IBBY 2022
I had the privilege of being invited as a guest Plenary Speaker at the IBBY 38th International Congress at Putrajaya yesterday on 5 Sept 2022 with Sharifah Osman and Heidi Shamsuddin.
Of course, there were at least 50 other speakers and delegates from 40 countries from around the world, including the winners of the Hans Christian Anderson Award.
I was quite nervous before my talk 'A Writers Journey Through Asian Folklore' and wondered if I had the energy to talk for 20 minutes... and then found that I didn't have enough time! Will post a more detailed write-up of my presentation on the next blogpost.
Met some interesting people - book sellers (who want to sell my books!), members of IBBY Korea, literary agents, an academic from the US who recommends books...
The winners of the Hans Christian Anderson Award: Marie Aude Mural from France and Suzy Lee from South Korea.
The highlight of IBBY2022 38th Congress was the announcement of the Hans Christian Anderson Award - this award is given for a body of work rather than one single book. This year, the Writers Award went Marie-Aude Murail from France and the Illustrator's Award went to Suzy Lee from South Korea. Marie-Aude, who addressed the issue of censorship said one of the challenges she faced was the dwindling readership in French worldwide and also her inability to get her book published by a mainstream publisher, due to it's controversial content. She was a brilliant speaker, prowling the stage with her huge personality and confidence.
Her most celebrated book appears to be Miss Charity, which was translated into various languages.
Suzy Lee, who described herself as a picturebook artist, creates wordless picturebooks almost exclusively - she sees the book, the paper and its folds and her illustrations as a seamless work of art. She won a publishing contract with Corraini Edizioni based on her student project, entitled Alice in Wonderland.
Suzy Lee, with the cover of her first book, Alice in Wonderland
One of the most notable winner of the Hans Christian Anderson Award was Astrid Lindgren from Sweden, the creator of Pippi Longstocking. She won the coveted prize in 1958 and went on to found the even more notable Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for children's literature.
Many thanks to Prof Muhammad Sidin Ishak and Dato Ahmad Redza, President of MBBY for this honour. Also delighted to meet Dr Jamilah Mustafa and Mr Mingzhou Zhang, former President of IBBY. It was amazing to meet another speaker from Malaysia, Nor Azhar Ishak, who won the IBBY Country award for illustrators and Swati Raje from Pune, India, who is passionate about preserving regional/indigenous languages from India, through her organisation, Baasha. I also had the pleasure of meeting Evelyn Sue Wong from Singapore, who was there on behalf of the Singapore Book Council and to publicize the Asian Festival of Children's Content 2023, which is going to be a live event, after going online for three years.
Evelyn Sue Wong is the author of the Mynah trilogy - three multilingual picture books about a talkative Javan mynah!
