Isobel Abulhoul, director of Dubai’s Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, explains why the 2016 edition – with “time” as its theme – will be the biggest yet.
Why has the festival been extended to two weekends?
I think it is a natural progression, but we didn’t expect it to be quite as extensive and so soon. If you look at the models of the great literary festivals around the world, they start off as a weekend and grow from there. At the moment, our festival is as long as the Cheltenham Literature Festival, which is oldest literary festival in the world. They are 60 odd years old and we are into our eighth year, so the progress and speed that we made is fantastic. We have also been inundated with authors who wanted to come because they heard so many great thing about the festival and the UAE. We thought, well, we can’t say no because this is a fantastic author and we had to accommodate them – and the only way we could do that was to actually extend the time of the festival.
What is the reason for the prevalence of Shakespeare in the programme?
It's the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, so we have a strand running throughout the whole festival. We have Steven Berkoff bringing his amazing one-man show, to close the festival, where he acts his way through all of Shakespeare's villains. We also have actress Meera Syal, who starred in Much to Do About Nothing – she will talk about the effect that Shakespeare had on her.
Can you tell us more about the Emirati talent in the festival?
We have a whole programme called Spotlight on the Emirates that will give Emirati writers and poets an opportunity to take the stage and give us an understanding of their craft.
Elaborate on the theme of the festival – "time".
It came from a series of thoughts. I was talking about how books mean the past, the present and the future to me, and one of the team members said: ‘Well, that’s time, isn’t it?’ Then we had this light bulb moment and it has worked so well for us, because these themes of the past and the future, mortality and changing seasons feature heavily in literature. That also helped us extend the science strand of the festival.
• The Emirates Airline Festival of Literature runs in Dubai from March 1 to 12; most events are held at InterContinental Dubai Festival City. Visit www.emirateslitfest.com
sasaeed@thenational.ae
