Literary Dundee Wants You!

Chiew-Siah Tei sent me this call for submissions which should interest the writers among you :

New Writing Dundee is a literary anthology featuring both new authors and invited published artists. Celebrating its fifth year, this book is a Dundee community based project with an international reputation. The last two issues have gone through two print runs and have held its own event at the Dundee Literary Festival.

For the 2010 issue we are seeking submissions from the general public. The book is open to all styles, genres, themes and nationalities. Send in your prose, poetry, essays, drama and creative non-fiction by 1 November, 2009. For more information see the writer’s guidelines below.

Submission Guidelines:

Deadline: 1 November, 2009

Entrants: Authors from all over the globe are encouraged to enter.

Entrees: Accepting all types and genres of English language creative writing.

Only ONE piece of prose will be accepted for each entrant.

Only TWO pieces of poetry will be accepted for each entrant.

Length: Prose should not exceed 2500 words, but can be less.
Poetry should not exceed 25 lines, but can be less.

How to Submit:
Submit to newwritingdundee@dundee.ac.uk

We can ONLY accept email submissions.

Please paste your document into the body of an email.

Please ensure that you have spaced the document correctly when pasting it into the email.

Postscript ;

Dipika Mukherjee left a comment on my Facebook page to say she had a poem publsihed in this - and didn't even get a free copy. If you send in your work, it has to be for the glory and not the dosh.

Little Hut Leaps Onto Shortlist!!!

Let's give a big collective cheer for Chiew-Siah Tei whose Little Hut of Leaping Fishes has been shortlisted for the Best Scottish Fiction, a prize held in conjunction with the Glasgow Book Festival, Aye Write. (More here.) It must be said that she's up against some very stiff competition!

The winner will be announced on March 14th.

Malaysian Participation

This year, a panel discussion of particular interest was Malaysians Making History, where début novelists Preeta Samarasan (Evening Is the Whole Day, a novel about an Indian immigrant family in Ipoh in the 1980s) and Chiew-Siah Tei (Little Hut of Leaping Fishes, the first in a trilogy about a Mandarin who feels torn during East-West confrontations in China) sat on either side of award-winning Malaysian writer, Faisal Tehrani (who writes atypical and award-winning novels in Malay, such as Bila Tuhan Berbicara, which he highlighted at this festival).

The panel was a small representation of the fast-growing breed of local writers successfully making it on local, regional, and international levels.

To Samarasan ... the local writing scene “is just evolving ... The fact that Tash Aw (Malaysia-born, London-based author of international best-seller, The Harmony Silk Factory and locally famous for getting a multi-million ringgit advance for his debut novel) did it ... people are beginning to see that they can become writers as well.”

Tan May Lee writes about thius year's Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Starmag today and in particular about the six Malaysian authors who did us proud.

(Photos of Preeta by May Lee.)

Personal Meets the Historical, Authors Meet Audience

We were in celebratory mood at Readings@Seksan on Saturday. We had three authors fresh from the Ubud Readers and Writers Festival, a gaggle of poets (right collective noun?) launching their first collection, great music from Singer songwriter Reza Salleh, books to give away thanks to the kindness of Pansing and MPH, lovely cakes baked by Just Heavenly! (Chet's idea) and an audience of beautiful people. (Far right is fantasy writer Glenda Larke, whom I must persuade to come and read for us soon!).

Shamini Flint has won a three book publishing deal with Little Brown for her crime thrillers but today she read to us from two of her children's books The Seeds of Time (which she launched in Ubud) and Ten about a football mad girl witnessing the break-up of her parent's marriage.

Singer-songwriter Reza Salleh gave us a set of songs before the interval which added wonderfully to the festive atmosphere.

The after a break for chat and delicious cake, with much bookselling going on thanks to MPH and authors who brought their own books along, we had our lucky drawer for brand new books with 11 lucky winners!

Preeta Samarasan read from Evening is the Whole Day. The last time she appeared at Seksan's was before the book was published - this time, many of us had read the book and could enjoy her reading from it even more. I was a bit naughty and asked Preeta to read from her most controversial chapter, with Truth and Rumour dancing in the streets on May 13th. It was a section that made me gasp when I first read it because it says the kinds of things folks are afraid to say out loud in Malaysia.

The personal also echoed the historical in the extract Man Asia Prize longlisted Chiew-Siah Tei read from Little Hut of Leaping Fishes where Mingxi's wife dies in childbirth and the reform movement is also still born. Although set in China, this novel illustrates the forces that drove many Chinese (including Chiew-Siah's ancestors) to the Malay peninsula. We really look forward to the next two novels in her trilogy.

Can I just shout from the rooftop how wonderful it was to have these authors here and to celebrate their successes? YAY!!

Lansell didn't make it to this Readings but don't worry, I will not let him off so easily.

Nothing happens without our lovely supportive audience. I was so surprised to see Kadek Kris, one of the organisers of the Ubud Writers Festival. You can see Bernice in the white shirt in the background with her two beautiful daughters, and Na'a Murad (actor and Jit's little brother).

Apologies to the folks I stared through glassy eyed ... I am a bit incoherant sometimes when I'm worrying about everything it's possible to worry about. Jane Sunshine, why didn't I give you a big hug?

Many thanks to Seksan for use of his beautiful space and to my friends who keep me calm and help me set up everything quickly and efficently and then quietly clear up afterwards - Chet, leon, Eugene, Saabdev - very many thanks. Thanks too to Eric and MPH.

Bali Photos (1)

Here are some of my photos from Ubud. More to come. Sorry they are not great.

Am also trying to snaffle a few from friends who took pics on my behalf when my camera went walkies for two days.

Egyptian novelist, and one of the most respected writers in the Arab world, Bahaa Taher, was one of the big names at the festival. Bahaa won the Booker Prize for Arabic fiction earlier this year. (Do read Maya Jaggi's article about him in the Guardian.)

Chinese author Lijia Zhang worked for 10 years in a factory producing intercontinental ballistic missiles is Nanjing before becoming a journalist and writer. Her first book carries the ironic title Socialism is Great! (Read an extract on the New York Times website.) I have great hopes to coax this lady to KL!

Our Preeta paying gazillions of rupiah for a book.

Chiew-Siah with Chris Hanley (one of the founders of the Byron Bay Festival in Australia) who moderated the session called A Long Way From Home.

Shamini Flint launched her latest novel for children, The Seeds of Time about two children's quest to save the planet. All I remember of the event was the extremely potent cocktail made from local hooch. (If the picture is wobbly, you know the reason!).

Pendatang Part 2

(Continued from yesterday.)

Set in late C19th China, Little Hut of Leaping Fishes tells the story of Mingzhi, the treasured first grandson in the Chai Mansion in Plum Blossom Village. His grandfather a feudal landlord who soon learns that opium is a more lucrative crop than rice, rules the household with an iron fist. Mingzhi’s future as a scholar and later a mandarin is mapped out for him, but this sensitive soul finds an escape learning from the cloying atmosphere of the household with its rivalries, adultery and addiction through books and learning.

But Little Hut is as much a story about China as about the characters. “These historical events in C19th China are woven into Mingzhi’s life. He is not just as a witness. He is part of it” says Tei.

She says that she did a lot of research for the novel to get the details right. “I found out the timeline of historical events which was very useful. I actually merged every important period in Mingzhi ’s life with important events in Chinese history. When I realised that Emperor Guangxu was enthroned in 1875, I arranged for Mingzhi to be born in that year. Then when Mingzhi’s wife dies together with the child in labour, it is on the same day that the 100 days of reform failed, when the reformers are toppled by the empress. That’s why when Mingzhi is waiting for the wife to give birth he counts to 100 and just can’t get past that number. There are many tiny details like this I don’t know if everybody will get them.”

The end of the novel has Mingzhi and his friends escaping to Malaya, along with a whole wave of Chinese immigrants fleeing poverty. Is the novel in anyway based on the lives of Tei’s own ancestors who arrived at about the same time?

Tei says that she doesn’t really know much about her great grandparents, but she does remember seeing a black and white photo of someone in a Mandarin’s costume which used to sit on the family altar, although she has no idea who he was and how he was related to her.

The novel is actually planned as the first part of a trilogy, all centered on the concept of “home”, a theme which has particular resonance for Tei, living between a Scotland where she still feels an outsider, and a Malaysia where she says feels a tourist on her return visits.

The sequel to Little Hut of Leaping Fishes will take place in the early years of the C20th and see Mingzhi having to find a home in the new land. “So he has to think, what is home to him, here or there? There is a conflict.”

The third book in the series will be set between the 1990’s and the present. “It will redefine the concept of home in modern society when everything is moving so quickly and people become so busy. People can just go from one place to another place so easily and some people even have houses in different places. So it explores how we define home and how sometimes home just equals a sense of belonging.”

Her writing is, Tei says very influenced by film, which she describes as her primary language, and she is concerned with using minimal dialogue and vivid images to tell the story.

Indeed, with its short sentences and sentence fragments, and its use of the present tense, Little Hut sometimes reads like a film script. The writing very visual, the imagery is often striking, while the relative simplicity of the language, as well as its working of themes which will be very relevant to the local audience, should win the novel a broad readership in Malaysia.

Although Tei very much has her hands full with the writing projects at the moment, she says that she sees all her work as interconnected and does not rule out a return to film making. She may also return to writing in Chinese, although she says she does not know when yet.

So how does it feel being one of the growing list of Malaysian authors who are winning recognition? Tei says she was tremendously encouraged seeing Tash Aw and Tan Twan Eng longlisted for the Booker and winning recognition for their work. And it is an encouragement that she no doubt will be passing forward in turn.

Pendatang Part 1

My piece of Chiew-Siah Tei appears in this month's edition of Off the Edge where it looks very pretty on the page (left) and is titled Pendatang (Immigrants).

This is a somewhat different earlier version and I am posting it in two parts :

Writing in The Independent last month, critic Salil Tripathy noted the “quiet emergence of new Malaysian writing” naming authors Tash Aw, Rani Manicka, and Tan Twan Eng as being among those who had put the country the world stage. And of course Preeta Samarasan whose first novel Evening is the Whole Day he was reviewing at the time. But barely a month after the launch of Samarasan’s book, we found ourselves cheering for yet another Malaysian author published internationally.

Chiew-Siah Tei won critical acclaim for her novel even before its publication : Little Hut of Leaping Fishes was longlisted for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize last year while still in manuscript form. The book was launched here on June 19th at an event jointly by The British Council and book distributors Pansing, even ahead of its UK launch in early July.

Tei grew up in small-town Tampin, Negri Sembilan, one of seven children in a cramped wooden shop house which housed three generations of the family. Describing herself as a sensitive child she says that she found her escape from the noise and chaos through fiction. The parents of a playmate were teachers and had a house full of books which became her refuge. She most vividly remembers how she devoured the picture books of Hans Anderson stories, most especially The Little Match Girl, as well as Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince.

Her grandfather also fed her imagination with stories about the old days when she used to accompany him for his morning yam cha as his guide after he lost his sight. From him she heard tales of the young Emperor and the Dragon Lady, the Boxers who fought the white men, and of his parents’ journey in Malaya on a fishing boat. It was all material that would resurface in her own work.

“The instinct of story telling came to me very early,” she says, and her early attempts at writing were fostered by a teacher at the local Chinese medium school she attended. “When I was ten years old the teacher began to teach us composition in the Chinese school. I wrote my first one and he liked it and asked me to copy it down on proper paper. Then he sent it to a Chinese newspaper, I think it was Sin Jiew Jit Poh, which at that time had a children’s section, and it was published. He gave me so much encouragement and he began to ask me to write compositions with different titles from other students, so I wrote more. I loved it, and I learned more quickly than other students, and the habit of writing started from there.”

Tei’s Chinese language fiction won a series of awards, including the Hua Zong International Chinese Fiction Award. Now that her first novel is published, will we be seeing translations of those early works? Tei says not. “The prose style would be very different. The essence would be lost, and it would be like writing a new book.”

Tei admits that she is much more widely read in Chinese literature than Western but says that there are two very important authors in her life : “When I finished secondary school the first two books by international writers I read were Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude, both of which, opened her eyes to the possibilities of literature.

Tei studied media at Universiti Sains Malaysia and stayed on to teach. But, she says, she felt there was something missing from her life. Since she had always loved the cinema, and decided to take a degree course in media studies and film at Glasgow University in 1994. She had no scholarship and had to work to support her studies by working part-time, although she says that had supportive friends and family members who also helped her out.

Two years later, a chance participation in BBC Scotland’s Migration screenwriting workshop showed her how her love of both film and creative writing might be integrated, and her film Night Swimmer won the best short film at the Vendome International Film Festival in 2000.

Quite out of the blue one day, she received an email from literary agent Toby Eady of Pan Macmillan after a friend of Tei’s had sent him a copy of her film. He asked her to send him samples of her work for him to read. “At that time I didn’t have anything,” she says “But I began to keep in touch with him.”

In fact Tei says, she initially had the idea for Little Hut of Leaping Fishes as early as 1999, but felt that she couldn’t begin writing it until she felt more confident using the English language. English is her fourth language behind Hokkien, Mandarin and Malay, and even now she finds herself apologizing for not speaking it very well.

When she embarked on a cross disciplinary PhD at Glasgow University in 2002, turned up to class with part of a first draft of Little Hut in her hands. Fellow course mate (and recently published novelist) Rodge Glass writing recently in the Glasgow Herald remembers “a mature, interesting writer who was far ahead of most of us”.

Her professors who included renown Scottish novelists Alasdair Grey and James Kelman, and poet and dramatist Liz Lochhead and Tom Leonard. They gave Tei every encouragement and she says the confidence to move forward with her novel.

Tei says that she sees herself primarily as an artist. “That’s why I like to take up challenges. I like to experiment with form and medium. I’m not satisfied if something is easy.” And when she was commissioned to write a play for the 2005 Edinburgh Festival, she wrote an ambitious piece called Three Thousand Troubled Threads, the title referring to a Chinese phrase uses hair as a metaphor of the difficulties and challengers in life. She says “I tried to put film on stage, but not all people liked that kind of approach”.

If Tei’s first play was not entirely a critical success, her novel struck gold. She sent Eady her finished novel in March last year and was thrilled when he replied four days later “It touched my heart”. Eady immediately became her agent and the novel has also been launched in Australia and the U.K. and is being translated into several languages.

(To be continued)

Chiew-Siah's Leap of Faith

When I was 10 years old, the teacher began to teach us composition in the Chinese school. I wrote my first one and he liked it and asked me to copy it down on proper paper. Then he sent it to a Chinese newspaper which had a children’s section and it was published. He gave me so much encouragement and asked me to write compositions with different titles from other students, so I wrote more. I loved it, and I learned more quickly than other students, and the habit of writing started from there.

My interview with our latest Malaysian novelist to be published overseas, Chiew-Siah Tei is in Starmag today. I loved hearing about how the encouragement of her teacher, and the kind neighbours with books helped foster her imagination at an early age.

(Incidentally, I'm working on another longer piece on Chiew-Siah for Off the Edge at the moment.)

Also in Starmag Jacqueline Pereira reviews the novel :

The tale is cohesive and compelling, the author’s voice loud and clear. The narrative style dispels any confusion that may have arisen out of the novel’s many issues — filial relationships, breaking with tradition, exploring new horizons and the advent of western influences. ... Asian audiences will easily identify with the straightforward theme, prevalent in their societies throughout the centuries. Especially those still caught in the conundrum of the relativity of identity. Another technique the author adopts is describing a place, event or scene via a list of single words or phrases. Yet the images clash staccato-style in your mind, impeding easy reading.

And by coincidence, Angela Bennie inteviews Chiew-Siah in this morning's Sydney Morning Herald.

Fishes Leap Again in Glasgow

Congrats once again to Chiew-Siah Tei whose Little Hut of Leaping Fishes had its UK launch yesterday at Waterstones, Sachiehall Street, Glasgow.

In The Times Literary Supplement Scottish novelist and Chiew-Siah's creative writing teacher Alasdair Gray writes about her "fictive family history of China".

There was also a very good piece on Chiew-Siah in The Herald (Glasgow) by Rodge Glass, one of her coursemates, but I can't find it online to link to. (I can forward the article by email as pdf to anyone who is interested.)

Update :

Chiew-Siah now has a very nice website.

Little Launch with Happy Booklovers

Siew-Chiah Tei's Little Hut of Leaping Fishes had its launch last night at the British Council and a good sized crowd turned up to cheer her on. I was given the honour of introducing her and started with a mention of "the quiet emergence" of Malaysian literature on the world stage. I forgot to mention in my speech (so make up for it here) that it was the first time that the British Council and book distributors Pansing had worked in partnership to organise an event and it seemed to work out very well for both of them - and certainly for us, the booklovers!

The author then she spoke a little about her book and how it came to be written and read an extract from the opening:



This is, incidentally, the novel's first launch ahead of the release in the UK next month (it has already been released in Australia) and it was lovely to be part of that.

Later, while the author signed copies for the guests (who found a copy of the book in their goody bags!), we had a nice little party with nibbles and the music of the guzheng playing gently in the background. (And how nice for me - some folks who comment pseudononymously on this blog emerged into the light of real life!)

In an earlier session, Chiew-Siah had given a talk about some of the things to consider when writing a novel, and illustrated the talk with examples of how she worked through each challenge. Writing must come from the heart, she said, otherwise it won't touch the heart of the reader.

I will tell you much more about Chiew-Siah and the novel soon as I will be writing up my interview notes for features in Starmag and Off The Edge.

If you're hungry for more in the meantime, you can find an extract from the novel here.

So What Book's in Your Hands?

This is one of those mornings when I have lots of good stuff to blog but sadly no time to sit here and put stories up. It feels like the right time throw the ball to you

Being away from my computer for a day in deepest darkest Alor Gajah gave me some much needed reading time. I finished Chiew-Siah Tei's Little Hut of Leaping Fishes am very much looking forward to meeting her later today. (I have of course much more to write about both author and book).

I am now reading Miranda July's short stories No One Belongs Here More Than You - two stories in, I am blown away by it.

And you? What are you reading? Any good? Go on, make me jealous ...

An Invitation to Chiew-Siah Tei's Launch

Here's an invitation to a talk and very special book-launch!

Tampin born and Glasgow based Chiew-Siah Tei is launching her first novel, Little Hut of Leaping Fishes, longlisted for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize in 2007. It’s a sweeping tale of sibling rivalry, cultural upheaval and the indelible power of blood ties, set during the dying days of Imperial China.

Book fans and aspiring writers alike – join us on 19 June to meet this inspiring writer!

Exclusive Pre-Launch Talk

The evening will start with an exclusive pre-launch talk where she will talk about her experience researching and writing the novel as well as the road she took to get it published.

Date: Thursday 19 June 2008

Time: 7.30p.m – 8.15p.m

Venue: British Council, South Block, Wisma Selangor Dredging

This is a free event but places are limited – please RSVP via email to arts@britishcouncil.org.my or call 03-2723 7988 by Tuesday 17 June.

Launch of Little Hut of Leaping Fishes

Date: Thursday 19 June 2008

Time: 8.30p.m – 10.00p.m

Venue: (As above)

This event is open to public – no registration required.

The first 50 guests will receive an exclusive goodie bag. Light refreshments will be served.

For more info and directions to the venue, visit our website www.britishcouncil.org.my .

The novel is published by Picador Asia and distributed by Pansing. And it's in the bookshops already!

A Quick Burst of Pride

... for our Malaysians published overseas.

Twan Eng passed me a copy of The Elliott Bay Book Company's Review of Books for Spring 2008 (left)* which has one review stacked on top of the other "striking debut" novel. Both Twan and Preeta read at the bookstore, within a week of each other. Preeta describes it as

... a wonderful independent bookstore -- miles and miles of books!

and fills me with envy that I can't hop over there and see for myself. She also says that she enjoyed meeting Rick Simonson, who wrote both reviews.

Evening is the Whole Day is reviewed by Lim Soon Heng in Time Out (right)* this month :

Samarasan has successfully written perhaps the best English language novel from our shores ...

says he.

(My interview with Preeta appears in the next issue of Quill, and will be online later.)

But I'm actually raising this cheer for a hatrick of authors. Am now completely hooked by Chew-Siah Tei's Little Hut of Leaping Fishes - and it's magical!

Chew-Siah's novel will be out next month. Preeta's novel is now out in both the US and due to be published in the UK next month, so expect it in the shops some time soon. Twan Eng's book should be here in mass-market paperback very soon.

(* Click to bring the pages up to full size.)

Malaysian Makes 2007 Man Asian Longlist!

The long-awaited inaugural longlist for the Man Asian Literary Prize has been announced:

Tulsi Badrinath - The Living God
Sanjay Bahadur - The Sound Of Water
Kankana Basu - Cappuccino Dusk
Sanjiv Bhatla - InJustice
Shahbano Bilgrami - Without Dreams
Saikat Chakraborty- The Amnesiac
Jose Dalisay Jr. - Soledad's Sister
Reeti Gadekar - Families at Home
Xiaolu Guo - 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth
Ameena Hussein - The Moon in the Water
Nu Nu Yi Inwa - Smile As They Bow
Jiang Rong - Wolf Totem
Hitomi Kanehara - Autofiction
N S Madhavan - Litanies of Dutch Battery
Laxmi Narayan Mishra -The Little God
Mo Yan- Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out
Nalini Rajan - The Pangolin's Tale
Chiew-Siah Tei - Little Hut of Leaping Fishes
Shreekumar Varma - Maria's Room
Anuradha Vijayakrishnan - Seeing The Girl
Sujatha Vijayaraghavan - Pichaikuppan
Xu Xi - Habit of a Foreign Sky
Egoyan Zheng - Fleeting Light

The prize, worth $10,000 focuses on new works as yet unpublished in English and aims to encourage the publication of more works by Asian writers. This year 243 submissions were received, from both established and first time authors, and included translated works as well as works originally in English. the shortlist will be announced in October, and the winner on November 10th, 2007.

Among the best known authors on the list are Xiaolu Guo who wrote the Orange-shortlisted A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, and Hitomi Kanehara's whose first novel Snakes and Earrings was a smash-hit in Japan. More about the award on the Guardian website and information about all the writers in this press release.

There is also a Malaysian on the list- Chiew-Siah Tei, born in Tampin, Negeri Sembilan. She is a bilingual writer who has already won a series of awards with her Chinese prose including the Hua ZongInternational Chinese Fiction Award. She scripted Night Swimmer which won Best Short Film at Vendome International Film Festival. Her play, Three Thousand Troubled Threads, was staged at Edinburgh International Festival. Little Hut of Leaping Fishes is her first novel in English.

Chiew-Siah studied creative writing at Glasgow University and here novelist and tutor Alasdair Gray writes about the novel he saw in progress.

Meanwhile controversy continues to dog the award, particularly with regard to the selection of the judges. Asia Sentinel brings the story up to date. (And thanks C for the link.)