Asian Festival of Children’s Content ~ May 6 – 9, Singapore
Thursday, April 15th, 2010
The Asian Festival of Children’s Content has launched it’s new website. Be sure to check out the Programme Schedule as well as the Speaker Profiles! You can also see the schedule herewith the names of their relevant speakers. And what a rich programme it is – there will be some hard decisions to make as to which sessions to attend! Among the speakers lined up are Chris Cheng, Sally Heinrich, Rukhsana Kahn, Uma Krishnaswami, Anushka Ravishankar and Holly Thompson, to name but a few.
Two new children’s book awards will also be announced during the Festival: the Asian Children’s Book Prize, and the Hedwig Anuar Children’s Book Award for Singaporean children’s books.
There was quite a buzz about this Festival at the Bologna Book Fair and I’m sure it will be a resounding success! The event is co-hosted by the National Book Development Council of Singapore (NBDCS), a non-profit organization that promotes storytelling, reading, writing and publishing. NBDCS does a fabulous job bringing the book industry and literary community together through social events, courses, seminars, conferences and author lectures. A visit to their website and blog gives great insight on the literary goings-on in Singapore.
Today while perusing the NBDCS website, I came across the inspiring story of Singaporean author Emily Lim. At the age of 28, Emily was diagnosed with Spasmodic Dysphonia (SD), a rare neurological condition that was robbing her of her speech
. A few years later, during a breather from her extremely successful corporate career, Emily decided to pursue her dream of writing and entered her story Prince Bear and Pauper Bear in the 2007 First Time Writers and Illustrators Publishing Initiative, a competition co-organized by the NBCDS. Prince Bear and Pauper Bear, which drew on her own emotional responses to SD, was one of eight winners. With the cash prize and her own savings Emily went about getting (more…)
