Shanghai International Literary Festival

Now in its ninth year, the Shanghai International Literary Festival returns next month for three weeks of literary events, readings and debates featuring renowned authors of all genres. Creative Hunt chatted with organizer Tina Kanagaratnam about the festival's humble beginnings, plans for the future and the unpredictable nature of writers.

"It all started because the founder of the literary festival and owner of the M restaurant group, Michelle Garnaut had a restaurant in Hong Kong that was being used as a venue for the Hong Kong Literary Festival".

Frank Moorhouse, a friend of Garnaut was working on the appealingly titled Martini and Literature at the time. The entrepreneurial restaurateur invited the author to discuss his work at the Hong Kong Festival, and then head over to the newly opened Glamour Room and Bar in Shanghai as it was then called for a lower key event there – over signature martinis, naturally.

"Everyone thought it was fantastic!" reminisces Tina. "We were all a bit tipsy and it really was a lot of fun". Realizing the concept had potential, Kanagaratnam and Garnaut contacted the Hong Kong organizers with a very humble proposal: "we just asked that when they're inviting authors if there's anyone who'd like to come to Shanghai – bearing in mind we have no money, no budget – if they can get themselves here, we'll find them an inexpensive hotel and we'd love to have them come and speak at the Glamour Room."

What started as a seed of an idea and one sole author began to grow, and by 2003 enough authors were interested in coming to Shanghai to hold a two day literary event. "It just kept growing organically. At the beginning, about 50% of the authors came from the Hong Kong festival. As our festival grew we continued to work with Hong Kong but their writers no longer make up such a large proportion of ours. It has developed more of a personality that makes sense to a Shanghai audience."



And now, nine years on and numerous sponsors later, the Festival has grown from one, solitary author to more than 85 over three weekends. What's more, organizers have decided that the time is ripe to launch a Beijing version of the successful annual event.

"Michelle opened a restaurant in Beijing in September 2009 and as soon as we'd opened we were asked whether we were going to do a literary festival. We realized that this year we have so many authors in Shanghai that it just seemed logical to take them that little bit farther to Beijing whilst they're here".

"We're doing it in Beijing for the same reason we do it in Shanghai: we like to bring a mix of people in, people come to the restaurant because it's more than just a restaurant, it's more like a community."

The inaugural line up is impressive, with some 30 authors speaking over two weeks. Organizing two concurrent festivals across two cities must, I speculate, be something of a challenge.

"It's a lot of spreadsheets for a long time!" laughs Tina. "Authors are like anyone else. There's some who are extremely well organized, who know what they're doing and you don't need to worry about them, and then there are some who turn up at the airport without a visa no matter how many times you tell them. It's a logistical challenge and something always falls through the cracks but hopefully we'll get through".

Back to Shanghai, of the plethora of writers speaking, there's one in particular that Kanagaratnam is particularly looking forward to: "I organize the programme, so I feel I know each author intimately. I'm lucky enough to get to hear them all, but I'm very excited about Hilary Spurling's new biography of Pearl Buck, she's my absolute favourite author."

What else is there to look forward to at this year's extravaganza? "Well, we did St Patrick's Day Irish poetry readings last year and they were so well attended so we're doing that again – people said how nice it was to have something a little different to do on that day, to have a literary component". Indeed, the international nature of the Shanghai Literary Festival is one of its defining characteristics, and this year, authors from 17 different countries will all congregate at Glamour Bar to share their work.



Based on previous years' successes, there will also be more children-friendly events, with a whole day devoted to readings aimed specifically at little ones. Sunday 20th will also see a repeat of Books2eat – a competition which sees readers recreate favourite titles, characters or scenes out of, well, something edible. Judging by previous entries - The Life of Pi, Alice in Wonderland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to name but a few – this year's creations will be quite something.

Many of this year's writers bear some relevance to Shanghai and China, and this, thinks Kanagaratnam, is key to the festival's success. "Our audience is mostly English speaking and not necessarily from China. They want to make sense of the place where they live, and someone else's insight into some piece of that puzzle is always very popular."

This year's festival will surely be a success, and with speakers like Thomas Keneally (Schindler's List) and Vikram Chandra (Love and Longing in Bombay), there's bound to be something that strikes a chord. Tickets to all sessions go on sale from 24 February and are available through www.mypiao.com. Check the Festivals website for further details, prices and a full programme of events.



The festival runs from 4 - 19 March 2011, with all events taking place at Glamour Bar.