In its seventh year, the Jingsi Lake Literary Festival at NPUST has once again reached beyond the university campus to welcome the participation of students from seven high schools and vocational schools in the area. In order to create an opportunity for students to hone high-quality writing skills, the event will include critiques and commentaries by professional writers and a 14-item series of activities. Starting on March 10 (2025), four upcoming writers have been invited to give talks in a lectures series entitled Words。Encounters. During the series, the speakers will share their insights and experiences, and help aspiring writers to open up their imaginations, perceive the world, and integrate images of daily life into their literary creations. For the opening lecture, Lin Che Li, a writer who was shortlisted for the 2022 Golden Classic Award, was invited to share “Life Stories Written in Essays: Father God and Possession”. In this work, she uses her father as the object of observation as she tells her own life story. Her writing is delicate, sincere—and deep. Encouraging the students to write more, Lin emphasized that “everything in life is subject matter”.
The Words。Encounters theme that was selected for this year’s series conveys a sentiment that “even if the universe continues to expand and move away, we can still have encounters through words”. Following Lin Che Li, the lecture series lineup includes Kai-Lin Chen, an author lauded for his ability to capture local memories in the Hakka language; poet Wan-Da Hung, whose poem “How many floors does a bag of rice have to be carried up?” won first prize at the Chou Meng-tieh Poetry Awards; and poet Tsao Yu-Po, who writes on themes of life and death. The four writers are all new generation authors and poets from Taiwan whose writing styles draw on experiences in different fields to create rhythms that resonate with the lives of modern youth; and through their lectures, we are sure to see literary ripples reverberate across NPUST’s Jingsi Lake—touching its shores and the students in a meaningful way.
In addition to the lecture series, the Jingsi Lake Literary Festival will include a book and film exhibition and Salon Book Club. With all selected books recommended by library staff and scholars, book club activities will include guided readings, casual book talks, and location field trips which will help bring the writings to life. National Pingtung University of Science and Technology hopes that the Jingsi Lake Literary Festival and its extended activities will broaden the students’ reading horizons and transform their life experiences while simultaneously enriching the cultural heritage and literary atmosphere on campus.
For details of the event, please visit the registration system at the following address: https://event.npust.edu.tw/
