Literary meeting to be held in RI

Literary meeting to be held in RI

KUALA LUMPUR (JP): A meeting of the Southeast Asian Literacy Council is scheduled for March 1966 in Bukittinggi, West Sumatra. This will be the first meeting of newly established council outside of Malaysia.

"Majelis Sastra Asia Tenggara was established at a meeting between representatives of Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, held from Aug. 21 to Aug. 25 this year," A. Aziz Deraman of the Malaysian Language and Literature Board said yesterday.

His institution was instrumental in setting up the council, whose purpose is to stimulate closer cooperation between authors writing in the Malay language in the region, to research traditional Malay literature and to stimulate comparative literature studies through translation.

The council will also be presenting awards of excellence for writers.

H. Ahmad Kamal Abdullah, the organizer of the ongoing Seminar on Comparative Literature in Kuala Lumpur, said that the newly established literary council's awards are designed to "give recognition to writers producing high quality Malay language literature in Southeast Asia. (mag)