Academic Men a Menace on Booker Panel

There must be a lot of authorly fingernail chewing going on at the moment as we await the result of this year's Man Booker Prize. (I'm sitting here in yet another Ubud internet cafe waiting for the result to come in ... 'cos I don't have anyone but you guys to talk to tonight and everything closes so early here.)

Ahead of the results though, Louise Doughty, one of this year's Booker judges has had a swipe at male judges as she tells the Independent that they :

... "always have their eye on their reputations" and are too concerned with picking a "highbrow" author rather than a readable one. She added that they tended to made judgements based on "how well the winning book reflected on them", often choosing the most obscure and self-consciously highbrow novelist, rather than considering the best entry. ... "I don't think it's a good idea to have academics as judges on these prizes," she said. "Academics always have their eye on their reputations and always have a vested interest to pick someone as literary and obscure as possible. I think academics are always looking over their shoulder.

John Sutherland (as a male academic) disagrees with her (of course).

I'm not sure whether she's right or not, but it would be really nice to have a novel win that's capable of catching the public imagination ... as previous winners Enright and Banville really haven't.

The Brink of Booker

Today's the day the 2008 Booker longlist is announced. For me it's kind of like the starting flag - how many titles can I get read before the final winner is announced? I managed most of last year's longlist, barring a couple that were in hardback and just too expensive to splash out on. (Those gaps will be filled soon.)

It's fun because you know a whole lot of other people are reading alongside you and opinions are being debated ... you become part of the literary conversation. And no matter what the chosen books are, whether they actually are the "best" books or not, that debate about what makes a novel succeed is fascinating. (For me, anyway. Sorry guys, I can see your eyes glazing over on the other side of this computer screen!)

And of course, there's the excitement of having a little flutter on the horse or horses of your choice.

Eric has a wonderful list of novels he reckons are contenders. I know my reading for the next few months is going to be guided by whatever is decided today.

(BTW, let's give a wave to our friend Louise Doughty who is one of this year's judges.)

We Made the Telegraph!

It makes you realise that even in the parts of the world where our politicians have singularly failed to make an impact - or made a negative one - British literature can sneak in, appreciate other cultures and show them what we have to offer. ... Sitting in the Central Market in Kuala Lumpur, I feel as though being a British novelist is the best job in the world.

Novelist Louise Doughty writing about being at our Night of the Living Text event at Central Market in the Daily Telegraph!

You know you're doing something right when an event you organise here makes the British press!!!!!!!

Now, when's the next one?

(Pic of Louise nicked from the Telegraph)

Kakisenied!

Even the tiniest scintilla of snobbery would have turned the whole thing into an exhibition of exhibitionism, but these were writers with heart, not ego. They were there to entertain, not showboat, and all six thoroughly excellent wordsmiths endeared themselves to us immeasurably.

Sherry Siebel reviews our Night of the Living Text event on the Kakiseni website.

I wanna organise another one now!!!!

(Dunno whose mouth this is, but I nicked it from the Kakiseni website)

Texts Alive!

We won't get more than about 30 people, I told Pang as we arranged a semi-circle of chairs in an intimate semi-circle for our Night of the Living Texts event. Fifty, tops. This was all fixed up so late, we haven't had a whole lot of publicity out, and that mainly on blogs and e-groups.

Besides, I thought, how many people will turn up mid-week for a literary gathering?

An awful lot as it turned out! I didn't take a head count, but probably around 100 people turned up, the numbers swelled even more when the Philosphy class that Hishamuddin Rais was teaching next door ended.

Many of the usual "readings" crowd (our bohemian beatnik chic Saturday afternoon arty-farties) showed up. Others were blogfriends - some materialising into physical form for the first time including Fei and Joshua. Still others were drawn in by the link with the British Council Reading across Cultures: Teaching English Through Literature conference.

Bernice Chauly (who set up the whole "readings" thing) was there, and I felt so happy to see her.

It was a very huggy kissy start to the evening, interspersed by moments of logistical panic.

And so on to the "show":

Roger Robinson was just the best opening act we could have hoped for, and he set a standard (particularly in terms of dramatising his work!). He read a very funny prose piece in which there was a character called Sharon, also known as Virgin Island (so of course, this Sharon now has a new nickname). Would have loved the opportunity to hear more and vow to track down Roger at a reading when I'm back in London.

Roger's Trinadadian accent just melts me, reminding me of old friends I miss so much ...

John McRae introduced our second speaker, and I appreciated his words very much. John was involved in the launch of the Skoob Pacifica series (a very important imprint which really launched local writing), and said that at the time of publication there was little interest in South-East Asian writing in Europe. And now the situation has totally changed and Malaysian writers are being published in the UK. Case in point ...


... Tan Twan Eng, whose immensely readable first novel (I know'cos I couldn't put it down!) The Gift of Rain, set in Penang, is out in hardback on March 8th, and paperback May 20th. This was Twan's first public reading. He choose the opening pages of the novel which hint at great mysteries to be unravelled. This audience should be hooked enough to buy it!

Louise Doughty read from her short story Doikitsa which appeared in New Writing 13, (also, I think she said, part of her Novel Fires in the Dark about the European Roma ) in which an elderly woman lies dying in her wagon.

Our second Malaysian author of the evening, Kam Raslan, read a couple of naughty passages from Confessions of an Old Boy and created a lot of laugher.

We took a break then, and folks wandered down to the Bau-Bau cafe which had opened specially for the night to sell us drinks. Much literary networking happening in the meantime.

Then Dina Zaman was up to read from I Am Muslim. Post-David Frost experience perhaps, this is a much more confident Dina than I've seen read before. Enjoyed the voices in her pieces, especially the piece was the possessed masseuse.

Isagani Cruz read a condensed version of one of his plays - a monologue about a zarzuela (traditional Filippino music theatre) performer. Very nice indeed! And I particularly loved the way his character has a little gossip about a certain writer called Isagani! (And we were talking only the other day about writers who put themselves into their fiction.)

Taiwanese poet Ke Hua Chen ended the evening for us with a poem in Mandarin with English translation. (And we finally got a chance to hear his version of the poem as song lyrics on CD when Pang came back from talking to friends outside to press the right button!)

To all who read, to all who came, to Pang for all his help, to the British Council for lending us their writers, to young Nic for letting himself be bullied into a whole lot of jobs, the biggest possible THANK YOU!!!!

Central Market turned out to be a great location and I am beginning to have lots of ideas about how we can make use of that space for other events of this kind ...

Postscript

Do go and read Jordan's post too. Ruby Ahmad says she had a great time and has some great pics of everyone ... except me. *sob*. BP doesn't want anyone to sell him a book ... and is the third person I've come across with a story to tell of the gents loo. (At least he only found someone smoking in there, Jordan and Nic had much worse ... or better, depending on which way you look at things.) And if you read Chinese, you can tell me what Fei and Joshua have written!

Cocktail Networking

Was at a cocktail reception last night organised by the British Council in conjuction with its Reading Across Cultures: Teaching English Through Literature conference. Was too busy gossiping with old teacher-training buddies and conference participants to make serious inroads into the lovely food, but also did some useful networking and met up with the writers who will be reading at my Night of the Living Text event tonight: Louise Doughty, Roger Robinson and Isagani Cruz. We also have Taiwanese poet (doctor by day) Ke Hua Chen to add to our list, which is great.

Just talking to these guys, I know tonight is going to be a lot of fun.

Author Tan Twan Eng also came along and was very happy to meet up with old friend (old as in lama not tua, I hasten to add) John McRae (author, academic and much more) who will be introducing him tonight. Hope that makes Twan's first ever reading a little less nerve-wracking!

Also had a chat with Singaporean poet Edwin Thumboo who says that he is very sorry he cannot come tonight because he has something else on, but promises to come up to Malaysia again soon. (Will chase up that promise!)

The lady in the picture above is Thai author and translator Jane Vejjajiva who read from her children's novel The Happiness of Kati. (Read an extract here.) Despite suffering from cerebral palsy, Jane has a very impressive CV in translation and publishing and now runs a copywriting agency. She has also received the Chevalier de l'Order des Arts et des Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture, and a SEA Write Award.

Anyway (nudge nudge) really look forward to seeing you all at Central Market Annex tonight!

International "Readings" - So Who's Coming?

So here's the line up of writers and poets for the "Readings" event 8.30, February 7th at Central Market Annex!

Roger Robinson is a poet, short fiction writer and lyricist who lives between London and Trinidad. He has performed worldwide and is an experienced workshop leader and lecturer on poetry. His performances often incorporate words and music, and his one-man shows are: The Shadow Boxer; Letter from My Father’s Brother; and Prohibition (all premiered at the British Festival of Visual Theatre at Battersea Arts Centre). He was also chosen by Decibel as one of 50 writers who have influenced the black-British writing canon over the past 50 years. He has published a book of short fiction, Adventures in 3D (2001) and a poetry collection, Suitcase (2004), and is currently working on a full-length novel.

Up to 2000, Roger Robinson was programme co-ordinator of Apples and Snakes. He was one of 30 poets chosen for the New Generation Poets collection at the National Portrait Gallery.

Louise Doughty is a novelist, playwright and critic. She is the author of five novels: Crazy Paving, Dance with Me, Honey-Dew, Fires in the Dark and Stone Cradle, and five plays for radio.

She has worked widely as a critic and broadcaster in the UK, where she lives, including a spell as Theatre Critic for the Mail on Sunday and presenter of several books and arts series for BBC Radio 4. In June 2007, Simon & Schuster UK will publish her first work of non-fiction, A Novel in a Year, based on her highly successful newspaper column of 2006. Throughout 2007, she will be writing another column for the Daily Telegraph's Saturday Review entitled A Writer's Year.

Isagani R. Cruz writes plays, essays, and short stories in Filipino and English, for which he has won numerous awards, including a SEAWRITE award, a Centennial Literary Contest award, and a Gawad Balagtas award. He has been named to the Hall of Fame of the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards in Literature. He has written or edited more than 30 books.

He is also the Former Philippine Undersecretary of Education, the Director of the Teachers Academy of Far Eastern University in Manila, a Visiting Lecturer at the Ateneo de Manila University, and a Professor Emeritus, a University Fellow, and the Executive Publisher of Academic Publications of De La Salle University Manila. (A much longer version of his CV can be found on his blog!)

Tan Twan Eng was born in Penang, but lived in various places in Malaysia as a child. He studied law through the University of London, and later worked as an advocate and solicitor in one of Kuala Lumpur's most reputable law firms. He also has a first-dan ranking in aikido and is a strong proponent for the conservation of heritage buildings. He has spent the last year travelling around South Africa, and is currently living in Malaysia. His first novel The Gift of Rain is to be published in the UK by Myrmidon Books in March 2007.

Kam Raslan is a writer and director, working in film, TV and theatre in Malaysia. He is a columnist in The Edge weekly and Off The Edge magazine. Some of his writings were previously compiled in Generation. He also writes for Instant Café Theatre and will one day make his feature film. His first novel Confessions of an Old Boy has been serialised in Off the Edge and will be published in book form in March 2007 by Marshall-Cavendish.

Dina Zaman writes both fiction and non-fiction, and is interested in "religion, society and what makes Malaysians tick". She has a B.A. in Mass Communication and Creative Writing from Western Michigan University and an M.A. in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and has been published abroad and locally. Her first collection of short fiction was night & day, published by Rhino Press (1997), while her play Harakiri was produced by Chakra Works in 2003.

She began her career in journalism with her column Dina's Dalca in the New Straits Times. She has also written for other publications including Men's Review, Marie Claire, and the Rentakini section of online newspaper Malaysiakini which she also edited. Her new book, I Am Muslim is due to be published by Silverfish Books in March 2007.

Postscript:

Ruhayat X is in the process of making me a sexy poster for the event which I will post tomorrow.

Please note that, sadly, Edwin Thumboo who was on the list earlier, will not now be reading.

Fictionalising Family

You're writing a story which is based on your family history: how much can you change and invent? This question that came up a couple of times in my class at British Council last night, when my participants were sharing work they'd written.

The reader of course doesn't have a clue where fact ends and fiction begins, but the writer might well have a family unhappy to let those skeletons out of the cupboard to walk in the sun.

I know of one local writer who has written a pretty good autobiography but he is too afraid of what his relatives will say to put the thing before the public. (This is a great pity, becasue it's certainly the best thing he has written.) Instead he mines his material from time to time for short stories which he passes off as complete fiction.

Anyway, I promised my writing group that I'd paste up a link to this article which shows how one novelist has resolved the dilemma for herself.

As ideas go, basing a novel on one's family history has, at first sight, a pleasing simplicity: the ready-made cast of characters, the bare bones of a plot. But I soon discovered that there were other issues which make the process far more complex than I could have imagined.

writes Louise Doughty in the Independent. Her novel Stone Cradle is based on the life of her romany gypsy forebears. She first of all faced the problem of naming her characters:

If you use the real names along with real events then what, precisely, makes your novel a novel? The fact that you have made up bits you couldn't find out about, or elided over anything awkward? The beauty of your prose? Many a memoirist has done as much. But a memoirist is entitled - even obliged - to say in places, this much I am only guessing at. This much I could not know. A novelist has no such excuse.

She decided that she would change names, which she felt gave her greater freeedom:

... to invent where I could not discover and to explain discoveries that did not suit my invention in whatever way I saw fit.

But, she cautions:

A family history is never your history alone. It is collective. It belongs to a whole set of people, many of them still alive, and however respectful you try to be of other people's opinions and feelings, there is no getting away from the fact that when a history is written down, there is a sense in which that becomes the authorised version, simply because it is a version which can be read by strangers.

All's fair in love and fiction, I'd say!

By the way, if Louise Doherty's name and picure look familiar, it's probably because you are following her excellent A Novel in a Year column in the Telegraph.

A Novel in a Year

Here's something good - and for free!

Novelist Louise Doughty shares her secrets about the craft in the Telegraph and invites readers to share their thoughts and some writerly solidarity on a message board. The series is now in it's fifth week, but the past articles are archived on the site ... and it's all good stuff. Today Doughty talks about passion being the beginner writer's greatest asset:

It's disastrous for anyone's art when they stop being hungry.