National Book Council announces programme for the 2022 Campus Book Festival

The National Book Council has announced its events programme for the 2022 Campus Book Festival taking place between 23 and 25 March at the University of Malta Quadrangle.

The programme for Malta’s second-biggest book festival is curated explicitly for tertiary education students with a range of activities also of interest to the general public.

Events include book presentations, book club sessions, panel discussions on literature and publishing, with interviews with local and international authors.

Celebrating EU Prize for Literature winners from Malta and Ireland

The festival's international guest is the Irish EU Prize for Literature (EUPL) winner in 2019, Jan Carson.

Carson is the author of The Fire Starters (Doubleday) and several other major prize-winning titles. She will be speaking about her literary works with the Maltese writer Leanne Ellul on 23 March at 2pm.

On the same day, the novelist will also be participating in a book club session with students from the UM English Department led by Prof. James Corby to discuss her inventive short story collection, The Last Resort (Doubleday).

On 24 March at 12pm, Carson will be joining fellow Maltese EUPL winner Lara Calleja to exchange their thoughts about the opportunities afforded by the Prize as well as their books in a discussion moderated by Robert Pisani.

This session will be of particular interest to all those who want to know more about the EUPL thanks to the participation of Joseph Lia, Head of the Creative Europe Office in Malta.

Lara Calleja will also discuss her 2021 National Book Award-winning book Kissirtu Kullimkien (Merlin Publishers) in a book club session with students from the UM Department of Maltese, which Justine Sommerville moderates.

Panel discussions: Peter Serracino Inglott, Artificial Intelligence and the essay

François Zammit will moderate the festival’s opening, revisiting the intellectual and cultural contribution of Prof. Peter Serracino Inglott on the year marking a decade since his passing.

The speakers addressing this prominent figure's philosophical, aesthetic, political, educational, and religious work include Ranier Fsadni, Prof. Kenneth Wain, and Dr Jean-Paul De Lucca.

Another panel on 24 March will bring together professionals from the publishing sector and researchers to discuss the technological needs of the publishing industry and how ongoing efforts in the development of Maltese computational tools could be of assistance to the industry.

Senior lecturer specialising in computational linguistics and Maltese language resources, Dr Claudia Borg will be leading this exchange with publisher Chris Gruppetta, translator Donatienne Spiteri, and Proofreading Malta editor and business owner Elizabeth Cortis.

The genre of the essay and its local context will be examined by PhD student Jessica Micallef and Dr Immanuel Mifsud from the UM Maltese Department, who will be joined by the editor of The Essay at the Limits: Poetics, Politics and Form (Bloomsbury) and the upcoming Edinburgh Companion to the Essay (2022) Dr Mario Aquilina to evaluate Malta’s public intellectuals’ written contribution in this genre.

2022 Campus Book Festival will come to a close on 25 March when it hosts an Open Mic evening organised in collaboration with Inizjamed and the participation of special guest Lara Calleja. The Open Mic concept offers a platform to anyone who would like to share their art through the spoken word.

Download here the 2022 Campus Book Festival Events Programme.