Leila Abouzeid is the first female Moroccan writer of literature to be translated into English. Her novels explore the conflict between traditional culture and the search for independence at both individual and national levels.
Hoda Barakat is from Lebanon. Her novel The Tiller of Waters is set in 1960s war-torn Beirut. Both this and her other novels have been translated from Arabic, the language of Hoda Barakat's choice. "In my innermost blood vessels I see the world in Arabic," she says.
Caryl Phillips is from St Kitts in the Caribbean. His novel Crossing the River was shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize. A Distant Shore, a remarkably convincing insider's view of the experiences of an illegal immigrant in Britain, won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for the best book in 2004.
Dennis Brutus is South Africa's best know poet and anti-apartheid activist. In 1964 he helped secure South Africa's suspension from the Olympic games to force the government to turn away from apartheid. Although Brutus's poetry is inspired by protest, it is shot through with a tenderness that often transmutes pain into beauty. His best know collections include Letters to Martha, Other Poems from a South African Prison and A Simple Lust.
Karen King-Aribisala was born is Guyana and now lives in Nigeria. Her book Our Wife and Other Stories was voted the best first book of the African region in the Commonwealth Writers' Prize competition for 1991.
Oman Conteh lives and works in Freetown, Sierra Leone. His novels address contemporary issues in West Africa. Unanswered Cries tells the story of Olibisi, who is under tremendous pressure to follow tradition and become a circumcised bondo woman. This novel, written for adolescents, won the Senior Section of the Children's Literature Award in the Macmillan Writer's Prize for Africa, 2002.
George Elliott Clarke is from Nova Scotia, Canada. In his play Beatrice Chancy, a white plantation owner, Francis Chancy, has a daughter from a black slave woman. Discovering the love of his daughter for a slave, Francis Chancy asserts his ownership of Beatrice by raping her. The power of Eliott Clarke's writing has won him various awards.
Andrew Sant is from Tasmania. He is the author of several collections of poetry, one of them called The Islanders. His interest in islands is likely to emerge in this conference during the poetry reading session in which he and a group of Maltese poets will read from their work. The Maltese poets are Adrian Grima, Stanley Borg, Maria Grech Ganado, Immanuel Mifsud and Norbert Bugeja.
Robert Young is a professor of Post-Colonial theory at Oxford University. His books Post-Colonialism: An Historical Introduction; Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race and White Mythologies are among the most important works on contemporary Post-Colonial theory. In Malta, Robert Young will be speaking on 'One Way Street... Walter Benjamin at the Border'.
This conference of the European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies promises to be a truly memorable literary event.
Independent Maltese scholars who would like to attend may contact Dr Borg Barthet, Department of English, Faculty of Arts, University of Malta. E-mail: stella.borg-barthet@um.edu.mt.