Connect with Writers Connect

Writers - here's somewhere you might like to send your writing.

Writers Connect is an online literary arts portal designed to connect writers to writers and writers to readers. It is owned and managed by Word Forward Limited, a non-profit literary arts company based in Singapore.

It welcomes quality creative works in all genres (fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, book reviews, essays, and interviews) from all corners of the world but works on and about Asia are especially welcome. Submission guidelines can be found here.

I don't know how this online publication slipped beneath my radar (it could well just be a case of me being as confused as the proverbial cuttlefish ... yes, I knew about WordForward the organisation, knew they had regular gatherings for writers, but hadn't realised they had got this together!).

Anyway, I would like to point you in the direction of some excellent fiction, some of it written by folks who are friends of this blog. The story of the week this time is Elmo Jayawardena's Tsunami. (You may remember this author from his visit to KL last year.) Other contributors you may know include local mat salleh Yusof Martin and Singaporean journalist and blogger Zafar Anjum. More stories here.

I also need to play catch-up with the poetry, interviews and reviews (the latest of which is Zafar's discussion of In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin.)

Singapore Stories Part 1

Singapore ... a little country that gets its priorities right! :

Arrived there Friday afternoon and went straight to the hotel to meet David Davidar (below) for the interview. He's one of the great heroes of the publishing world, putting Penguin India firmly on the world map, working with some of the greatest writers of our time, and now a novelist in his own right with The House of Blue Mangoes and now The Solitude of Emperors.

David also introduced me to Jo Lusby, general manager of Penguin in China, and what began as an interview relaxed into a fascinating chat about favourite authors, the Man Asia prize and the future of publishing.

You'll get to hear more when I've transcribed my tape and got the article written!

On the Saturday morning I made my way to the Arts House where the Singapore Writers Festival was being held and what was the old parliament building makes a stunning venue.

I went to hear Indian author, Anita Nair (above), whose novel Ladies' Coupe (a kind of updated and feminist Canterbury Tales set on a train) I thoroughly enjoyed.

Anita talked about her love of mindless violent films, making the decision to break with her advertising career, and her writing process.

I then caught David Davidar in two sessions back to back. The first moderated (very well) by novelist Meira Chand, and the second with him in conversation with Kunal Basu (below left) who manages to combine being an author of several highly acclaimed novels (The Opium Clerk, The Minaturist, and Racists) with an impressive academic career (just take a look at his CV!). He's heading for Malaysia in April so you may get a chance to meet him then.

In the afternoon it was time for our panel on litblogging - one of a series of discussions about different aspects for blogging. For me it was a chance to reconnect with my Singaporean blogging friends in "real life". Deepika Shetty (a.k.a. read@peace) was as always a skilled moderator (below), and the other panelists were Zafar Anjum (Dream Ink) blog ...

and Rambling Librarian, Ivan Chew (below far left, with me looking terribly enthused!).


There was so much to talk about, and a lot of passion for what we do, and the hour fairly whizzed past. I was sad that I didn't get a chance to chat a bit more to Ivan, whom I hadn't met before, but hope we get to connect again.

It was great also to talk to a Singaporean audience as I really would love more of them to drop by this blog and pass me book gossip from down there. (If you're from Singapore and reading this give me a wave!!)

(More pictures and stories to come!)

Postscript

Zafar captures the day very well indeed.

Cold Rain and Hailstones ... Jitlessly

There's an over-anxious part of me that constantly screens grisly "what-if" scenarios in my head when I'm organising anything.

I thank goodness I set off for Bangsar so early yesterday afternoon, just as the sky was beginning to grow dark. At just after 2p.m. the rain came tipping down. A quick shower, I thought and then it will be over with, and it will be nice and cool for the readings.

But who am I to dictate to rainclouds? I sat in my car outside Seksan's waiting for a break in the storm, which never came. And then I noticed a drenched Amir Hafizi, and a neatly rain-drop splattered Dina in a dress as grey as the sky, waiting for Buddhi to slide open the door, which despite several tingalings on the artistic temple bell, he hadn't yet.

Once in, we set up. Put out glasses, opened bottles, arranged stools and benches. Then sat, our attempts at talk drowned out completely. The vista of Lucky Garden disappeared behind a solid sheet of water. The thunder was a solid growl, and suddenly there was a new dimension to the percussion of the rain on the roof. Hail!

I kid you not. Hailstones. Perfect little rounded knobs of ice.

Buddhi splashed out onto the verandah to get me one. It looks a little melted in the photo below. (By the time Dina had snapped it. By the time I had rooted out my camera.) The first time I've ever seen hailstones here, though I remember some fell in parts of the Klang Valley during the haze last year. Sky ice in the tropics!

This is an Act of God? I looked to Dina and Amir for reassurance. I mean there's no way this could be interpreted as a balls-up on the part of the organiser? (Come back Bernice, the sky would listen to you!!)

But people began to arrive. One by one. Each with a tale of survival against the odds and in different degrees of soakedness. Joy Teh and her friend Helena. Patrick. See Ming and Sim. Natasya. Our Australian poet Patricia Sykes and her friends were only a short walk away and managed to make it across. At least by now we had three writers and some audience. The readings would happen.

Aneeta and Xeus both SOSed via SMS to say that they were stuck in traffic due to flashfloods. Jit was stuck in Kenny Hills and couldn't get a taxi despite offering generous bribes via the company's telephone operators. He apologizesd profusely for never having learned to drive. I told him to stay safe and we'll ask him back next time. (He had promised to read a monologue from his play Gold Rain and Hailstones - hence my brilliantly inspired title for this post!)

We waited until the storm died down enough for us to hear the readers, half an hour after the scheduled time. (We don't have a microphone. Need one.)

Here are my photos. Deliberately and artistically out of focus and camera-shakey:


Patricia Sykes read from both collections of poetry. Her first, Wiredancing, uses the circus as a metaphor for the world. (She used to be a tightrope walker and juggle with fire - how cool is that?) The poem she read ended with such a disturbing image - kittens lapping up spilled human blood. She told us that her second collection Modewarre: Home Ground was a collection about identity and belonging, and read a poem called A Face in the Water. She also gave us an extract from her opera libretto (she's working again with composer Lisa Lim and the first performance is scheduled for 2008 in Brisbane) about the weaving together of language: she had lines in Finnish, a click language of the Kalahari ... and when the call for prayers drifted over from Bangsar mosque, she had yet another layer of language and poetry!

I do hope there's a chance to hear Patricia again before she leaves. I'm so curious to hear more.

He isn't wearing his superman costume, but this is Mr. MalayMale himself: Amir Hafizi.

I'm glad he read a piece based on blog entries about his father and village as this is what I've enjoyed most on his blog. It's an affectionate piece, but at the same time there is a strong sense of the ridiculous which is very funny.

I don't want any of this to go straight to his already swollen head (and his friends were falling about laughing mentally writing his post-reading blog entry!), but I could read much much more of this!

Joy Teh is a lot less blurred in real-life than she is in this picture! She's one of Bernice's creative writing students from Sunway and at present working on a screenplay which she read us part of. Enjoyed watching the film in my head as she read, and hope it gets made in the end. She finished with a poem. A very confident reader.

After the break, Faridah Manaf stepped in to give us a taste of her new collection of poems: The Art of Naming: A Muslim Woman's Journey, which she says she wrote as a reaction to the fallout of 9/11, and the constant questions about being a Moslem woman she faced as she travelled overseas. Since she only had a short slot, I hope that she can come back again another day, because I want to hear much more.

Our other missing readers made it just before the break, and must have had a horrendous time getting to Seksen's. Xeus (Lynette Kwan) read from her story One if by Land from her Dark City collection, a story based on information gatheed from a prison warder at Kajang Gaol. I love the way that Lynette's pleasure in her writing spills over. She's found her voice, she's found her niche, and clearly she's having a blast with her writing. I'm overjoyed to hear that she has now found a British agent for her children's stories.

Last up was Aneeta Sundaraj, one third of the writerly equation which collaborated on Snapshots! (Jessie and Saradha read last month.) Aneeta read her story brought Brought Back to Life. She seemed a little nervous - understandable - under the circumstances and without her fellow-writers there.

So glad she was finally up there though, as she has supported and cheered on others, and been so committed to her own writing. We'll get you back another day, Aneeta!

So it all happened. Thanks very much to our audience in wet clothes. Thanks too to the ones who tried to make it but couldn't because of the inclement weather. Thanks to Seksen for the lovely space. Thanks to Buddhi for helping set up and clear up. Thanks to La Bodega for the wine. And most of all, thanks to the six very special people who shared their words with us.

Bernice sends her love. She had a family energency in Ipoh. I hope she's able to make the next one ... which will be the other side of Hari Raya, so tentatively November 24th.

Went for tea afterwords with Sharanya, KG, and Singaporean journalist and good blog-friend Zafar Anjum (of Dream Ink).

Wish all my Muslim friends a blessed and peaceful Ramadan.

Update:

Read Xeus' account of the afternoon here. Ted's here. Aneeta's here. Natasya's pics on Flickr. Vovin's here. Zafar's here. Amir Hafizi gives some excellent advice on how to prepare for a reading here.

I'll add other links as I discover 'em.

Romesh the Wizard!

Don't miss this account on Zafar's blog of Romesh Gunasekera's reading at the Asian Civilizations Museum’s auditorium last month, it's so beautifully written.

I'm always stumped for how to describe writers physical appearance and it seems presumptuous (for me) even to try, but I think Zafar captures Romesh beautifully:

He has a Harry Potter like intelligent bespectacled face, but his unruly mop of salt and pepper makes him look like a monkish boy wizard who has grown a tad older in his troubled fantasyland ...

Well, Romesh does weave magic too!

I loved what Romesh said about belonging :

When I was very very young, reading all sorts of books that I used to come across, I was never where I was reading, I was where I was fantasizing.

All readers will surely identify with that!

Dream Ink at The Singapore Writer's Festival

A combination of circumstances conspiring against me (deadlines, the reading) and the kind of inertia that makes me angry with myself (particularly as I'm reading myself perfect in the loo every morning. Canfield in the can, haha!) meant that I did not manage to get down to the Singapore Writers Festival.

Fortunately, thanks to Zafar I was able to attend the sessions vicariously at least. Bruce Sterling, the well-known American science fiction writer, gave his take on Writing Sci Fi and painted a bleak picture of the world of the future.

Another session focused on crime writing, more specifically Women and Crime. Among questions raised:

Why is there so much of crime writing in the West? And why is there so little of crime writing in the East?

I find Nuri Vittachi's comment about writing in this part of the world in general very interesting:

Vittachi said that it was not just about the crime writers published internationally from the East but in general about writers in English from the East. He said that the simple reason was that there was no machinery to promote writers from this region: no literary agents, no publishers, no editors. But there was hope, he said. Two literary agents are now setting up office in Asia: one in China and another in Hong Kong.

Great to know!

There was a panel discussion Sexuality and Desire in Asian Writing consisting of writers Gerrie Lim (Invisible Trade), Wei Hui (Shanghai Baby; Marrying Buddha), and Isa Kamari (Kiswah). I'd have loved to have seen Wei Hui especially, having enjoyed her Shanghai Baby.

Then there was Tarun Tejpal, "India's ace journalist, editor, publisher" talking about his novel: The Alchemy of Desire.

and Colleen Doran

talking about graphic novels which are becoming increasingly popular in Singapore, and probably in Malaysia too. (Booksnobs like me haven't taken them seriously - after reading Zafar's entry I think I should begin to!)

Anyway, do go read the whole thing on Zafar's blog - this is very good stuff and the next best thing to being there yourself. I applaud the festival organisers for catering to a very wide variety of literary tastes. I think our own Litfest got a bit too snobby-elistist with almost no concession made to genre fiction. A narrow view indeed of what literature is.)

(By the way, did you know that one of Mills and Boon's top romance novelists lives in Cheras and is a HE writing under a female pseudonym?! Buy me a long-island iced tea for the rest of the story.)

Meanwhile, check out the Singapore Writers' Festival Blog for more stories and photos of other sessions. I'm jealous!!

DZ sent me this link to the excellent Kitaab website with plenty of Asian literary news.

Writings from the Diaspora

Where will the best Indian writers come from in future? Read Zafar's take on William Darymple's assertion that the next batch of successful Indian writers in English will emerge from the Diaspora.

My own feeling is that much of the sharpest writing comes from writers who straddle two very different cultures giving them a certain amount of distance and perspective - the ability to see both as insider and outsider at the same time.

Says Zafar:

The fact is the market for Indian (and even African) writing in English is not in India but in America and Europe. It is natural that Indian writers, who have degrees and addresses in London or New York, will succeed as they have better access to literary agents or publishers. Also, the lack of a literary culture in India, especially in centres like Delhi as noted by William, will not be a problem for Indian writers in the West.

True for writers here too, I think.

Chickens and eggs. Chickens and eggs.

How do we grow a literary culture locally?

Answers on a postcard please.

The Underground Route to Self-Publishing.

Problems getting published? Here's a couple of solutions.

Zafar Anjum, who links to all the best lit. stories in the UK newspapers before I'm even off the starting block (not that I'm jealous, you understand!) picked up this story about a writer who decided to give his novel away in the streets. The article is both hilarious, and gives an interesting insight into the UK publishing business, so do go follow the breadcrumb trail back to the original piece.

I thought you might like to read about another very enterprising individual who sells her stories at a subway station in New York. Source: The New York Times.

NEW YORK -- Since the day it opened, and for obvious reasons, the subway has been as much a supermarket as a means of transportation. Daily, it delivers a group of prospective consumers numbering in the millions. August Belmont, the system's chief financier, sensed the potential and tried to tap into it by plastering the early subway with hundreds of tin-framed advertisements for everything from rye whiskey to washing powder.

Over the years, there have been cigar stands, flower stands, newspaper stands, chewing gum machines, a record store and an army of hard-working immigrants who wander the trains selling AA batteries, toy cell phones, lighted yo-yos and plastic sticks that make funny sounds when you wiggle them. Once, I spotted a well-used one-piece bathing suit for sale at the Second Avenue stop on the F line.

So it is in that grand tradition that a small, friendly 27-year-old woman named Adrian Brune set up shop about two months ago to sell her wares at Times Square. Her "shop" is a very common one for subway commerce, consisting of a small cardboard box, behind which she sits with her back against the wall. But what differentiates Brune from her competitors are her unique handmade products, advertised in a hand-lettered sign on the sides of the box. "Writer w/ good short stories for sale: $2 each," it says, adding in parentheses, "Masters from Columbia; bad economy."

In other words, Brune is a player in what the writer Terry Southern once called the "quality lit game," but instead of trying to sell her work through publishers, she has decided to go right to the reading public. This would be a brave decision, if it were one she made herself. In actual fact, she says, it was made for her by the publishers.

"I got to the point where it was either start selling my stuff or try to sell my work," she said last week, sitting on the floor of the Grand Central subway station, where she has relocated because the police there seem to appreciate nonfiction prose more than those at Times Square do. ("I've only been kicked out of here three or four times," she said with appreciation.)

Brune, who was raised in Tulsa and came to New York by way of Chicago and Boston, says that she originally conceived of her subway sales job as a form of "protest slash performance art." After graduating from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism last year, she tried in vain to find full-time work, but landed only occasional freelance jobs (including a few short articles for The New York Times). She was angry at New York, she said, and wanted to find a way to let the city to know it.

But then a funny thing happened: She discovered that low-priced, cheaply copied, heartfelt short memoirs held together with paper clips actually sell pretty well in the subway.

In fact, on good days she sells out of them, unloading 20 copies or more of each of her three stories. (One is about the death of her stepmother, with whom she was very close; a second is about online dating and a third is about a whirlwind romance she had with another woman at Columbia. She is at work on a fourth story about another romance.)

Last week, Brune was doing a very brisk business in the corridor leading to the Times Square shuttle. As a salesperson, she tends to comport herself with ease, something like a country-store clerk selling fertilizer to farmers. "You like short stories?" she says to the undecided. "Try this one."

"Hey, have a good one now," she says as they walk away. When a man in a baseball cap walked up, she gave him her friendly sales pitch. "You want action or satire?" she asked.

"Action," he said finally and forked over two bucks for the whirlwind romance. Brune folded the bills into her pocket. "Guys like the action story," she said.

In the space of about two hours, she had sold more than a dozen stories, some to satisfied repeat customers like Orlando Fonseca, who had also bought the whirlwind romance story and gave it a big thumbs up. "It reminded me of some of the stupid things I did," he told Brune, smiling.

She says that she has never had any customers demand their money back, though one man did return a story, apparently disappointed that she is gay. "I think he was a little sweet on me," she said.

Of course, the subway is not always the most relaxing sales environment. Once she spent the whole afternoon with a rambling drunk at her side. The same day, she said, "a slam poet or whatever he was came up and slam-poeted me."

Some people, most often women in business suits, look at her behind her box, well dressed and well fed, and roll their eyes. But others seem to understand. In fact, one woman recently gave her a $10 bill for a single story

"O.K., maybe she thought this was about charity," Brune said. "Or maybe she just thought I was undervaluing my work."

See, there are all kinds of ways to get your words out there and all you need is a little imagination.

Maybe you'd like to post your own suggestion in my comments. There is a prize for the best one: you get to buy me lunch.