Listings / book club / self-publishing

As I said in August, I am starting to run listings of literary events across Asia, excluding West and Central Asia, but extending west to east from the Indian Sub-continent to Japan, and north to south from Mongolia to the southern tip of the Indonesian archipelago.

If you do want to submit listings, I will accept them up to three months before the event takes place.  I will assume the language of the event is English, unless otherwise stated.  If you would like to have an event included please e-mail details to asianbooksblog@gmail.com.  Please make it as easy as possible for me to extract information, and follow the format below as closely as you can. The two examples are both real listings, not invented, so make a note, should you be interested in attending.

What?             Short Story Boot Camp: a series of creative writing workshops on how to create and craft short stories, led by Felix Chong and Verena Tay

When?            Sat 28/9 and Sun 29/9, 10 am – 5 pm

Where?           The Living Room, The Arts House, 1 Old Parliament Lane

Singapore 179429

Cost?               SG$ 120. Concessions apply

Booking          http://www.bytes.sg/EventDetails.aspx?EventID=492

What?              Book reading from Kampong Spirit: Gotong Royong - Life in Potong Pasir, 1955 to 1965, by Josephine Chia

When?             Sat 21/9, 3:00 pm

Where?            Select Books, 51 Armenian St, Singapore 179939

Cost?                Free           

Booking           Not required

I am working on creating a proper listings page, until then I will post listings weekly at the bottom of more general posts.

Just a reminder that I have also launched a book club.  The first selection is Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan, published in paperback by Doubleday.  I will post my thoughts on Sunday 29^th Sept, so if you’d like to read it before then, and post your own opinions that would be great.

Since self-publishing is becoming so accepted, and important to those of us living outside of, and feeling excluded from, the big centres of commercial publishing, ABB is going to provide a monthly round-up of five or six interesting looking self-published titles from around Asia. 

Alice Clark-Platts will write the round-ups.  Alice is a human rights lawyer with a passion for literature, high, low and trashy. She is the author of Warchild, a political thriller, and she is currently working on her next novel, The Weir.  In 2011, Alice founded The Singapore Writers Group, which currently has over 350 members. The Group is involved with others across the world in an exchange of ideas and information. Alice blogs on life and writing at www.mycoffeewithconnie.com, so take a look!

If you are a self-published author, and you would like to have your book considered, please e-mail asianbooksblog@gmail.com.  No children’s / young adult, erotica, self-help, religious titles, cookery, autobiography, so-called lifestyle titles, true crime or anything else Alice or I decide to take against.

The ban on erotica is not a ban on books with sex scenes, even ones where you have to flip through to find the clean bits, just an attempted ban on boring books.  All other genres of adult fiction are fine: chick lit, lad lit, sci-fi, and so on are as welcome as lit lit.  All narrative non-fiction is likewise welcome. All books should have something to do with Asia, or with Asians.

The first of Alice’s round-ups will be posted in mid October. 

Lisa Dempster / Director, Melbourne Writers Festival

Melbourne Writers Festival, the city’s annual, two-week celebration for writers, readers and thinkers, has just closed.  I asked Lisa Dempster, its director, to reflect on this year's achievements.

I commented that the program seemed to suggest the Festival was intended, in part, as a bridge between East and West. Was that correct? "Yes, it's very important to me that the Melbourne Writers Festival creates a dialogue with our neighbours in Asia. So much of the publishing industry is focused on the US, UK and Europe, but as we live in the Asia-Pacific it's vital that we take part in conversations about the politics and literature of our region also. When planning the program, we think about the conversations that are happening around us and curate topics and speakers that we know will provoke discussion or further the conversation about a particular issue. Given our geographical position, some of these naturally promote dialogue between East and West."

Global Voices was one event clearly focused on encouraging an East-West conversation. It brought together Iranian-born Australian writer and poet Ali Alizadeh, American-Taiwanese Tao Lin, and Australian writer-performer Laura Jean McKay to talk about how they represented, or evaded, different cultures in their writing.  I thought it sounded great, and I wondered how Lisa and her team came up with the idea of bringing together these three writers? "It was a natural fit. Although their writing styles are very different, all of their most recent books are about the intersection between the East and the West, and how people navigate increasingly globalised lives. The discussion was fantastic, and each author brought an interesting perspective to the panel."

Like #Word, Kula Lumpur, (see the post here) Melbourne hosted a chapter of the Edinburgh World Writers’ Conference - a global enquiry into contemporary writing that has spanned the world from Edinburgh to Beijing, and beyond. One of the EWWC's themes was censorship - a problem in much of Asia. How did Lisa think writers' festivals in countries where free speech is allowed help writers in countries where it isn't? "We can help simply by contributing to the dialogue around writing and censorship. I think in democratic countries we need to be aware of the challenges facing authors working in more restrictive conditions. At the Melbourne Writers Festival we ensure there are empty chairs on stage during events, highlighting authors who cannot be at the Festival because their circumstances don't allow it." 

Ruth Ozeki was one of the big names attending the Festival.  Her novel A Tale For The Time Being is on the Man Booker shortlist.  (See the post here).  I wondered how she was received in Melbourne, and which other Asian writers, or writers of Asian descent, the audiences wanted to see? "Everyone loved Ruth. In addition to being a brilliant novelist, she's a very interesting woman and a great presenter. Tao Lin also made waves. His work is quite divisive in a lot of ways - he has fans but he also has detractors. A lot of people were curious to come along and meet the man behind the work."

The Festival closed with Marina Warner, an expert on the magic and metaphor of fairy tales, talking about her latest book, Stranger Magic: charmed states and the Arabian Nights, an exploration of the wide-ranging influence of Scheherazade's life-saving tales. Lisa moderated the event.  Had she enjoyed herself? "It was a real treat. Stories are vital to the human condition, as evidenced by our desire to tell and retell stories across centuries. Musing on that idea at the end of the Festival was the ideal way to close a huge eleven days that celebrated stories and storytellers of all kinds!"

Wayan Juniartha, Indonesian Program Manager Ubud Writers & Readers Festival

The Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, which this year celebrates its 10^th anniversary, brings together Indonesian, South East Asian and international voices.  I spoke to Wayan Juniartha, Indonesian Program Manager.

I wondered what she thought UWRF had achieved for Indonesian writers? “The Festival has played a major role in the birth of a new generation of promising Indonesian authors. Ours is the only literary festival dedicating significant resources to ensuring that emerging Indonesian writers, those producing quality work, but having limited or zero exposure at the national level, receive fair attention. Selected writers receive sponsorship to attend the Festival and the works they present are translated and published in our annual bilingual anthology, making their works accessible to English speakers. Since 2008 we have showcased 75 emerging Indonesian writers.  This year more than 600 young writers from across the archipelago submitted applications to attend. The chance to speak alongside established authors, from Indonesia and elsewhere, provides chosen writers with valuable networking opportunities.  Separately, we have established links with literary communities right across the archipelago; the Festival is now the primary bridge connecting Indonesian authors, particularly those living outside Java, with the international literary community." 

How did Wayan hope to build on these achievements in the future? “UWRF wants to establish better international links. One of our dreams is to introduce an exchange programme which would enable emerging Indonesian authors to stay in Australia, and Australian authors to stay in Indonesia.”

Moving from emerging writers, to more established ones, UWRF hosts many book launches.  Of the books by Indonesian authors being launched this year which was Wayan most looking forward to reading, and why? “Renditions of My Soul, by Balinese author Desak Yoni. I met her a couple months ago and she struck me as a different kind of Balinese women: outspoken and passionately opinionated. She told me that her book touched controversial issues and might get her into trouble with mainstream Balinese thinkers.”

Renditions of My Soul, published by Saritasku Editions, certainly does sound interesting. Returning to Bali after years abroad, Desak Yoni experienced at first hand the multiple challenges facing Balinese women struggling in a patriarchal world. Renditions of My Soul, a fictionalized memoir that morphed into a novel, is apparently an antidote to consumer driven fantasies of Bali as a hedonist’s paradise, and as such it ought to be well worth reading.

UWRF has few events in Bahasa.  I put it to Wayan that this was perhaps a little odd, but she disagreed: “We are essentially an international festival with English as the main language. We provide interpreters for Indonesian authors who need them, but rather than holding a majority of events in Bahasa we opted for a different approach: inviting as many Indonesian writers as possible, translating and publishing the works of selected Indonesian emerging writers, and ensuring that all our invited Indonesian writers get exposure through panel appearances and media interviews. At the moment, our audience composition is about 70% foreigners and 30% locals. The foreigners have varying degrees of fluency in Bahasa, and many of them hail from English-speaking countries.  Meanwhile, most members of our Indonesian audience are fluent in English. Given these facts it would be counter-productive for us to use Bahasa as the main language of the Festival.”

What did Wayan hope the 30% of local readers attending the Festival would take away from it? “UWRF is about exchanging ideas. Indonesia is a young democracy  - a nation in transition - which has to deal with huge new issues: gay rights; multiculturalism; terrorism; free markets; women’s rights; environmental conservation. The Festival sees a multitude of writers from various countries, diverse political ideologies, and different belief systems, gathering at one place discussing these critical issues. I believe that exposure to such diverse viewpoints and experiences must benefit Indonesian readers by expanding their horizons of thought and, by offering insights on how they might speed up the transition process and steer the country onto a correct course.”

UWRF runs from 11 – 15 October. Visit www.ubudwritersfestival.com for more information.

This year, in conjunction with The Asia-Europe Foundation, UWRF ran Long Way Home, a short story contest. Leroy Luar, from Malaysia, won the Asian section, with The Evidence of Us. Special mention went to Maltese-French author Nadia Mifsud for Made in Bangladesh, and to Kathrina Haji Mohd Daud, from Brunei, for I am a Bird.  You can read all three of these stories, and others, by following links either on www.ubudwritersfestival.com, or on the website for The Asia-Europe Foundation www.asef.org

Sushmita Banerjee

On 4^th September, Indian author Sushmita Banerjee was shot dead by turbaned men in Kabul, where she was involved in health care, and in documenting the lives of local women.  Her killers were probably the Taliban.  She was widely denounced by fundamentalists in Afghanistan for her work promoting women’s rights, and she had attracted the fury of the Taliban after she wrote the memoir Kabuliwalar Bangali Bou  (A Man From Kabul’s Bengali Wife). It told of Banerjee’s love marriage to the Afghan businessman Janbaz Khan, her moving to Afghanistan in 1989, the adversities she faced under Taliban rule and her eventual escape back to her native Kolkata.  She had only recently returned to Kabul when she was shot. Her publisher, Swapan Biswas, told The Times Of India she had informed him about her plan to return to Afghanistan in February to start work on another book: "She was determined to go back for the book which she wanted me to publish."

Kabuliwalar Bangali Bou detailed the harsh life inflicted on women in rural Afghanistan.  In 1998, Banerjee talked to Outlook India about her book.  She explained it told how the Taliban forced her to close down her business: "They also listed out dos and don'ts. The burkha was a necessity. Listening to the radio or playing a tape recorder was banned. Women were not allowed to go to the shops. They were even prohibited from stepping out from their houses unless accompanied by their husbands. All women had to have the names of their husbands tattooed on their left hand. Virtually all interaction between men and women outside the confines of their own homes was banned."(See outlookindia.com)

Banerjee followed up Kabuliwalar Bangali Bou with  more volumes of memoir, and general commentary: Talibani Atyachar, Deshe O Bideshe  (Taliban Atrocities In Afghanistan And Abroad), Mullah Omar, Taliban O Ami (Mullah Omar, Taliban And I) Ek Borno Mithya Noi (Not A Word Is A Lie) and Sabhyatar Sesh Punyabani (The Swansong Of Civilisation).

According to India Today, Kabuliwalar Bangali Bou initially sold seven lakh copies, including “over one lakh copies of a somewhat amateurish English version.” 1 lakh = 100,000. I haven’t been able to track down a mainstream, easily available English language translation of Kabuliwalar Bangali Bou, or translations of Banerjee's other titles but I hope her work does now find an international publisher, able to distribute her books, and to promote them. This butchered woman sounds like an author we all should read.

Listings / Book Club: Crazy Rich Asians / Kevin Kwan

I've decided to try to offer listings of literary events across Asia, excluding West Asia / The Middle East, but extending west to east from the Indian Sub-continent to Japan, and north to south from Mongolia to the southern tip of the Indonesian archipelago.

I will accept listings up to three months before the event takes place.  If you would like to have an event included please e-mail details to asianbooksblog@gmail.com.  Please state the month of the event in the subject line, and specify that this is a listing, e.g. September / listing.   Please provide the following information:

Date of event
Nature of event and a brief description. E.g. book launch plus a 100 word description
Venue for event with both a complete real world address, and a link to the venue's website  / details of its Facebook page if these are available
Cost of event, if any, plus details of discounts, if any
Language of event
For booking and further information please contact...followed by relevant information

For a series or a course of events at one venue, or for literary festivals at multiple venues within one general area, please supply the start and finish dates.  For literary festivals, I will  give only the over-arching venue, e.g. Jaipur, Hong Kong, or wherever.

I have also decided to launch a book club.  I will select a book at the beginning of each month, and request that people post comments through the month.  I will then summarise these at the end of the month, plus give my own thoughts.

My first book club selection,  for September, is  Crazy Rich Asians, by Kevin Kwan, a comedy about three super-rich Chinese families and the gossip, backbiting, and scheming that occur when the heir to one of the most massive fortunes in Asia brings home his American Born Chinese girlfriend.

When Rachel Chu agrees to spend the summer in Singapore with Nicholas Young, she envisions a humble family home, long drives to explore the island, and quality time with the man she might one day marry. What she doesn't know is that Nick's family home looks like a palace, that she'll ride in more private planes than cars, and that with one of Asia's most eligible bachelors on her arm, she might as well have a target on her back. Initiated into a world of dynastic splendor, Rachel meets Astrid, the It Girl of Singapore society; Eddie, whose family practically lives in the pages of the Hong Kong socialite magazines; and Eleanor, Nick's formidable mother, a woman who has very strong feelings about who her son should - and should not - marry. Crazy Rich Asians is an insider's look at the Asian JetSet; a depiction of the clash between old money and new; between Overseas Chinese and Mainland Chinese. 

Crazy Rich Asians is published by Doubleday, in hardback, paperback, audio, and e-book formats. Color Force has acquired movie rights so it should be coming to a big screen near you sometime soon. 

So: what do you think?  Please do post with your opinions, and I'll share mine at the end of the month.




 

The Commonwealth Short Story Prize

In 1949, as the British Empire began to fade into history, The government of the UK and those of seven former colonies came together to form the modern Commonwealth, an association of free and equal members co-operating in the pursuit of peace, liberty and progress.

Today, the Commonwealth has 54 members and the Commonwealth Foundation, a UK-based development organisation, works towards a world in which every person on the planet is able to participate in, and contribute to, the sustainable development of peaceful and equitable societies.

Commonwealth Writers is a cultural initiative from the Commonwealth Foundation. Commonwealth Writers both develops the craft of individual writers and also builds communities of emerging voices, so that, individually and collectively, writers can work for social change, and influence, directly and indirectly, the decision-making processes which affect their lives. Commonwealth Writers wants the writers it unearths to inspire others, especially in their local communities, and it challenges selected authors to take part in on-line residencies, and on-the-ground literary activities.

Commonwealth Writers runs the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. This aims to identify talented emerging writers and to promote the best new writing from across the Commonwealth, thus developing literary connections worldwide.  

The Short Story Prize is awarded for the best piece of unpublished short fiction, of between 2000-5000 words. The language of the competition is English. Writers can submit stories translated into English from other languages.

Entries can be submitted from five regions: Africa, Asia, Canada and Europe, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. The regional divisions are intended to give writers in countries with poor publishing infrastructure a fairer chance to compete with those in countries where there are more opportunities. Within Asia, you are eligible to enter if you are a citizen of one of the following countries: Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam, India, Malaysia, Maldives, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka,

There will be five winners, one from each region. One regional winner will be selected as the overall winner. The overall winner will receive £5,000 (approx US$7,750) and the remaining four regional winners £2,500 (approx US$3,785). Translators of winning stories will also receive prize money.  If the overall winner is a translation into English, the translator will receive £2,000 (approx US$3,100).  Translators will receive £1,000 (approx US$1,150) for regional winners.

The 2014 judging panel will be chaired by Ellah Allfrey, deputy chair of the council of the Caine Prize for African Writing, formerly deputy editor of the UK-based literary magazine Granta and senior editor at Jonathan Cape, Random House, in London. She will chair an international judging panel; this will make the final selection. The regional judges will be announced on 1 October. Experienced readers will assist the named judges in selecting the long lists.

The 2014 Short Story Prize will open for entry on-line on 1 October 2013 and close on 30 November 2013. Entry will be via www.commonwealthwriters.org where you can view the eligibility criteria, and the entry rules.

So new Asian writers: Get writing! Tell the world what great stories, and what great storytellers, we have on this continent! If you need inspiration,  click about on www.commonwealthwriters.org, it’s a great website, with a mix of interesting tips and advice, discussion, and constructively provocative comment.

500 Words From Julian Kim

 

500 Words From is a series of guest posts from authors.  Here, Julian Kim talks about  his first novel, SAINTS: Song of Winds.  This is a fast-paced, multicultural, quasi-historical mystery-thriller that combines a race-against-the-clock adventure, with contemporary concerns about the weather, with a love story, to produce a wild and satisfying romp.

Julian Kim was born in Seoul, but as a child he lived in other places in Asia, as well as in Europe, and in the Americas. Thus from an early age he was fascinated by cultural diversity, and as an adult he continued his nomadic existence, living in New York, London, Hong Kong and Seoul.

Julian now lives in Singapore, where, in 2012,  SAINTS: Song of Winds was the winner of a competition sponsored by the National Arts Council, to promote the works of unpublished authors.  It was subsequently published by Straits Times Press: http://www.stpressbooks.com.sg/home.php

So: 500 words from Julian Kim

With SAINTS: Song of Winds  I was hoping to create something which would be fun to write and  fun to read. In addition, I wanted to fuse modern and historical elements of Asian and Latin American cultures - the core action occurs mainly in China and Peru, with meaningful scenes also taking place in Korea, India, Mongolia, Hong Kong and Singapore.

As we all know, our world is full of stories – there is so much history, so many nations and regions and cultures. Past human civilisation has left us so many traces - superstitions, fairy tales, legends and myths. Granted, much of this wealth has been lost in the mists of time, but the gaps in our knowledge allow us both to imagine what-ifs, and also to wonder about the borders between fiction and non-fiction.  Without a doubt, Asia offers a vast and rich depository of history and civilisation from which we can mine and spin a million what-if factual fictions.

The same is true for the world of unexplained phenomena. We often hear stories about the paranormal, about the extraterrestrial, and about bizarre creatures. I think most of us can agree that there's still much that we don't understand about our planet, the universe, and the realms of the physical and the spiritual, especially as they relate to the human mind.

So with all this wealth of secrets and mysteries surrounding Asia and the world we live in, I could not resist creating a world of somewhat plausible histories, mysteries and uncommon abilities.

SAINTS: Song of Winds begins two thousand years ago in China, when a geomancer leads a tribe out of the tomb of Emperor Qin. One thousand years later, in Peru, the immense treasure of the Incas is lost to the world.  And today, a strange terracotta soldier is unearthed in the ancient capital of China.

In my novel SAINTS is an acronym standing for Syndicated Alliance of Irregular and Talented Specialists. It is a secretive organisation whose purpose is to save nations, when all else fails. The members of SAINTS look like ordinary people and behave like ordinary people, most of the time. But they have very special talents.

There’s a Korean boy who teaches at school and can secretly control the winds. There’s an American university student who studies animals and discovers she can heal people. There’s a young Singaporean billionaire who plays the financial markets and who possesses an unnatural intuition. There’s an old Mexican man in Manhattan who sells hot dogs and can see your past. And they are all connected in a web of fate that stretches from ancient China to the mountains of present-day Peru.

Using sheer intellect and mastering their subtle supernatural talents,  the four heroes  join forces with the leader of Peru to free the country from a mysterious villain who is causing havoc with the weather.  But before they can save the day they must unlock the cryptic codes of Emperor Qin’s tomb and also find the lost treasure of the Incas. Somehow, they realise, the tomb and the treasure are connected.

In essence, SAINTS: Song of Winds can be loosely described as a kind of Indiana Jones meets The Da Vinci Code, in an Asian and Latin American context. Key events include monstrous battles with lightning and tornadoes in the desert plains of Peru, desperate scrambles through deadly chambers in the tomb complex of Emperor Qin, and an epic cavalry battle between the ancient forces of China and Mongolia.