George Town Literary Festival

Fun literary festival that we’ve personally participated in, long time ago now, but it was welcoming and open and DESK loves that. The 2026 theme, Cosmopolises, aims to explore cities as places where languages, cultures and histories intersect. Having personally visited several times, I feel Malaysia is a good place to go if you’re into multicultural locations, so that makes sense for a theme. What I like the most about this festival is that it’s part of a citywide experience, so you don’t just have an isolated thing going on with a bunch of literary snobs. Rather, it’s integrated into the experience of everydayness which is what makes it less pretentious than many things like this.