Ken Liu is a prolific and award-winning author of stories that span the galaxies of futurism and fantasy. He also happens to interpret one cultural constellation for another: Liu is the leading translator of Chinese science fiction into English. “Science fiction can’t tell us a lot about the future,” he insists. “It’s more interesting for what it says about the society that produces it.”

Wrapped in creative words and cultural visions, the Lahore Literary Festival brings to London, Pakistan’s artistic thinking and classical heritage. This rare sight of Pakistan, at the BP lecture theatre of the British Museum, will take place on Saturday 29th October 2016. With exceptional artists, writers, and cultural commentators, the festival will explore outstanding ideas. For the very first time, London will be celebrating the visionary liveliness of Lahore.

Canada will be responsible for designing and building a pavilion that will feature our country's rich talent and cultural diversity. The pavilion, which will occupy the Fair's main stage, will be filled with various Canadian cultural exhibitions; it will also offer programming such as author readings, dance, film and music that will promote Canadian artists and cultural entrepreneurs on the international scene.

On September 10, 2015, the launching ceremony of the book "CHINA-AFRICA 500: Facts About China, Africa and Relations Between the Two"and the Chinese Bridge ― Sino-African Friendship Knowledge Competition was held in Peking University. [...] This event is co-sponsored by the Secretariat of the Chinese Follow-up Committee of Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), Peking University, China Public Diplomacy Association and the Confucius Institute Headquarters (Hanban).

Premier Li Keqiang is bringing along another group on his trip to Latin America as he tries to increase China’s influence and soft power in the region – novelists. A special delegation will attend a seminar in Colombia on cultural exchanges between China and Latin America, the People’s Daily reported.

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin once described writers as “the engineers of the human soul.”  “The production of souls is more important than the production of tanks,” he claimed. Stalin clearly believed that literature was a powerful political tool—and he was willing to execute writers whose works were deemed traitorous to the Soviet Union.

Like torture and curfews, book banning in Brazil went out with the military dictatorship almost 30 years ago. Back then, intellectuals, artists, and politicians hailed the end of the long night of authoritarian rule (1964 to 1985) with a burst of creativity and civic commotion. É proibido proibir—“Prohibition is prohibited,”—proclaimed singer and songwriter Caetano Veloso, who was censored under the military and spent years in exile. Veloso’s slogan became the meme for the new era of democratic liberty.