This year’s 23^rd edition of the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali brings back some of the festival’s most decorated authors alongside celebrated writers, artists, filmmakers and thinkers making their Ubud debuts.

“The Ubud Writers and Readers Festival continues to be a beacon for extraordinary stories and brave voices from Indonesia and across the globe,” festival founder and director Janet DeNeefe says. “This year’s lineup represents the very best of what we stand for: diversity, courage, and the transformative power of words.”

Amid its galaxy of international and Indonesian stars drawn from the world’s fourth largest nation, UWRF offers a chance for meaningful interaction with speakers through Q&As, intimate special events, book signings, workshops and book launches. Here’s a sampling of some of the talent you can expect to rub elbows with in Bali’s rolling hills October 21-25.

When my novel Hong Kong On Air had its international launch in Ubud in 2007, Kiran Desai attended the festival to celebrate her 2006 Booker Prize winning novel The Inheritance of Loss. Desai makes her second UWRF appearance this year showcasing her latest novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, revisiting in epic fashion the theme of Indian identity in the wake of colonialism, the 1948 partition and globalization. On a panel in 2007, responding to criticism of globalization, I noted one upside: “We can read Kiran Desai in English.”

Tash Aw returns to Ubud to highlight The South, his coming of age novel that’s at once deeply personal, universal and acutely Malaysian. Like The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, The South was listed for the Booker Prize.

Fatima Bhutto comes back to Bali to discuss The Hour of the Wolf, her third novel. Featuring a bad man, a good dog and a deadly pandemic, Bhutto might have considered calling the book Love in the Time of Covid.

From the US, Katie Kitamura joins UWRF for the first time, focusing on her Booker finalist novel Audition, a mesmerizing tale of performances on and off the stage. Designer Prabal Gurung, who has dressed Oprah Winfrey, the Duchess of Cambridge and Michelle Obama, presents his memoir Walk Like a Girl. Gurung recounts his journey to escape homophobia in Nepal and India, discovering the New York fashion world is not necessarily the promised land he envisioned.

Physician and author Rachel Clarke tells the most uplifting true tale you’ll hear of childhood death and life in The Story of a Heart. Events in the book led to changes in UK public policy, designating organ donation as the default choice for adults.

From Australia, Randa Abdel-Fattah explores journalism and activism amid Israel’s destruction of Gaza in her debut adult novel Discipline. An award winning author for children and young adults as well as a researcher in fields including Islamophobia and social movements, Abdel-Fattah found life imitating art and academia early this year. In the wake of deadly December shootings at a Jewish celebration in Sydney, South Australia’s Adelaide Book Week rescinded its invitation to Abdel-Fattah. She called the action “anti-Palestinian racism and censorship,” and dozens of authors withdrew from the Adelaide event in response, leading to its cancellation.

Count on the show going on in Ubud. If you love, reading, thinking and the creative pulse, there’s no better place to be than UWRF October 21-25.

Former US diplomat and broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is Asia editor at large for Clarion Media, a longtime contributor to Forbes, columnist for Asia Times and author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about TV news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his biography, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com; follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, ex-Twitter @MuhammadCohen and now on Blue Sky @MuhammadCohen.bsky.social.

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