The National Book Council is publishing the programme of events for the Book Festival on Campus 2017, which will take place at University on the 4-5-6th of April, starting 10:00 hours and continuing till late. The purpose of the Festival is to promote literature as a whole, while at the same time giving publishers and book distributors a space in which they can promote their material with a mature audience, such as university students.

The publishers and distributors participating in the festival are HORIZONS, FARAXA BOOKS, SENSIELA KOTBA SOĊJALISTI (SKS), STUDENTS PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, EDE, KOTBA CALLEJA, and BDL, some of whom will be setting up events of their own. Among these we find HORIZONS who will launch a poetry collection by Prof. Kenneth Wain, entitled 'Who looks at the sun anymore' and FARAXA who have also prepared a poetry evening. KOTBA CALLEJA will be holding two workshops on the art of book binding.

Apart from the publishers and book distributors, other participants in the Festival have contributed to the programme. The poetess Miriam Calleja will lead a workshop on the topic of creative writing which is open to all writers of all levels.  The event will involve a number of exercises and games, prompts and guidelines, as well as advice on how to improve one's writing. The event will close with a reading of Calleja's poetry both in English and in Maltese. Other events of academic interest include 'Il-Malti u l-Barranin', set up by Kunsill Nazzjonali tal-Lsien Malti, where a number of people who studied Maltese as a foreign language will talk about what motivated them to learn Maltese and why Maltese of all the languages in the world, and 'X'naqbad ngħid?', a talk and discussion on linguistic variations in Maltese, which will be led by Michael Spagnol.

As we have already announced in a press release of last week, the special guest of the festival is Caroline Smailes, the renowned author of 'In Search of Adam', 'Like Bees to Honey', '99 Reasons Why' and 'The Drowning of Arthur Braxton', which is currently being made into a film.

Caroline Smailes, who is of Maltese descent, was born in Newcastle and has studied creative writing. During the festival she will be leading workshops on the subjects of creative writing, aspects of narration such as the choice of dialogue diction and location, the need for convincing and consistent characters and the question of linguistic inheritance. There will also be an activity in which excerpts of Smailes' work will be read and members of the public will be able to address the author directly.

Every year the programme of the Festival includes a musical performance, which this year will be given by the HipHop act Marmalja, whose performance will close the first night of the Festival, that is 4th April.

We ask the public to read well the programme and to learn about the events that have been prepared as they are sure to find much more than one event that piques their interest. The programme will be available in print form and distributed in public places in the coming few days.