The Holy Woman become a bestseller in Indonesia and Turkey. Ms Shahraz deems the conferences important for her connections in Asia. “Since I joined five years ago it’s something I look forward to every year,” she said.

This was the second APWT conference that poet Ravi Shankar flew to join from the USA. This year he ran one of the six creative writing workshops. Professor Shankar is the founder of one of the world’s oldest electronic journals of the arts, Drunken Boat, and is a professor of English at Central Connecticut State University.

“In part what APWT has provided for me is a forum to explore my identity, my ancestry,” he said. “But also (it enables me) to connect with other writers from around the world, and that has proved remarkably important because those sorts of conversations are simply not taking place, even in a cosmopolitan city like New York.” He went on, “The relationships I’ve built with editors and other writers have been instrumental in shaping my own aesthetics and my sensibility and I don’t think I could have those experiences anywhere else. I think this is a profoundly important organization.”

For Eliza Vitri Handayani, an Indonesia writer and founder of an Indonesian literary translation initiative, APWT is indeed profoundly important. After reading her fiction at an earlier APWT forum in Bangkok she was approached by Australian poet based in Tokyo Michael Brennan about publishing her work in his new publishing venture, Vagabond Press, focused on Asian writing. Brennan, who is also an academic, has since published other APWT members he heard at the conferences, including Japanese writer Kyoko Yoshida. Handayani’s newly published novel, From Now On Everything Will Be Different, was launched during the conference.

Others who read from their work included three young authors featured in the ‘New Asia Now’ issue of Griffith Review (issue 49), published in August this year with assistance from APWT.

During the conference Australian-Filipino author Merlinda Bobis launched the Philippine edition of her latest novel Locust Girl. A Lovesong (published by Anvil Press). Dr Bobis, a teacher of creative writing at the University of Wollongong, said: “Asia Pacific Writers and Translators is important in the light of the current geopolitics… This story telling across cultures reminds us that we share a lot of things more than our differences and we are bonded in storytelling.”

Francesca Rendle-Short, associate professor in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT, and co-director of the university’s Writers Immersion and Cultural Exchange Program (WrICE), co-led another of the workshops. “The APWT forum is really important to me because it’s a way of understanding this region,” she said. “If we understand our neighbours, we can understand ourselves.”

APWT’s chair, the author Nury Vittachi, stresses that APWT is important not just for Asia. “Asia, in terms of population, is bigger than all the other regions put together. So what happens in Asia is important for the world,” he said.

His thoughts were echoed by many others attending this year’s event.

“I can’t think of any other organisation that brings writers together from all the corners of Asia, that gets them sharing their work, to think critically about what it means to write and to teach writing” said James Shea, an assistant professor in the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing at Hong Kong Baptist University.

Registration In Australia

At this year’s conference, APWT’s members voted to move APWT’s headquarters back to Australia from Hong Kong where it has been based since 2012. APWT will be registered in Brisbane as an incorporated association and will partner with universities and other organisations around the region.

Members also voted that, in keeping with multimedia platforms for writers now, screenwriters will be invited to join the association. Further, the new association will expand its earlier limited definition of ‘Asia Pacific’ to match that of UNESCO.

APWT Online Magazine

A special Filipino edition of APWT’s magazine LEAP+ was produced for the conference. A limited number of hard copies were printed for delegates. The version is available online with an introduction by Jose Dalisay. (See www.leap-plus.com). LEAP+ is supported by a one-off grant from the Commonwealth through the Australian National Commission for UNESCO of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Strengh In Soft Power

APWT has been lauded for its ‘smart engagement with Asia’, cited in a paper for the Australia Council of Learned Academies. It was considered among a handful of organisations that illustrates ‘how Australia’s engagement with the Asia-Pacific is strengthened by the establishment of region-wide cultural networks and institutions, driven by independent, bottom-up initiatives from cultural professionals.’

The authors of the ACLA ‘Smart Engagement’ paper, by Ien Ang, Yasmin Tambia and Phillip Mar, contend that what is particularly significant is ‘focus on building long-term, region-wide cultural infrastructures’. APWT was deemed to ‘contribute fundamentally to Australian soft power and cultural diplomacy by promoting Australia as a proactive and engaged regional citizen.’¹

The 2016 conference will be held in Guangzhou, China, 24-27 November, hosted by Sun Yat-Sen University.

Biographical notes of all the writers quoted in this article can be found on this page: http://apwriters.org/participants-at-against-the-grain-manila-2015/.

A short video about APWT and the conference is available on this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEptPb3OVj4

¹http://www.acola.org.au/PDF/SAF03/SAF03%20SMART%20ENGAGEMENT%20WITH%20ASIA%20-%20FINAL%20lo%20res.pdf pp. 134/135

Article by Jane Camens, executive director of Asia Pacific Writers and Translators