On Beauty and Other Saturday Stories

Big apologies for the delay in putting up the pictures of July Saturday's Readings@Seksan, a very enjoyable and well attended event with some great readers. (I could offer you miserable excuses, but won't.)


Jac SM Kee who describes herself as "a feminist activist, agitator, writer & researcher" in the newly published Malaysian Essays 2 read from her contribution to the book : Boundary Monsters in a Time of Magic - we all enjoyed the intelligence and humour of this very well-written piece. (You can watch her interview on The Fairly Current Show.)

Also talking about body image was Yvonne Lee who read for us from her book of essays about women's relationship to their looks - Vanity Drive. The book deals with such topics as relationship with luxurious lingerie, that first white hair, help my handbag looks like a warzone would you go with makeup - things we women can all relate to, written in a refreshingly honest and entertaining way.

Yvonne is also the author of The Sky is Crazy : Tales from a Trolley Dolly - a hilarious collection of pieces about life in the air - I found it laugh out loud funny and wished that I had had it at the time that I was teaching cabin crew for Malaysian Airlines.

Dipika Mukherjee's name may already to familiar to many of you. She was the editor of The Merlion and The Hibiscus, the collection of Malaysian and Singaporean short stories published by Penguin in 2002, and she also edited Silverfish New Writing 6. She had just heard that her novel has been longlisted for the Man Asia Literary Prize, and so got a big cheer for that.

But today we encountered Dipika the (very widely published) poet reading from her beautifully produced chapbook The Palimpest of Exile which examines what it means to belong to many places, and the ways in which we find home.

And of course we had to have the delightful Shamini Flint back again since she lights up the room with her warmth and humour every time she reads. The last time she took part in readings she wasn't able to read from the first of her her Inspector Singh novels to be published by Little Brown . Today she was able to make up for that - and what fun it was to see Malaysia through the eyes of her bumbling protagonist. And for good measure she gave us another extract from her Young Adults novel Ten.


Ipoh-born Paul Gnanaselvam was one of the writers featured in MPH's Urban Odysseys and now teaches English at Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman in Kampar, Perak. (I'm quite humbled that he made the journey all the way down for this event.) He read from his story Char Kuay Teow Satu, very nicely evocative about the way that the city has changed. I do hope we hear more from him.


And finally, we heard from a new writer, Amir Sharippudin, whose piece Blue, Black and White: How I Survived National Service appears in New Malaysian Essays 2 and gave us a very well observed insider's view of the whole thing.

Once again my thanks to all who read, to all who came (including from the UK my friends Rob and Elaine), to Seksan for his beautiful space and to the friends who helped set up and clear away.

Our next Readings will be in September after Hari Raya (because it would be no fun for those fasting during puasa, and I wouldn't want to hold it without them). We may also be holding it in a new venue, so watch this blog and the Facebook page for details.

Winning Wimmin!

Great to see so many friends turn up to support the readings at 67, Jalan Tempinis 1 yesterday. Seksen's place looked a little different with some very interesting installation art including a mobile of glass bottles stuffed with various colourful objects.

It was an afternoon of "wimmin" writers, readdressing the gender balance after the past few months when male writers tended to feature rather more. (Too many Kutus!)

In the end there were five of us reading. Sharanya Manivannan went first reading a beautiful poem about her relationship with her mother tongue, and a longer excerpt from "a novel in progress". Her writing is so sensual and languid and I'm glad that she's chosen for herself the larger framework of the novel. Have to pinch myself to remind myself how young she still is. (Yesterday was her 20th birthday!).

I read next. In the end I chose a piece I'd begun as a short story but plan to work into my own "novel-in-progress". Reading it aloud was an extremely useful experience - could hear how the audience collectively reacted to the words. And I was so pleased that they laughed in the parts where I had laughed when writing it.

Bernice then read a piece about a woman being physically assaulted by her lover. She used repetition and short sentences to skilfully control the emotional impact. Hope it grows into a longer piece.

It was Eileen Lui's first reading. (Bar of course for the launch of my anthology Collateral Damage.) As I've said before, I think she is a very good short story writer. Her two published stories are set in Vietnam, where she was working for some time. At The Gates, the story she read out, has a local setting and features two very elderly Chinese men reflecting on their pasts and worrying about their children. As with her earlier stories, characters emerge sharply from the dialogue, and background detail is worked in very carefully.

The final reader of the afternoon was Jac SM Kee who has recently completed Beth Yahp's creative writing course. She read several short pieces and an extract from a very quirky children's story Sammy and Me.

The only think that might have made me a little happier yesterday was some ice to put in my coca-cola ... it was a really hot afternoon with some serious sweating going on!