The second Shanghai Literary Festival will kick off this weekend with talks and readings by authors who live mainly in the Asia-Pacific region.

After its inaugural success in the city 12 months ago, the Shanghai Literary Festival will be held again starting tomorrow and running to March 19 in the Glamour Room at M on the Bund.

The next three weekends will be packed with literary lectures and talks by writers from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and, of course, China and will include a talk by the current holder of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, Alan Hollinghurst, from the United Kingdom. Shanghai writers will have special representation at the festival in the form of panel discussion, entitled "Shanghai Literature.''

The objective of all the visiting authors in their talks and in the following question-and-answer sessions will be to stimulate, challenge, provoke and entertain.

The Shanghai Literary Festival, in close liaison with the Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival, has planned a mix of the familiar and not-so-familiar, a blend of the national and the local and the new and the established. The first speaker at the festival is Thomas Kenneally, one of Australia's most successful and internationally respected authors.

He was a winner of the Man Booker Prize for Schindler's Ark and has been shortlisted for the prize four times. He has written more than two dozen books, many inspired by historical events and characters.

Two of his books have been filmed -- Schindler's Ark became Steven Spielberg's movie, "Schindler's List'' and an earlier book about a black Australian bushranger became "The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith.'' He has also written several non-fiction works.

Kenneally's latest work, The Tyrant's Novel, combines his talent for writing fiction with the real world.

In Shanghai, he will be talking about "Australia, Australian History and Australian Writers.''
Australian-born writer Shirley Hazzard won international acclaim for her 1981 book, The Transit of Venus, for which she won Australia's National Book Critics' Circle Award.

In 2003, she won the National Book Award for her latest novel, The Great Fire. It also was listed for the 2004 Man Booker Prize. An early novel was The Bay of Noon (1971) and, more recently, a memoir of Graham Greene, Greene on Capri. Hazzard traveled widely during her younger years because of her parents' diplomatic postings.

Malaysia-born Australian Hsu-Ming Teo is an exciting new author emerging on the Australian literary scene. She emigrated from Malaysia with her family to Australia at the age of seven. Her first book, Love and Vertigo, won the Australian Vogel Literary Award in 1999.

Denise Chong is the Canadian author of  The Concubine's Children, which was on The Toronto Globe and Mail's bestseller list for nearly two years. Her second book -- The Girl in the Picture -- is the story behind one of the most famous news photos of the Vietnam War (1954-75).

Other authors to appear during the festival include 2004 Man Booker Prize winner Alan Hollinghurst (for his novel, The Line of Beauty), Mardi McConnochi, James Bradley, Lynda Chanwei-Earle, Margaret Mahy, Debra Daley, Denise Chong, Sheila Melvin and Cai Jindong.

(Shanghai Daily March 4, 2005)