Litbloggers Breakie!

The inaugural Breakfast with the Litbloggers kicked off on saturday at the new branch of MPH I Bangsar Village Two. I wasn't sure beforehand how it would all turn out, and whether a discussion in a very open bookshop bookshops space would work and whether anyone at all would get up on a saturday morning and come along ... but it all worked out very well. Quite a number of people turned out to support many of them writers and wanna-be writers and bloggers ... many of them the strange folks who comment on this blog!

The only problem was little kids who gravitated towards the musical books ... One Two Three Four Five Little Indians ... but Renee handled them very well without resorting to infanticide.

Here then are the social pages ...

Here's novelist Yang-May Ooi with Eric Forbes, MPH editor, bibliophile bibliomaniac, and litblogger extraordinaire. Eric did a great job of organising the event.

This here's Janet Tay who drops by this blog on occasion. Janet is just about to start work as an editor with MPH, working alongside Mr. Forbes. She got roped into helping with this event even before she was officially in harness, so to speak. She is doing a Masters degree in Literature at Universiti Malaya part-time and enjoying it very much.

Two UK published novelists together! Tan Twan Eng dropped by.

This smiling guy is Kenny Mah who made the great poster for the event. It's so nice to meet him in the "real" world!

Sharanya reading an extract from her novel-in-progress Constellation of Scars and poems from her chapbook, Iyari. Kenny summed it up best when he broke the silence after the reading saying "What I need now is a cold shower!"

A crowd scene. Anyone you recognise?

More to come, but I thought I'd better post this all up quickly before you all think I've died or left the country. The computer was sick, not me. Thanks for phone calls and SMSes!!

Updates:

Do go and listen to Yang-May's phone blogging experiments to hear about Saturday's events from her view points and there's so much good stuff here about Malaysian writing.

Kenny Mah's account of the day is so good I think I could be out of a job.

Xeus' thoughts on the morning and the setting up a critiquing circle ...

Sharanya has a lovely photo up with Yang-May ...