The Marrakech English Book Festival contributes to promoting cultural tourism and positioning the Ocher city as an essential cultural destination, said the president of this cultural event, Yassine Adnan.
This major cultural event has become a bridge of communication between Moroccan writers and their Anglo-Saxon counterparts, thus promoting dialogue between Arab and international literature and contributing to enrich the literary cultural scene, noted Yassin Adnan in an interview with the MAP, on the occasion of the second edition of the Marrakech English Book Festival, scheduled for January 17 to 19.
Yassine Adnan, poet and novelist, stressed that this festival aims to achieve interaction between writers and intellectuals from different continents, encouraging cultural exchanges, strengthening mutual understanding between different cultures through English literature, and enabling writers from different countries to interact with local and international audiences.
“By welcoming authors writing in English, coming from different continents, the festival also contributes to the international influence of Morocco in general and of the city of Marrakech in particular,” he added, indicating that the event will this year highlight honor Moroccan writers in the diaspora.
In this context, Yassine Adnan underlined that the Festival association has entered into a partnership with the Council of the Moroccan Community Abroad (CCME), with the aim of encouraging Moroccan writers from the diaspora to meet of their counterparts from their country of origin, with the prospect that such meetings will lead to the conclusion of partnerships between the two parties and also encourage publishing houses in Morocco to publish books in English, or even translated books.
He noted, in this regard, that the festival would highlight the challenges facing the dissemination in Morocco of books written in English, whether they are published locally or imported, particularly in light of the emergence of Moroccan authors. speaking in English and finding it difficult to publish their works.
Regarding the new programming of the second edition of the festival, Yassin Adnan noted that the organizers have decided to devote a large part of the activities to the promotion of Moroccan poetry written in English, as well as to the exhibition of foreign books dealing with the civilization of Morocco in general, and the millennial history of Marrakech in particular. Conferences, signing sessions, creative workshops and activities for children will take place mainly at the Dar El Bacha Museum and other venues associated with the festival.
In this context, Yassine Adnan announced that this edition will be marked by the presentation of a new national book prize, “the Costa Goldex Prize” for Moroccan works in the English language, which will be awarded this year to the writer Oum Hani Alaoui for his novel “The House on Butterfly Street”.
