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Exploring the interplay of human, nature and technology at 2024 Singapore Writers Festival
The 2024 SWF will hold over 200 programs with hundreds of established Singaporean and international writers, poets and artists, including award-winning Indonesian author Dewi “Dee” Lestari.
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Singapore Writers Festival's new director Yong Shu Hoong (left) welcomes audiences at the SWF 2024 launch event on Sept. 4 ahead of the festival's run in November. (Courtesy of Arts House Limited) (Arts House Limited/-)
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s the world struggles with climate change and the progress of artificial intelligence, one concern always seemingly arises: what will become of mankind?
For the Singapore Writers Festival (SWF), one of the biggest literary festivals in Southeast Asia, the question has to lead deeper into a more introspective view of mankind’s relationship with its environment.
“What is in our natural surroundings, and what is in our nature, as a person?” festival director Yong Shu Hoong told The Jakarta Post on Oct 5.
Those questions will be prominent at this year’s SWF, which will run from Nov. 8 to 17 across the city-state. Themed “In Our Nature”, the 2024 SWF seeks to reflect with its audience on what it means to be human, amid the changing ecological and technological landscape.
The intersections between man, nature and machine might be an old dilemma in literary works, but they are even more relevant for Shu Hoong, the new festival director.
“I actually studied computer science at the National University of Singapore before becoming a poet,” Shu Hoong shared.
The 58-year-old poet said his background as a programmer, and his later dip into poetry, helped him view literature in more ways than one, and he hoped that audiences coming to the festival would do the same.
