Missed out on the first weekend of the 2011 Shanghai International Literary Festival? Never fear, City Weekend was front and center to record all the action. Grab a cup of coffee, settle in and listen to your favorite authors talk about their work.

Saturday, March 4

Sarah Brennan: The Tale of Rhonda Rabbit
Children's author Sarah Brennan reads from her latest Chinese Calendar Tale.

Thomas Keneally: A Life of Writing
The Booker Prize-winning “Schindler’s Ark,” author—(you may know it as “Schindler’s List, the award-winning Spielberg film)—also has 40 other works to his name. He talks about his life of writing at the festival.

Anne Summers: The Lost Mother
The The End of Equality and Damned Whores and God’s Police author discusses her most recent book, The Lost Mother. The book chronicles the search for a lost painting, an endeavor that quickly becomes more than that, ending up an exploration of art, love, loss and the relationship between mothers and daughters.

Andrew Fukuda and Craig Silvery: Coming of Age
Fukuda and Silvey talk about the growing up and coming of age, and how the feelings that accompany that transcend geographical and cultural boundaries. Both authors' works feature a character who comes of age; in Fukuda's "Crossing" it's the sole Asian in a white town, and in Silvey's "Jasper Jones" is a nerdy kid in an Australian mining town.

Kim Young-ha: I Have the Right to Destroy Myself
Considered one of South Korea’s most prolific authors, Young-ha’s five novels include Empire of Lights and Quiz Show and the above mentioned I Have the Right to Destroy Myself, which is about a guy whose business is helping his clients commit suicide.

Deborah Baker: A Blue Hand
Baker's A Blue Hand covers Allen Ginsberg's time in India as he and his fellow Beat poets take a spiritual journey from the Himalayan foothills to Delhi's opium dens and Benares' burning pyres. She is also the author of Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding, and for it she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography in 1994.

Pankaj Mishra and Ian Johnson: The Resurgence of Belief in China and India Moderated by Jeffrey Wasserstrom
Listen to Mishra–author of An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World– and Beijing-based New York Times correspondent Johnson–who has profiled Taoist nuns and Muslims in Germany–for a discussion of the resurgence of indigenous religious traditions and how "imported spiritual systems" in both India and China are on the rise. Moderated by one of our favorite China hands, Jeffrey Wasserstrom.

Sunday, March 5

Michiel Hulsholf and Daan Roggeveen: China's World Cities of Tomorrow
A journalist and architect take a look at the new China mega-cities.

Brian Castro and Wang Guanglin
Hong Kongnese Castro's Shanghai Dancing, is loosely based on his own family's life in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Macau from the 1930s to the 1960s.

Pallavi Aiyar: Smoke and Mirrors
Indian journalist Aiyar talks about her views on China. She is the author of the award-winning novel Smoke and Mirrors and the newly published Chinese Whiskers, both of which are set in Beijing.

Lars Svendsen: The Philosophy of Boredom
When you were a kid, how many times did you whine "I'm booored," and how often do you think it now? Philosopher Svendsen explores boredom -- its origin, history and why we can't overcome it.

Jonathan Watts: When A Billion Chinese Jump
The Guardian's Asia environment correspondent talks about his most recent book, When A Billion Chinese Jump: How China Will Save the World - or Destroy It. The environmental travelogue covers the Tibetan Plateau, Inner Mongolia, tiger farms, melting glaciers, coal mines, eco cities and even Shanghai's enormous, pink Barbie store.

Nir Baram: Prism of History
Israeli Baram is the author of Good People, the tale of a German Nazi and a Russian communist. He talks about telling stories through the prism of history.

Amitav Ghosh: A Postcolonial View of Antique Lands
The Indian-Bengali author of In An Antique Land, Glass House and Sea of Poppies talks about telling stories on the East in a contemporary perspective.

Paolo Sabbatini
Sabbatini talks about Jesuit China Mission founder Matteo Ricci's work and the inspiration it took from Buddhist mystics. He also examines the riddle that is Sabbatino de Ursis' Chinese name and the influence China has had on Ricci and his ancestor Sabbatino.

There is still more Literary Festival action coming up. Check out the full schedule here.

See also:
Your Complete Guide to the 2011 Shanghai International Literary Festival
SILF Must See: Emma Donoghue Discusses Her Intense New Novel
Kids' Events at the 2011 Shanghai International Literary Festival
2010 Shanghai International Literary Festival Podcasts