The National Book Council has released the programme of cultural events for the Campus Book Festival 2020. The festival will take place at the University Quadrangle on March 25, 26 and 27 from 9am till 4pm on Wednesday 25 and Thursday 26, and from 9am till late on Friday 27.
The aim of the Campus Book Festival is to promote literature while giving publishers and book distributors a space in which they can sell and promote their publications. The exhibitors in the 2020 edition are BDL, Merlin Publishers, Midsea Books/Klabb Kotba Maltin, Horizons, EDE Books, SKS, Faraxa Publishing, Pjattaforma and Infinity Books.
The programme includes various activities ranging from readings and interviews with authors, to the screening of films related to literature, as well as language discussions and activities, guided tours around the University Library, live music and collaborations with Għaqda tal-Malti – Università and DESA.
The international guest for this year’s event is American poet and memoirist Mark Doty. On Wednesday, March 25 at 3pm, Doty will be part of a panel discussion on queer literature with local dramatist Tyrone Grima and Marthese Formosa, project manager behind ‘Kitba Queer’. On Thursday, March 26, Doty will be participating in a book-club session with university students led by Mario Aquilina and centred on his memoir Firebird (HarperCollins, 1999). On Friday, March 27 he will be interviewed by Head of English Department at UoM Prof. James Corby on his literary and non-literary output.
Doty will be one of the readers during the open-mic session organised in conjunction with Inizjamed on the same day and revolving around the theme of literature and music of protest. Doty was the first American to win the T.S. Eliot Prize in the UK and won the National Book Award for Fire to Fire: new and selected poems (HarperCollins, 2008).
In collaboration with the Department of Translation, Terminology and Interpreting Studies, the Campus Book Festival 2020 will host an interview led by Prof. Clare Vassallo with translation theorist and scholar of comparative literature Prof. Susan Bassnett. Bassnett is the author of over 20 books, including Translation Studies, which first appeared in 1980 and has remained in print ever since, becoming an important international textbook in this field. Her Comparative Literature (1993) has also become internationally renowned and translated into several languages.
The programme includes events organised in collaboration with University departments and participating publishers. These include the presentation of Prof. Joseph M. Pirotta’s 2019-National-Book-Prize-winning book Fortress Colony. The Final Act 1945-1964 (Midsea); Prof. Charles Briffa’s book on Mario Azzopardi published by Horizons; and the official launch of Bil-Bieb Mitbuq (Pjattaforma, 2020), Kevin Saliba’s Maltese translation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Huis Clos. Infinity Books will organise a lecture with Fr Marius Zerafa on the theft, recovery and restoration of Caravaggio’s St Jerome Writing.
On Friday, March 26 at 5pm Jean Paul Borg will moderate a roundtable discussion on literature and music of protest in troubled times, with reference to the most recent contributions of local artists and writers. These will also take part in the open mic session after 6:45pm.
For the language and literature enthusiasts, not to miss are the events organised for Wednesday, March 25, starting at 1pm: ’Are we are told what we should read?’, a discussion about readers’ favourites, reading lists, book prizes, book reviews and booktube and on how these affect readers’, writers’ and publishers’ choices; and ‘Maltese Literature... in English’ with Prof. Ivan Callus, Prof. Clare Vassallo, Norbert Bugeja and moderated by Prof. Adrian Grima. On Thursday, March 26 at 2pm Mark Camilleri, Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone and Chris Gruppetta will engage in discussion on the divide between genre fiction, and literary and mainstream fiction in Malta.
Other highlights include events revolving around film and literary adaptation, with Franica Pulis, Prof. Saviour Catania, Rebecca Anastasi and Kenneth Scicluna; ethnography, with Steve Borg on Wednesday, March 26 at 11am; anthropology and women’s history, with Veronica Veen on Thursday, March 26 at 9am; and the revival of theatre in Maltese, at 1pm on the same day with Marco Galea, Sean Buhagiar, Simone Spiteri and Stephanie Bonnici.
On Friday 27 at 10am, Christine Muscat, Emanuel Buttigieg and Andrea Dibben will discuss if prostitution can empower women; while at 1pm a discussion among Ranier Fsadni, Ahmed Zanya Bugri and Andrè Callus will look at how identity politics shapes active participation by minorities living in Malta. On Friday, March 26, at noon, the Department of Philosophy will present an event, moderated by Jean-Paul De Lucca, revisiting philosophy’s plural histories and its forgotten voices, 50 years from the death of Bertrand Russel. On the same day, at 3pm, Francois Zammit will engage Enrico Panai in a conversation on the application of philosophy to address present challenges.
The Campus Book Festival, organised by the National Book Council in collaboration with Għaqda tal-Malti – Università and DESA, is free of charge. For more information visit www.ktieb.org.