Tickets for Amitav Ghosh’s keynote at the Singapore Writers Festival are marked Selling Fast ahead of his talk at the Victoria Theatre on 14 November. His talk is one of three Festival Keynote Talks at this year’s festival, which runs from 13 to 22 November under the theme Hidden in Plain Sight. American journalist Stephen Witt opens the series on 13 November and Canadian novelist Silvia Moreno-Garcia closes it on 21 November.
All three keynotes are ticketed separately from the Festival Pass and take place at the Victoria Theatre, 9 Empress Place. Each is followed by a book signing in the Victoria Theatre atrium.
Stephen Witt on Nvidia, 13 November
Witt, an award-winning journalist and the author of How Music Got Free, talks about his new book The Thinking Machine on Friday 13 November from 7.30pm to 8.30pm. The book follows Jensen Huang and Nvidia from a near-bankrupt video game graphics company to a trillion-dollar giant at the centre of the AI boom.
Grace Chng moderates. Tickets cost S$25, and his appearance is made possible by the Asia Creative Writing Programme.
Amitav Ghosh on the planet’s future, 14 November
Ghosh’s talk, A Writer’s Reimagining of Our Planetary Future, runs on Saturday 14 November from 1.30pm to 2.30pm. He takes on a question that runs through his recent books, the essay collection Wild Fictions and the novel Ghost-Eye: what it means that many of the world’s most powerful people, from billionaires building bunkers on remote islands to investors in doomsday shelters, seem to have given up on the planet.
He looks at what these catastrophic imaginings mean for the future, especially for the Global South. Tania Roy moderates, tickets cost S$35 and the programme is supported by the Shaw Foundation.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia on truth and fakery, 21 November
Moreno-Garcia, whose novels range from a haunted house to generations of witchcraft and a con artist’s lies, gives her keynote, Writing Between the Real and Unreal, on Saturday 21 November from 1.30pm to 2.30pm. Her question for the hour is what writing honestly requires when artificiality is so easy to manufacture.
Novelist Balli Kaur Jaswal moderates. Tickets cost S$25, and her appearance is supported by the High Commission of Canada.
Tickets, discounts and fees
Students, full-time national servicemen and seniors aged 55 and above get 20 per cent off individually ticketed programmes, with ID checked at the door. Festival Pass and Youth Pass holders get 15 per cent off selected individually ticketed programmes by choosing the Festival Pass Holders ticket type and entering their Pass ID. The Festival Pass costs S$30 and the Youth Pass, for students with a valid student card, costs S$15.
Tickets are sold through BookMyShow, which adds a booking fee of S$1 for tickets at S$20 and below and S$3 for tickets from S$20.01 to S$40. SG Culture Pass credits can be used on eligible festival programmes, and any shortfall can be paid by other means.
Tickets are non-refundable and there is no waitlist. Walk-ins are considered only after a programme starts, and only when no-shows free up seats.
Each patron can get one book signed by each presenter, and the presenters will sign books only, not other memorabilia.
