Literature festivals and promoting a love of reading

Peter Hellyer recaps the Emirates Airline Literature Festival in Dubai

Between These Lines is a collection of poems, short stories and descriptive pieces, in both English and Arabic, written by students from Year 8 to Year 13. Fatima Al Marzooqi / The National

I had the pleasure last weekend of taking part in the Emirates Airline Literature Festival, an event which, I readily concede, I should have visited in previous years. Numerous authors from around the world attend. There are book launches and open format discussions of some of the works, booksellers offer considerable discounts and there are opportunities for purchasers to have their newly bought books signed by the authors. All in all, to use a phrase I would normally avoid, what's not to like?

Running over nine days, with well known names from the world of literature as well as from the news media and political life, both local and from overseas, it offered a veritable cornucopia of attractions for both adults and children.

I haven't seen any figures, but it must have attracted many, many thousands of visitors, from home and from overseas. Emirates, the key sponsor, Dubai Culture and the Emirates Literature Foundation deserve credit for a remarkable event – one which underlines the UAE's continuing commitment to the promotion of reading. Our Year of Reading may have ended, but the desire to popularise the habit lives on.

The event with which I was involved was the launch of the first Arabic edition of a field guide to the Birds of the Middle East.

The English edition, written by Richard Porter, Middle East adviser to the conservation charity BirdLife International, and the late Simon Aspinall, former chairman of the Emirates Bird Records Committee, was sponsored by the Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi and the Abu Dhabi Global Environmental Database Initiative.

The Arabic edition attracted support from, among others, BirdLife and Britain’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

Judging by the large audience at the launch, the book will attract considerable attention. Emirati birder Ahmed Al Ali, one of the panellists at the launch, noted how difficult it had been for him, developing an interest in birds, to find any good information in Arabic. I hope that environmental bodies here and throughout the Arabic-speaking Middle East will make good use of this tool, aimed at anyone with an interest in birds. In particular, I hope that it will be used in schools and elsewhere to teach children.

To my mind, anything that encourages children to read deserves to be promoted, not least because it is out of today's readers that tomorrow's authors will come.

In that context, I was delighted last week to be invited to attend the launch of another book, not at the literature festival but at Abu Dhabi's Al Bateen Secondary School.

Between These Lines is a collection of poems, short stories and descriptive pieces, in both English and Arabic, written by students from Year 8 to Year 13. It's the second in a biennial series the school plans to produce and, at over 240 pages, it's impressive evidence of its success in encouraging students to read and to write.

The school's head of English, Kieran McMahon, tells me: “Every student has their favourite book and their favourite author but I think creating a book that contains their own ideas is something that is unique and special.

“We want to develop a passion for reading and writing among our students, especially among those who are usually reluctant to write.

“Giving every student an opportunity to publish their own work encourages and strengthens their self-confidence, which has vast benefits for their overall education.”

Listening to some of the students reading their pieces aloud, I was struck by their confidence and their pride in their work. Some of them, I predict, will appear at further Emirates Literature Festivals in the years to come.

I hope other schools will follow suit – and perhaps newspapers such as The National could play their part too in encouraging these writers of the future.

Peter Hellyer is a consultant specialising in the UAE’s history and culture