The Hong Kong International Literary Festival celebrates its 20th anniversary this year with its biggest line-up of authors ever, covering 76 events including 20 that are free. The 11-day festival, which begins on November 5, has responded to the challenge of the pandemic with bold and creative programming thanks to new festival director Catherine Platt. While many of the world’s leading literary festivals have gone 100 per cent online – including those in Singapore, Melbourne, Sydney and Edinburgh – the Hong Kong festival has created an event that will see 31 events take place online, 15 in-person and 21 hybrid affairs. The hybrid events will feature a moderator or other speaker take to the stage in front of a live audience accompanied by a live steam of an overseas author on a big screen. In addition, there are nine writing workshops. “I wanted to make this festival more accessible and flexible in terms of choice, format and price,” Platt says. “There’s a wide range of genres [covered], so no matter who you are, you should be able to pick up the programme and find something that interests you.” Alongside the English-language events are eight in Cantonese or Mandarin. All the online events will also be available with subtitles 24 hours after they take place. While the pandemic has posed challenges, there is a silver lining in that going online has meant there are more big-name international authors in the line-up than usual. The first weekend (November 7-8) features mostly online and hybrid events, with the weekdays from November 9-13 all online. The second weekend (November 14-15) is packed with live events at the Tai Kwun arts and heritage centre, so you might want to base yourself there for those days to really make the most of it. “The wonderful thing about a festival weekend is going to an event, then wandering into something else, discovering a new author or topic you hadn’t planned to go to,” Platt says. Highlights Hong Kong Film Focus: Translating Books to Screen Australian writer and broadcaster Benjamin Law, author of the hilarious and heartbreaking memoir The Family Law , also created and co-wrote the first three seasons of the TV series of the same name. He will speak to Hong Kong screenwriter and director Ray Yeung about bringing fiction to the big screen, the embrace of queer stories by mainstream media, and how these stories are regarded and reflected within Hong Kong society . November 5, 6-7pm, Miller Theatre, Asia Society Past Perspectives: The Last Kings of Shanghai Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author Jonathan Kaufman will discuss his new book The Last Kings of Shanghai , a story of two Jewish families – the Sassoons and the Kadoories – who were key players in Chinese business and politics for more than 175 years. They profited from the Opium Wars, survived the Japanese occupation, courted China’s Nationalist head Chiang Kai-shek and nearly lost everything as the communists swept into power. November 13, 9-10pm, Miller Theatre, Asia Society How to Talk about Race Keith Richburg, director of the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong, will lead a discussion around post-colonialism, race and the Black Lives Matter movement in Asia. “At a time when the US and the world are reckoning with questions of racial justice and equality, this panel will explore how this overdue global conversation translates to Hong Kong and Southeast Asia,” he says. “We will be looking at issues impacting Southeast Asian minority communities in Hong Kong, and also the city’s black community, examining questions of identity, discrimination, diversity and representation. I’m looking forward to an exciting, stimulating and very timely discussion.” November 14, 10-11.30am, JC Cube, Tai Kwun. ‘Who am I?’ Issues cross-cultural teens face and how to deal with them Sex and Vanity Kevin Kwan, the author and creator of the bestselling phenomenon Crazy Rich Asians , will talk about his latest novel, Sex and Vanity . As you’d expect of Kwan, it is a brilliantly funny comedy of manners set between two cultures, and shifts between the Italian island of Capri and the Hamptons in New York state as Lucie Churchill finds herself torn between two men: the white, upper-class fiancé of her family’s dreams and George Zao, the man she is desperately trying to avoid falling in love with. November 14, 11.30am-12.30pm, Miller Theatre, Asia Society Hong Kong Digital Noir Local authors Chan Ho-kei and Eva Lau Yee-wa will discuss social issues in Hong Kong in the context of their latest works. Chan says Second Sister , the crime mystery he wrote, tackles cyberbullying, youth suicide and the exploitation of social classes, while Lau’s book, Tongueless , explores conflicts within a school between headmaster and teachers, the lost identity of Hong Kong people, and the suicide of a teacher. “Although we are writing in different genres, our books both focus on exploitation in our high-pressure city,” he says. The event is in Cantonese. November 14, 12-1pm, JC Cube, Tai Kwun Bringing Asian Stories to the World Hong Kong author Xu Xi will moderate a panel of three Asian and Asian-American women writers whose first books have taken the literary world by storm. “We will discuss the literary traditions they are writing out of – as Asian immigrants writing in the West – and their literary influences,” Xu says. “I’d like to get them to talk about when and how they saw their writing as a serious endeavour and prepared themselves for the profession. And I’ll ask them to talk about the trajectory of their writing lives, specifically the combination of supportive literary communities they each benefited from and their advanced degrees in creative writing that preceded the publication of their first books.” November 15, 10.30-11.30am, F Hall, Tai Kwun The Good Samaritan Excited about the Hong Kong launch of her crime thriller debut novel, Charlotte Parsons says her interest in crime writing developed when she was working as a senior court reporter at the South China Morning Post in the late 1990s. “I spent years watching criminals in the dock and listening to the things they’d done and what made them tick,” she says. “What fascinated me was their motives and the degree to which a lot of popular fiction doesn’t reflect how criminal minds really work.” November 15, 1.30-2.30pm, F Hall, Tai Kwun For the full line-up visit festival.org.hk