World-acclaimed authors invited to hold workshops

Dubai: Residents of the UAE will be able to peek into the minds of their favourite authors as a line of world-famous writers head to the city to lead monthlong workshops.

As a start to the Writer-in-Residence programme, launched by the Dubai International Writers’ Centre (DIWC) yesterday, travel writer Tim Mackintosh-Smith will join the sessions from January 14 to February 1.

The DIWC, part of the Emirates Literature Foundation and an associate organisation of the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, was officially launched in November, 2014, and has promised to hold such events around the year in order to cater to the multicultural and multinational communities living in the region.

Abdullah Al Shaer, Director of DIWC, said that programme allows writers to spend time developing a work in progress and participate in community outreach events to enrich residents with their experiences.

“We want to give [the] residents of Dubai and [the] UAE access to published authors and, of course, support the local and international writing community. The programme aims to help residents realise their writing dreams while bridging the gap between international authors and local writers as well as published and unpublished writers,” he said.

He also said that Mackintosh-Smith is the first of many to join the programme.

“We will be holding this programme often and will fine-tune it to the needs of the audience. We want to open it to a diverse group of people and will be inviting authors of varied nationalities and genres.”

The DIWC will be holding weekly talks by Mackintosh-Smith throughout January. He will also be speaking about adapting his book for television, writing about Ibn Battuta’s travels and more every Saturday of the month. “We are very excited about the workshops Tim will be conducting. We have translation workshops, in Arabic and English, as well as a three-day travel-writing workshop. Tim will also be holding one-to-one sessions with aspiring writers. These sessions will last half an hour [long each] and are an amazing opportunity for writers to gain practical advice,” said Al Shaer.

For those interested in translation, Mackintosh-Smith will conduct translation workshops in Arabic and English, as well as a talk on the joys and difficulties of the Arabic language.

The sessions and workshops will be open for everyone. Tickets and information for the talks and workshops will be available online on the DIWC’s website, Diwc.ae, starting January 8.