Description and review of the Singapore Writers Festival

The event which I have chosen for my FEM field trip assignment is the Singapore’s Writers Festival (SWF). An over view of the Singapore’s Writers Festival, it is one of Asia’s leading literary events.  First started in 1986, the festival serves a twofold function of promoting new and emerging Singaporean and Asian book writing to a worldwide audience, as well as presenting the world’s major book writing talents to Singaporeans. SWF has delighted book lovers by inviting literary celebrities to the event. One of my personal favourite would be Mr Mick Foley whose books are a true inspiration to me.

To date, SWF remains one of the few literary festivals in the world that is in a variety of different languages. This also compliments Singapore’s official languages which include English, Malay, Chinese and Tamil. The event was located in Singapore Management University (SMU) next to the School of Law. This year, the panel sessions, readings and performances were spread out over 10 days and it took place at The Arts House, the National Museum of Singapore, the Singapore Art Museum, the Peranakan Museum and The National Library.

The festival itself was spread across the different museums around the Stamford and Bras Basah area with its main kiosk and panel-section booth/tent located in SMU. I believe this was a good idea as it enables the ability to gain partnership easily with the museums and also, to gain sponsorship for the event.

During my visit to the event, I was shock to find out that it was indeed an overwhelmingly popular event. Wondering why I was shocked? Well, it’s because before I came to know about this event, which is via my school, I did not know such writing and book event cum festival existed. Let alone the amount of people who knew about this event and supported it every year during the festival. The theme of the event this year is ‘Returning back to the beginning’ which, I believe, is about going back to the ‘roots’ (as you can see from the picture below) about storytelling, writing a book or even the types of language used. How it all came about to be one of the most sort after pass time or most importantly, a passion, be it for writing, creating ideas and of cause, just reading a book. Allowing the readers to feel the authors ideas come to life as an imaginary motion picture in the mind is a unique experience one may find, addictive. 

During the festival, besides book reading sessions, there were live music performances as well. Now, one may be wondering, like how I wondered, why are there music performances during a book festival? While I was sitting there during a music performance listening to the lyrics of the songs being sung, it suddenly occurred to me that the reason was because music lyrics, just like books, share feeling and emotions that the author/producer is trying to share with his/her audience or listeners. A music lyric is just like a book which tells a story on something and it enables the listener to once again, paint a picture or two in their minds.

My interview with an information counter stuff helped sum up the main reason for this festival. And that reason is ‘To encourage people to have fun with words’.