Testimonials

“I enjoy the Irrawaddy Literary Festival particularly because of the opportunity to mix with predominantly Myanmar writers and learn about Myanmar Literature. The huge turnout of enthusiastic writers and audiences is an impressive endorsement of the Festival’s importance in promoting the link between Myanmar and international writers.”

Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China)
2017, Mandalay

“…A great and significant festival…”

Vikram Seth (A Suitable Boy)
2013, Rangoon (Yangon)

“…Absolutely brilliant and pioneering and above all fun..”

David Pilling (Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival)
2013, Rangoon (Yangon)

“I attended her (Jung Chang’s) talk on Empress Cixi: creation of modern China. It was an amazing and inspiring talk. Thank you very much for inviting me to participate in this event. It was a very fruitful and delightful experience for me.”

Ju
2017, Mandalay

“Thank you for putting on such a wonderful festival in Mandalay. It was certainly one of the most interesting, diverse, and thoroughly enjoyable events I have been lucky enough to be invited to – so please extend my appreciation to everyone, organisers, grafters, and all the volunteers behind the scenes. We were so well looked after, in such luxury, and staying together gave us the wonderful opportunity to make new friends”.

Keggie Carew (Dadland)
2017, Mandalay

“This is the festival where not only Myanmar writers but also International writers come together and exchange their experiences and opinions…The Yangon writers who have participated this time enjoyed it very much as a meritorious deed of knowledge-sharing and an up-country trip together… Holding this festival in Mandalay is quite appropriate for International writers as Mandalay is the place where all Myanmar arts, crafts and cultural heritages are accumulated and rooted. ILF is the very first and still one and only international literary festival in Myanmar. Its legacy includes The Nobel Myanmar Literary Festival and other literary festivals. We owe the organisers of ILF for this legacy and we all are responsible for sustainable development of this ILF…. So long as we can motivate people to love and like literature again through these festivals, we must carry on the ILF flag without fail in the coming years.”

Shwegu May Hnin
2017, Mandalay

“The Irrawaddy Literary festival was one of the highlights of our year. It has been my dream to go to Myanmar and see some of my Myanmese friends again, and I am grateful for the festival for making this a reality. It is one of the most inclusive festivals in Southeast Asia, dedicated to fostering open dialogue between local writers and international visitors. The volunteers and translators were excellent, bringing sessions about local history, politics and society to life. The organisers went out of their way with great generosity, patience and care, to ensure that our experience of the festival was a positive one. Thank you, ILF!”

Alice Pung (Her Father’s Daughter)
2017, Mandalay

“The Festival was very well worth while, welcomed a wide range of speakers, both local and international, ran five simultaneous events hourly, nine hours a day, for three consecutive days,  provided free lunches and a celebratory dinner for its contributors every evening, forged links and actively encouraged a free and untrammelled exchange of ideas among the Myanmar participants and their international guests. For me, it was a happy and very well-run, amply generous and idealistically admirable occasion. I enjoyed the Festival enormously and learned a great deal from it, and its extraordinarily rich range of local and international participants”.

Ann Pasternak Slater (Literary Scholar and Translator, Fellow at St Anne’s College, Oxford)
2017, Mandalay

“The Irrawaddy Literary Festival in Mandalay was far more than just wishy-washy ‘literature.’ Numerous sessions focused on the situation in Rakhine State, either trying to agree what was happening there or discussing what should be done. As well as the literary festival in Mandalay I met with aid workers and the historian (and grandson of UN Secretary-General U Thant) Myint Thant-U in Yangon and I visited the new capital (absurd new capital) Nay Pyi Taw”.

Tony Wheeler, founder of Lonely Planet
2017, Mandalay

“A huge thank you for everything over the weekend (and long before!) We couldn’t have had a more perfect launch for We Were Kings in Myanmar, the response was just lovely…. hope you get the support you need for an ILF 2018. You’ll certainly be getting it from Grammar Productions”.

Alex Bescoby, Co-Founder, Grammar Productions
2017, Mandalay

“We have witnessed the attendance of many teachers and students from Mandalay and the surrounding areas – a positive sign of the revival of Myanmar literature and interest in international authors. There are many more fruits and benefits we have enjoyed in this festival. Thank you to all the organisers of ILF!”

Aye Nyo (Ba Nyo)

“When the second ILF was done in 2014 in Mandalay, the Civics Education textbooks were successfully reprinted and distributed. A panel discussion on Civics Education was included in that festival. The paper by Sayadaw Rahtapala presented in a Festival panel came out as a book later and was liked and praised by many educationists. Later on the second National Conference of Monastic Education(2015) decided unanimously to start the Civic Education in their schools without awaiting its reintroduction to government schools.” 

Myanmar participant
2019, Mandalay

“In 2017, at the 4th ILF, I organised a panel on the pragmatic educational needs of Myanmar by well known monastic school, Phaung Taw Oo’s Sayadaw U Nayama and MP Dr Hla Moe which stimulated a lot of audience discussion on education reform strategies. So also the young volunteers of Election Watch organised a panel on Election Education for the population at large, highlighting its dire need in Myanmar”.

Myanmar participant
2019, Mandalay

“I and other young writers participated enthusiastically in the first ILF. It coincided with the time we were trying to revive and reintroduce Civics Education in Myanmar Schools. On the second day of the first ILF, Daw Yin Yin Nwet, Lecturer of Burmese Literature in Beijing University, presented a paper on the importance of Civics Education to students during their formative years”

Mya Nanda Thin
2019, Mandalay

“Thank you so much for putting together a wonderful festival, and for looking after us all so well… I believe you’re doing important work – that it’s best to keep the dialogue open and running and show support to the Burmese writers and audiences”.

Kelly Falconer – Founder of The Asia Literary Agency
2017, Mandalay