Monday, March 03, 2008

More Malaysian Essays

With his first collection of Malaysian essays hot off the press, Amir Muhammad is now looking for material for the second volume :
Matahari Books seeks entries for New Malaysian Essays 2!

Yes, we aim to publish maybe 8 people this time. The cover art has been chosen. Each essay, either in English or Malay, should be between 5,000 to 15,000 words.

Among the stuff I wanna see:

- National Service, written from the POV of someone who just went through it
- Contemporary architecture
- Life in a Malaysian jail or drug rehabilitation centre
- Dating rituals (urban or rural, straight or gay, or maybe all together).
- An essay that can be told mainly through pictures
- A biography of someone you think we should all know about
- A comparative thingamajig between Malaysia and a neighbouring country
- An extended, perhaps investigative, rumination on a single local song, film, painting, poem.

... but I am open to suggestions.

Absolute deadline 31 August 2008. But email me much earlier ( matahari.books at gmail.com ) if you are working on something :-)

The book is due in stores in early 2009. The good news is that some stores have already placed advance orders.

15 comments:

Yvonne Foong said...

So many words! Urgh... dunno if I could write that much about my experiences in GHKL. Last I did in the Yellowpost, KDN waved a finger.

Bookwormz said...

more reason to keep on writing...

Burhan said...

"Dating rituals (urban or rural, straight or gay, or maybe all together)"

a piece of socio-anthropology that i will definitely be interested in reading. the ways of courtship that are particular to malaysia.

bibliobibuli said...

burhan - sounds like you know a thing or two so should maybe write it!

yvonne - what happened with the kdn??

Burhan said...

unfortunately, i don't do anthropology, sociology, or social 'science'.

besides, writing such an essay sounds more of a job for a seasoned playa'.

bibliobibuli said...

i'd like to see a fictionalised version of it though, with or without the millipede!

Burhan said...

the millipede? huh? i don't get it. is it slang for social scientist?

bibliobibuli said...

ohhhh i was thinking you were another burhan who drops by this blog perhaps ... very sorry.

Burhan said...

oh, okay, it's an inside joke. my name is pretty common anyway.

(back to the issue at hand) still, such an essay would be an interesting read, and i myself wouldn't even know how to begin undertaking such a socio-anthropological investigation for NME2. but i'm already in NME1, so it doesn't matter anyway.

bibliobibuli said...

hang on - you are that same burhan - was talking about your novel (seksan's remember???)... aiyoh, sorry to pull your leg. what i'm saying is i think you would be able to write some very good fiction about dating rituals even if not an academic piece.

what i'm really saying beneath all that is i really want to read your fiction!

Burhan said...

i've completely forgotten about the giant millipede!

bibliobibuli said...

aiyoh man. you so absent minded professor.

eelee said...

i'd like to give it a shot :)

Jannah said...

Sharon,

Should I write an "investigative" piece about that Cake and link the story with the power of Blogging? Should be a fun piece right?

Heard anything from that NST reporter? I heard the story won't be printed. Internal issues katanya.

bibliobibuli said...

evey - yes, give it a go, why not?

jannah - haha it's a bit done to death, innit? i spoke to nst on the phone but made it clear that i felt that the case of nh should be linked to the far more serious plagiarism case the paper has swept under the carpet. and that is the real crux of the matter and why i think it will never be discussed in the paper. if you blow the whistle on the small case, you can't ignore the more serious one. it gave me great satisfaction to make the point to nst journalists. but it was nice of nst to consider me some sort of expert in this area!