Wrapping Up Ubud

I missed a lot of interesting events in this Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. I missed Andrea Hirata's session and pre-launch of his fourth book, Maryamah Karpov. I missed book signings, street parade, book launch and priceless sessions. Business happened and I must bid farewell to the festival which just started to heated up.

On the first day of my arrival, I got the chance to joined a superb half-day workshop "Dramatic Ideas" by Tee O'Neill. My class is surrounded by picturesque hill view of Ubud. One just can't ask for a more pretty setting to start writing. Tee was such a supporting and kind teacher. I reached the peak of brain orgasm afterward.

my "classmates" scribbling

After Vikram Seth's session, I darted off to followed Camilla Gibb's Sweetness in the Belly book launch. It has been translated by Mizan Publishing into "Lilly:Pencarian Cinta Seorang Gadis Eropa di Etiopia". There, I met my favorite lit blogger, Sharon Bakar, whose splendid blog, I read almost daily. She kindly acknowledge my rambling blog and encouraging me to blog more about Indonesian literature.

On my last day, I managed to squeezed two sessions. Malaysians Making History with "Truly Asia" writers attending the session (Preeta Samarasan, Faisal Tehrani and Chiew-Siah Tei). With a still sleepy eyes and caffeine stirred-up brain, I went to the session and thoroughly enjoyed it. All three authors read excerpt of their work (I'm still, even until now, haunted by the harrowing excerpt on Preeta's book "Evening is the Whole Day").

Malaysian Making History session

The last session was just amazing. John Berendt, another star in this year festival, was such a charming persona. No wonder he managed to charmed his way to dig the eccentrics appeared in his books, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil & City of the Falling Angels. The session, Evoking a Sense of Place, John Berendt lucidly described his method of writing and in the way, throwing interesting anecdotes and jokingly called himself "state-of-the-art weirdo magnet". My moleskin is full of quotes. The other writer, Cameron Forbes, discussing his book "Under the Volcano: The Story of Bali". Both authors agreed upon the importance of setting to bring reader into their story.

Evoking a Sense of Place session

I was so upset upon leaving this amazing event of my annual brain stimulation. There can't be more perfect place to held this event than Ubud. Hopefully there won't be any incredulous thing preventing me to come next year.