Singapore Writers Festival - 2014 (My Experience)

Day 1:

 I was posted at National Museum Of Singapore for three sessions.  I was at the front of the seminar room checking the tickets. The first session was a panel discussion on Critical Thinking moderated by Sellakrishnan. I have to admit that I never heard of neither the panellists nor their works except the writer Kamaldevi Aravindhan, I read her short stories in Tamilmurasu and met her last year in the same event. Since I was posted outside I did not listen much .But for the second session I sat inside the room and listened the talk. The topic for that session was "The Beauty Myth", The panellists had some familiar faces like Leena Manimekalai and moderator Azhagiya Pandiyan (seen him in Vasantham programmes) . The session was lively as each one present their view on beauty.  Leena Manimekalai talked more about women and how our society (upper caste) defined beauty. A very strong statements but sadly very true. Everyone agreed that beauty is subjective and it will keep changing. A question asked about Indian women following western tradition blindly I did not understand why they raised this question even after discussing about beauty for almost an hour!! 

The last session of the day was an English session titled "Finding My Voice" , as the name indicates the session was about first time authors and their experience in writing and publish their work in Singapore. More people participated specially young ones . The authors shared their writing habits and importance of having a mentor.  I heard only one author talking, he was good and straight forward.

Day 2:

The last day of the festival. Like last year , this year too the Singapore Tamil Writers Association  organized event to celebrate the life of a writer. This year the chosen author was SV Shanmugam. Again I have to admit that I never heard of this writer before same like last year's one. But as the session progressed I got time to read 3 short stories of this author in a book published at the event. I should say I really enjoyed reading it. Mostly the same people who attended the day 1 were there.  There was food too but I was appalled to see the wastage of so much food.

I think to improve Tamil events , the organizers need to advertise more in Vasantham, not just in news. Also need to bring some well known writers, I can understand the difficulties with schedules but to attract more crowd there is no other alternative.

As usual the NAC did great job with its clear planning and arrangements. Most of the visitors I spoke to told me that they enjoyed the event. Another important factor for the success of this years festival was the volunteers. I met some wonderful volunteers specially a guy from India . He wanted to become a writer. Very interesting and he really enjoyed the event.Well done every one.

Looking forward to 2015.