KLAB Festival

Promo di bawah buat pengedar dan peminat buku, lebih-lebih lagi yang cuba mencari buku-buku yang jarang (rare) dijumpai di kedai buku biasa.

The 1st KL Alternative Bookfest (KLAB) will be held on the weekend of 3-4 May, 2008 at The Annexe, Central Market. Held less than a month after the mammoth Pesta Buku KL (where you can buy as many text-books, romance novels and religious instruction manuals as you want), it will be held simultaneously with the very popular Art For Grabs event – but in a different room.

What is KLAB?

Basically a gathering of small, independent publishers who would like a popular venue to sell, launch and discuss books. We seek to fill 10-15 tables. Each table can be taken up by one publisher, or it can be shared between various people who each have books to sell. There are many interesting Malaysian books now being published; the trouble is, not many of them are readily available in the main bookshops. This is an opportunity to bring these books to the public, and to make the whole process fun lah.

6 tables have already been filled up; they are by Gerakbudaya, SIRD, Silverfish, Tokobuku, Kinibooks and Matahari Books. We seek 6-11 others. We are in negotiations to bring one publisher each from Singapore & Indonesia too.

Among the events we plan are:

- Book launch by Hishamuddin Rais

- Discussion of new books by Rustam Sani, Noraini Othman & Mavis Puthucheary, and others.

- A 'book give-away' where people can simply get rid of books they no longer want, for free. This will physically take up one corner of the room, where people can just leave the books. The idea is to make interesting books available even to those who can't afford to buy 'em. The remainder of the books will be donated, most likely to Ricecooker.

- Bilingual poetry slam, where the audience gets to vote for their favourite performers.Details:The fee per table (for both days) is RM100. The event is from 12-6pm both days. Deadline to receive entries (including payment) is April 26. (These details are identical to the ones for Art for Grabs. The only difference is that this event takes place in a different gallery room at The Annexe).

For further info, please contact me, Zulhabri Supian zulhabri@gmail.com or 019 3083804