Mediterranean Literature Festival

Top writers and musicians from seven countries, including gritty Welsh novelist Niall Griffiths, Maltese iconic poet Victor Fenech and Lebanese poet and novelist Hyam Yared are performing at this year’s fifth edition of the Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival.

Launched yesterday, the impressive programme proceeds tonight and tomorrow at the Garden of Rest in Floriana, close to the Floriana Central Public Library. During all evenings there will be live jazz or alternative music, a free glass of wine and food for sale.

Short films from the Zebra Poetry Film Festival, in English or with English subtitles, are being shown tonight and presented by Boris Nitzsche. Readings are meant for a mature audience and start at 8 p.m. Entrance to all events is free.

The poems and prose will be read mainly in Maltese and English, but also in the native languages of the participants. The readings tonight are by Maltese poet Nadia Mifsud who lives in Lyon; Egyptian poet, novelist, journalist and photographer Youssef Rakha; leading Catalan writer Miquel Desclot; and the well-known Maltese poet Victor Fenech.

The writers reading tomorrow are award-winning Gozitan novelist and short story writer Pierre J. Mejlak; Lebanese Francophone poet and novelist Hyam Yared, who confesses that “I write in French with all the influences of Arabic in which I was born,“ and the well-known Welsh novelist Niall Griffiths. The 19th century Garden of Rest in Floriana where the festival is being held, has been restored by Din l-Art Ħelwa.

The festival coincides with the fifth annual Malta LAF Literary Translation Workshop, led by Alexandra Büchler, director of Literature Across Frontiers, during which the participating writers will translate each other’s works. Previous workshops have hosted writers from Algeria, Croatia, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Palestine, Portugal, Slovenia, and Turkey, who translated their Maltese colleagues’ writing into their languages and whose work was in turn translated into Maltese. This year’s festival and literary translation workshop are the biggest to date in terms of participating writers and events being organised.

This annual international literary festival, the only one to be held in Malta, is being organised by Inizjamed and Literature Across .

Events start at 8 p.m. More information may be obtained online at www.inizjamed.org.