The 2022 Makassar International Writers Festival (MIWF), a literary festival to spread joy and increase community interest in reading and writing from Rumata ‘Artspace, is about to begin this Thursday from the 23rd-26th of June. The longstanding annual festival (beginning since 2011) to celebrate literature will return this week bringing together several established and emerging writers in-person and online from across Indonesia, especially East Indonesia, as well as writers from abroad. This year, MIWF will raise the theme ‘Awakening’ and is committed to being a low carbon and no-waste event.
MIWF Founder and Director Lily Yulianti Farid highlighted this year’s festival theme to mean ‘Awakening’ towards diversity, including new understandings, ways of thinking, determination, perspectives on life, and following lessons we have all learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic. After all, the pandemic has disrupted several aspects of life, including education and literacy across the globe since it began in 2020. Hence, authors from overseas such as from countries like Singapore, India and Malaysia will attend to discuss and share with their Indonesian counterparts. Of course, there will also be several Australian authors taking part in MIWF 2022, who have already been attending the festival for several years since it began.
Among the Australian writers attending this year is Omar Musa, an author famous for several poetry books touching themes of migration and race in Australia as well as his award-nominated novel ‘Here Come the Dogs’. Furthermore is Beth Yahp, award-winning author and teacher of creative writing at the University of Sydney. Yahp is famous for her short-fictions and memoirs such as her latest work ‘Eat First, Talk Later’, which also highlights issues of diaspora and migration in Australia, where she describes her family’s former home of Malaysia. Other notable writers from Australia, or who write about Australia, include sports and pop-culture writer Andy Fuller as well as Harvard Human Rights Review Editor in Chief Kieren Salazar who often writes about refugees in the Pacific region.
All of the authors mentioned above and more will appear on the first day of the Makassar International Writers Festival this year on a panel about ‘Connecting Indonesia and Australia Through Literature and Translation Initiatives: How Can We Improve the Partnership’.
In fact, this year’s festival in Makassar is very significant, beginning only two weeks after newly elected Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited the city and Hasanuddin University on the 8th of June along with Ministers Penny Wong, Ed Husic, Don Farrell, as well as several other government delegates. PM Albanese’s visit to Indonesia and Makassar displays Australia’s increasing interest in deepening Australian ties with Indonesia compared to the previous administration under Scott Morrison. Many observers have even compared Albanese’s interest in Indonesia to former Prime Minister Paul Keating’s time in the 90s, who also emphasised developing bilateral links with Australia’s closest neighbours.
For Makassar, PM Albanese may be among the first of few state leaders who have ever visited the South Sulawesi Capital, and visiting one of the biggest cities in Eastern Indonesia outside of Jakarta is symbolic of his government’s recognition of the importance of diversity. PM Albanese’s cabinet has been largely praised for including 10 women, 2 Muslims and 1 indigenous Australian, making it more clearly representative of Australia\’s people.
The Australian PM’s Makassar visit and this upcoming festival show the potentially bright future of cooperation between Indonesia, Australia and the region in the next few years to come. As will be seen at the 2022 Makassar International Writers Festival, the people-to-people relationship between these South Pacific neighbours is also strong and can be further strengthened, not only the relationships between our governments. As the COVID-19 pandemic situation in Indonesia, Australia as well as in other countries improve, our potential to ‘Awaken’ together also grows.
Rifqy Tenribali Eshanasir is a Junior Researcher at the Center for Peace Conflict and Democracy, Hasanuddin University, and an Alumnus of International Relations and Peace Studies at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Japan. He also studied in Moreland Primary School, Melbourne Australia.