Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

Music festivals, poetry readings, and the launch of a new dawn in academic publishing in Sri Lanka!

This  week, our editors on the ground report from events and lectures, spanning large-scale festivals and intimate readings. Julia Sherwood discusses a spotlight on Slovak authors at Month of Authors’ Readings, and Thirangie Jayatilake is here with notes from a talk regarding the current state of Sri Lankan academic publishing. Read on for more!

Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Slovakia

Over the summer, literary organizers in Slovakia have tentatively returned to live events, mostly held in the open air. Audience sizes were kept smaller and featured mostly domestic authors because of continuing travel restrictions. Many of these events were streamed and can be watched later—this hybrid format may be one positive legacy of the pandemic.

Slovak writers were the guests of honour at Central Europe’s largest literary festival, the annual Month of Authors’ Readings (MAČ) organized by Větrné mlýny, a publishing house in Brno, Czech Republic and, on the Slovak side, by Literárnyklub.sk. Though the number of locations and participating writers was slightly scaled down, its ambition was certainly not, with thirty-one pairs of Slovak and Czech authors reading from their works every day of the month in both Bratislava and Brno, with some also travelling to Ostrava and Lviv in neighbouring Ukraine. Videos of all readings are available on the MAČ website alongside podcast interviews with the Slovak writers.

Although Pohoda, Slovakia’s largest outdoor music festival, was held from July 7 to 11 at its usual location—a former airfield in Trenčín—was limited to one thousand spectators per day, undaunted publisher Kali Bagala continued the tradition of presenting established as well as emerging authors at the Martinus Literary Tent (sponsored by the bookselling chain Martinus and also organized by Literárnyklub.sk). Young poets Richard L. Kramár and Michal Baláž introduced their second poetry collections, and Lukáš Onderčanin talked about Utópia v Leninovej záhrade [A Utopia in Lenin’s Garden], his documentary novel about some thousand idealistic men and women from Czechoslovakia who headed for Kyrgyzstan in the 1920s to help build socialism. Acclaimed poet and writer and past Asymptote contributor Jana Beňová discussed her latest non-fiction book of rambles around Bratislava, Flanérova košeľa (The Flâneur’s Shirt). There were readings by authors shortlisted for this year’s Anasoft Litera Prize, Ivana Gibová (Eklektik Bastard) and Zuzana Šmatláková (Nič sa nestalo/Nothing Happened),  as well as by Alenka Sabuchová whose novel Šeptuchy (The Whisperers) won the award in 2020. A sample from The Whisperers can be heard on the LIC_Online YouTube Channel, along with excerpts from several other books by contemporary Slovak writers in English and German translation.

Several other small but perfectly-formed literary events took place in August: an evening of Slovak and Slovenian poetry outside T3, a tram-turned-cultural-vehicle on the bank of the Danube in Bratislava; Cap a l’Est, a music and poetry festival held in Banská Štiavnica; BALLAMUTA, dedicated to the writing of Balla, another past Asymptote contributor. Originally scheduled for 2020 as part of Vzdušné Zámky (Castles in the Air), a year-long festival celebrating the culture of Nové Zámky (“Newcastle”), Balla’s home town in southern Slovakia, it was postponed to early August this year. A reading by the author from his short novel In the Name of the Father was followed by the same excerpt in Croatian, German, Hungarian, English and Ukrainian translation, as well as a discussion with four of his translators, as well as a creative writing workshop for emerging writers, all expertly moderated by literary critic Marta Součková. This was the first live literary event I’ve attended since February 2019 and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting my fellow translators, the author, his friends and publishers, as well as the pub crawl around some of Balla’s favourite haunts.

Thirangie Jayatilake, Educational Arm, reporting from Sri Lanka

Tambapanni Academic Publishers (TAP) was launched online on the 21 of August, 2021. TAP Founder Professor Sasanka Perera addressed the audience regarding his stance on the current state of the academic publishing industry, as well as the social sciences and humanities in Sri Lanka.

He began by stating that in Sri Lanka, most disciplines within the social sciences and humanities are “exiled to the lower strata of academic hierarchies as irrelevant soft subjects by educational decision makers and political leaders”. In addition, he said that individuals within these disciplines have not enhanced their own research and intellectual engagement.

However, he highlighted that this was a systematic issue and outlined four reasons for why the Sri Lankan academic publishing industry is not up to standard.

  1. “often problematic nature of networks and forums which contemporary scholars have become a part of”
  2. “lapses in the quality of publications in the social sciences and humanities”
  3. “ways in which social sciences and humanities engages with and generates theory in locals intellectual settings”
  4. “extent to which Sri Lankan humanities and social sciences’ knowledge production impacts the global discourses in these disciplines”.

Firmly stating “we have to recognise that the quality of social sciences and humanities is a very serious problem”, professor Perera mentioned that Sri Lanka lacks university presses and commercial academic publishers.

Sri Lanka did once publish high quality academic work; however, the University of Ceylon press shut down in the 1970s and other commercial publishers like M. D. Gunasekera publishers and Saman press which published academic works in the 1960s and 1970s are also no longer in function. Professor Perera acknowledges that although more academic publishing forums have expanded in the past twenty years, giving more people the opportunity to publish, these forums are not up to standard.

Professor Perera stated that “today, we have printers who publish almost anything” but there are significant “issues regarding careful peer review, selection of what to publish. . . copyediting. . . [and] referencing”.

Professor Perera concluded by stating two aims of TAP.

  1. TAP aims to bring knowledge about Sri Lanka [this is perhaps in reference to Sri Lankan scholars who publish outside of the country with international publishers that are rarely sold or referenced in Sri Lanka] and the world to Sri Lanka, as well as take knowledge from Sri Lanka to the world.
  2. To make knowledge affordable. He stated that Sri Lankans publish their work with international publishers for example, like SAGE and Columbia Press. However, books published by these international publishers are too expensive for Sri Lankans.

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