The Asian Festival of Children’s Content (AFCC) is an annual festival that celebrates and aims to promote the creation, development and appreciation of quality Asian content for children and young adults. Organised by the Singapore Book Council, the festival comprises presentations, panels, masterclasses, workshops, along with a festival bookstore showcasing a wide selection of books from local and international publishers. 

AFCC 2019 Highlights

AFCC ran from 5-8 September 2019, featuring 149 local and international speakers in over 120 sessions. The festival garnered more than 4,300 participants across all ticketed and public programmes. We collected a total of 225 survey responses. Here’s what some of our delegates said about the festival!

The AFCC is a unique event in Asia that provides an opportunity for academics, writers, illustrators, editors, publishers, agents, distributors, parents, teachers, and librarians to meet, learn, hone their craft, and develop cross-cultural collaborations.

The Singapore Book Council (SBC) has been organising the Asian Children’s Writers & Illustrators Conference (ACWIC) since 2000. Leveraging on the success of this conference, ACWIC morphed into AFCC in 2010. It was reconstituted as both a professional trade, and to a limited extent, consumer event in 2010.

In its 10th edition this year, AFCC explores the richness of Asian children's stories by focusing on the theme Diversity.

At its core, diversity has always played a pivotal part in AFCC’s role in promoting children’s literature and young adult (YA) fiction in the region and Asia. Over the past 10 years, we have been advocating and championing diversity in the range of themes, content, as well as content creators themselves. We continue to establish ourselves as a crucial platform for writers, illustrators, translators, publishers, educators and media producers to develop works that resonate not only with audiences in the region, but also universally.

For AFCC 2019, the festival features a wide array of speakers who share our vision for a diverse and multicultural world. They will explore an extensive range of themes, from handling difficult topics like depression and sexual abuse in books, to nurturing empathy, expanding inter-ethnic understanding, crafting special needs programmes and creating purposeful play.

In a complicated world that grows smaller and bigger at the same time, these discussions on how literature can help children and teens understand the world they live in – but still encourage their imagination – are ever more important.

AFCC will celebrate Myanmar as its Country of Focus this year, as we continue to showcase the best of children’s book writers and illustrators from our Southeast Asian neighbours. Past COFs include Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The COF programmes will provide a window into the literary tradition and publishing developments in Myanmar.

Join us for another milestone year of exciting discussions, insightful exchanges and flights of imagination!