Script Road literary festival in Macau set to be biggest yet

Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author Madeleine Thien and acclaimed Korean-American writer Krys Lee are among more than 60 influential literary figures attending The Script Road this year, Macau’s literary festival, making it the biggest since the event was launched in 2012.

Getting bigger was not intentional, says the festival’s programme director and co-founder, Hélder Beja. Last year’s festival turned out to be almost bigger than the festival team could manage and the plan was for the 2017 edition to be smaller. But with more writers asking to attend this year, it just didn’t turn out that way.

“Last year was the biggest edition – we had more than 50 guest authors, and we did 104 events in 15 days,” says Beja, a Portuguese journalist who has lived in Macau for seven years. All the events were well attended, he says. “This year, we thought it may need to be a bit smaller, as our people had been under a lot of pressure. But then, things come together.” He smiles broadly and shrugs his shoulders. “We can’t say no to good offers.”

This year’s programme runs from March 4 to 19, and is impressive not just for its size, but also for the stature of the attending authors and geographic coverage. The line-up includes writers from mainland China, Portugal, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Canada, Ireland, the UK, France and Brazil and beyond. Apart from Thien, who was shortlisted for the Man Booker for her acclaimed novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing, and fellow Booker nominee Graeme Macrae Burnet, there is Tony-award winning theatre director Garry Hynes, and Natália Borges Polesso, winner of the 2016 Jabuti award, Brazil’s most prestigious literary prize, as well as many other well known names.