This Saturday's Readings@Seksan turned out to be a female affair though not by design. Although a couple of folks I'd hoped to have event couldn't make it (Marina Mahathir had her own book launch at Megamall but will be with us next time; and Avanti Kumar was whisked off somewhere else by his publishers to promote his book.)
As always we managed to have one little disaster this Saturday (the usual anything that can go wrong manages to) , the microphone packed up but thankfully everyone read extra loudly and the audience huddled in close to listen.
Lawyer-by-day Jade-Yi Lo had the unenviable task of reading first. Jade attended my creative writing class and is a new writer absolutely hungry to write and very hard working. The story she'd shared with us on the last night of the class,
The Girl with Red Ruby Shoes, was such so magical, I invited her to read in front of the crowd at Seksan's. She'd reworked the story, and even though I knew the ending, it still kicked me in the stomach.
Adeline Loh read the first hilarious chapter of her book
Peeing in the Bush about what drove her to leap into the unknown, the reactions of nearest and dearest, and the search for a travelling companion ...
Lee Eeleen's story
Scenes From The Shopping Complex appears in the
Urban Odysseys collection. It is a beautifully observed piece about the nightmare of a weekend family trip to the shopping mall and the politics of family life. Much of it is written like a film script, and I particualrly love the delicious counterpoint between the supermarket soundtrack of
James Dobson's Focus on the Family (which yes, for some reason really does get played ad nauseam in supermarkets here) and the reality of shopping with kids. Great comedy.
I was so grateful when Bernice agreed (the night before!) to come and read for us. And she had new material - autobiographical pieces for the new autobiography she is writing,
Growing Up With Ghosts, as part of her M.A. course in creative writing at Universiti Malaya. I loved the portrait of the whole family feasting on durian - you could smell and taste the fruit. Yum!
Shih-Li Kow read her shortest story
Let the Bird Sing from her new collection
Ripples. A small bird sits on the windowsill of a dying man and the two are locked into one final adversarial battle. It's one of the more surreal pieces in the book - an excellent piece of micro-fiction.
Sheena Baharudin is a poet, spoken word artist, and lecturer at the International Islamic University. (It was nice to see that she had brought along some of her students!) She has performed her work alongside leading poets at various venues around the city. I am impressed by how she has grown as a poet, and how much more assured her voice has becom both live and on the page. Just take a look at the poems she read -
Monologue 1.01.001 and
and
Cloudy Conversations.
Thanks to all who came (including quite a number of new people who I hope will find their way again), to all who read, to Shahril Nizam for the blog poster, to Seksan for his inspiring space, to the guys from MPH in Bangsar Village for bringing over books to sell, to Eugene and friends who cleared up, and to Reza in advance for fixing the microphone ...
See you all later in the month. I've fixed readings for March 28th (provided Seksan will have us) and have a great line-up already worked out. More about it later.
Sorry I'm late posting this - my photos weren't so good so I was waiting for someone to come up with some better ones and Tan May Lee came to my rescue! (The first three nice pics are hers, the last three not so nice pics are mine.)
Thought I might save this post for Halloween, but then again, Halloween is a season for carnivalesque safe scares; you pays your money, enter the ghost-train ride and emerge on the other side unscathed. The ride is easily forgotten and the memory is disposable. ... Alison Flood's article in The Guardian set me thinking about horror/supernatural fiction. Readers cite the usual horror suspects (King, Poe, Shirley Jackson...) but I remember as a reader that my literary scares came from reading short stories in old anthologies borrowed from libraries or unearthed in clearance book sales. I discovered new names and old names; wonderful tales by one-hit wonders and stories by writers that you'd normally would not associate with horror/ supernatural fiction.
