China's Literary Feast: Man Asian Prize Tweaked, Four Simultaneous Book Festivals

By Edward Nawotka

There's plenty of literary activity going on in China this week.

First comes the news that in its fourth year, the Man Asian Literary Prize will change: Instead of awarding the prize to an "Asian novel unpublished in English," the Prize will now be given to "a novel written by a citizen of an Asian country and first published in English in 2010."

Translations into English of works originally in another Asian language are also eligible, provided they are first published in English in 2010.  What's more, the prize triples to $30,000 (from $10,000) with $5,000 (up from $3,000) going to a translator (provided there is one).

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What are the Best Practices for Book Festivals?
By Edward Nawotka

In today's lead story and a blog post from yesterday, we discuss five different book festivals taking place across China and the UAE. In the UAE, some 70 authors will appear in Dubai at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature over just three days; a similar number will appear at the Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival over a week, and the others at the Bookworm International Literary Festival over some two weeks. This raises the question: is it better to concentrate author appearances over a very short period of time, or is a longer period better?

(read on ...)