Silverfish's Full Stop

The seventh book in the Silverfish New Writing series is also, of course, the last in the series of the short story anthologies which has done so much to revitalise local fiction over the years.

Like most of its predecessors, it's a pretty mixed bag with some first-rate new fiction, a number of other pieces which are interesting and certainly worthy of inclusion, and only one or two disappointments.

Overall, it's a less even collection than Silverfish New Writing 6 which also had a much stronger Malaysian flavour, but it still sets a standard that other locally produced anthologies of short fiction have fallen well short of.

Of the 19 stories in the collection, four are by Singaporeans, five are by Malaysians, and another four stories are by expats resident in Malaysia, the remaining pieces coming from writers from further afield. The original intention of opening the anthologies to writers from outside Malaysia and Singapore was to provide a little competition and to lift the standard. Perhaps it is a sign that the short story in Malaysia and Singapore has come of age that many of the strongest pieces are by local writers.

One of the best known writers in the book is Wena Poon. Her story Dog Hot Pot, which humourously dissects the attitudes and prejudices of Singaporeans. The story is included in her collection Lions in Winter, which has just been nominated for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize.

Fellow Singaporean Yvonne Tham gives us one of the quirkiest ghost stories I've come across. Jumi who works as a subtitler at a TV station, has recently lost her mother and is experiencing some strange goings on at home, including all the papayas from her tree mysteriously disappearing. She isn't too surprised when a ghost turns up ... except that instead of it being her mother's ghost (which would, she feels have been much scarier!) it is the ghost of Chinese writer Zhang Ailing, whom she greatly admires. The depiction of the growing friendship between the writer ghost and the ghost writer is both funny and touching.

Of the stories contributed by Malaysian writers, I particularly enjoyed Shih-Li Koh's most unlikely of love stories The First Time, and Saras Manickam's The Invisible, the story of an Indonesian maid after she is fired by her employer for letting her lover, another migrant worker, into the house. Both stories avoid all the usual cliches and give us the sense of real women in straightened circumstances making tough decisions.

Four of the stories are by expats who have made Malaysia their home. Robert Raymer is already well-known for his short stories, and in particular for his collection Lovers and Strangers. Only in Malaysia is told from the point of view of an expat whose marriage to a Malay woman has fallen apart. I found it fascinating for its cross-cultural insights, though a little slow in the telling. I much preferred his Transactions in Thai, a very nicely observed piece about the goings on in a Had Yai hotel where two Westerners on holiday from their real lives negotiate a deal with a hotel manager for a couple of women they want to take on holiday. Who, one wonders, is that backpacker scribbling in his journal at another table? It couldn't be Raymer himself playing fly on the wall, could it?

Peter Brown's The Last Deejay, set in a dystopian Malaysian twenty years in the future is nail-bittingly tense. Social order has completely broken down following the collapse of oil prices. Mobs rule the streets, and the forces of the United Islamic Army have landed (although the government denies this in the newspapers!). A deejay is murdered in his club in Jalan Bukit Bintang, and his mother and best friend must risk their own lives to bring back his body for burial.

The most risk-taking story in the book is Yusof Martin A. Bradley's The Good Lieutenant which follows over the course of a day, the life of a British policeman posted to Malaya during The Emergency. What I found exciting about the narration is the way that the lens of the camera sweeps from close up glimpses of the minutest details of the natural world around Reggie Gold (the birds, the insects, the drip of rain drops) to a wide angle view which encompasses the entire range of historical and social forces that brought Gold to Malaya. While little of note happens in the foreground of the piece until the tragic climax, the background is so full sketched that Gold is completely located within his temporal and physical context.

Editors Ashraf Jamal and Shanti Moorthy point out in the introduction that there is something a little unfinished and tentative about some of the stories, that they show :

... something that they (the writers) can't quite name and put a finger to ...

and I think that this is indeed true of some of the stories.

Viren Swami gives us The Beggar, a puzzling piece not amounting to a story, because story implies plot and this has only incident, a single incident, a chance encounter with a beggar in the final paragraph. Just who is the narrator and what is the meaning of the this encounter? The piece reads like the opening of a gothic horror novel, and even though the setting (Orchard Road, Singapore) is so familiar and no doubt coloured by our experiences of happy shopping trips, Swami creates an atmosphere of menace and a sense of dread which makes us see it in a new way entirely.

Layang-Layang by Yew Kwang Min is also a-not-quite-story - but an account of a journey back to the quaintly named Johor town with a friend who asks whether there is anything interesting to see. Perhaps to the outsider there isn't, but to the narrator, who grew up there every nook and cranny is replete with memories. This piece left me wanting to read more.

Of those stories by writers from further afield I especially enjoyed Shalini Akhil's surreal tale of a briefcase that took possession of its user, and Jane Downing's That Smile and the Tilt of Her Head in which the mother of a young man fighting in Iraq finds consolation in the memorabilia of an earlier war in the markets of Vietnam, including a haunting photograph of a young girl.

So yes, this was another Silverfish anthology that gave me much reading pleasure, and it really does grieve me to think that there won't be any more to come. Will MPH's collections fill the gap? Will another collection that another friend was talking to me about some months ago, finally materialise? Will Raman manage polish one or two of his protegees to publishable standard?

In all cases, I really hope so. But they really will have something to live up to.

Blue Shoes and Silverfish

Saras came by yesterday bearing the gift of a copy of Silverfish New Writing 7, in which her short story Invisible appears. (Some of you will have heard it when she last read at Seksan's.) There are also stories by Wena Poon (in next Saturday's line-up), and Yusof Martin , Robert Raymer, Viren Swami, Peter Brown and others. The collection is this time edited by South-African academic Ashraf Jamal, and Shanti Moorthy (whom I suddenly realised I had met ... she's the daughter of a very dear friend of my husband's. Small world, huh.)

If there's anyone whose story is included would like to read at Seksan's, please let me know, okay?

The cover by those amazing malay boys (Sufian Abas and Ruhayat X) is so nice, especially so as I recognise Saras' house and my friends in the moody sepia photo!

And talking about Sufian Abas, his new book Kasut Biru Rubina (Rubina's Blue Shoes) is now out, and can also be bought from Silverfish. Here's the blurb and it sounds intriguing :

A woman wakes up without her body. A boy tries to endure the pain of being an adult when mini animals start to come out of his anus. What do you do when angels forgot to bring a unicorn for your daughter's birthday? And are all shoes evil or just the blue ones?

Many of the characters in Kasut Biru Rubina want to live ordinary lives. But the unexpected happen. Brief, shocking, and full of lies that can only come from the twisted mind of Nigerian scammers, Sufian Abas' stories are snapshots that illuminate the strange hidden in a world we never want to live in.

Sufian will also be reading at Seksan's this Saturday.

Maggie Wins Txtlit

Bernice sent me an e-mail telling me that one of her ex-creative writing students from CENFAD, Mag Tan Yee Mei (who, as Maggie Tan, wrote a story Theatre des Marionettes which appeared in Silverfish New Writing 5) has won a UK writing competition for a romantic micro story submitted by SMS.

Biggest congrats from me too.

Maggie is now studying Art History and English Literature at the University of East Anglia. She apparently enjoys writing fairy tales in her spare time, and I bet you any money that she will turn out to be one of Raman's Silverfish "lappers". You might remember Maggie's appearance at reading at Seksan's some time back. She was so shy that Bernice had to read her story for her!

Lappers or Splashers?

Following the furor over Raman's decision to pull the plug on the Silverfish New Writing Series which he announced a week or two ago, he explains his decision:

When we published Silverfish New Writing 1 in 2001, we said that it would be fantastic if only one or two writers emerged from it. ('Writers' has become a sensitive word -- so henceforth we shall change that to 'authors'.) We reckoned that if we have about fifteen or twenty authors (what is the tipping point, anyway?) producing good stuff regularly, the whole industry would take on a much healthier glow and, perhaps, even attract international attention.

After seven years and seven books in the SNW series and two other anthologies, not one Malaysian 'lapper' has emerged. (Internationally, we only know of Gary Lamoshi, an American living in Hong Kong, whose novel-in-progress was featured in Collateral Damage, and whose full length novel, Hong Kong on Air, has just been published. We are not counting several others who were already published authors before they started sending their work in for SNW.) Yes, the New Writing series has touched many people in many ways and it has resulted in (if we allowed ourselves to be so immodest) a slight seismic shift in the local literary scene. However, no matter how precious we feel about it, it has not produced the desired result. The SNW series, instead of becoming a means, a stepping-stone leading towards an end, has become an end itself.

He's decided on a change of tack, nurturing up some promising voices from his writing class. The first collection of stories, News From Home, featuring three writers (Chua Kok Yee, Kow Shih-Li, Rumaizah Abu Bakar) is due out at the end of the month and will be very interesting to see.

Postscript:

A very poignant post by self-confessed splasher Deviant Urbanite:

I mean, it isn’t the New Yorker, but it was definitely thrilling to have been a part of it. I did send some of my stuff elsewhere too, but none of them were as inspiring or as relevant as Silverfish. Most of my stories (or story whims, more like) are set at home or have a Malaysian tone/context. It only made sense for them to be published back home where readers are better poised to appreciate or be impacted by them. And there’s a certain amount of pride associated with getting published in your homeland, too.

Wot? No More Silverfish New Writing?

Meanwhile, back in Malaysia for the moment, Raman announces in the same breath the list of stories that have made it into the Silverfish New Writing 7 (and big congrats to all, new names and familiar ones) and the imminent demise of the short story anthology:

By the way, this will be the last in the Silverfish New Writing series. We have decided to stop here. There will be no Silverfish New Writing 8, nor anymore after that in the foreseeable future. To all those who have contributed in the past, thank you for making the series an unqualified success.

Very very sad. These short story collections have been extremely valuable to local writers - and I'd include myself in that (and editing Collateral Damage was a tremendous experience). There are some really heartfelt comments on the post and I really sympathise.

As Deepika Shetty points out there's a funny kind of irony here. I was sitting with her on her veranda at the Honeymoon Guesthouse in Ubud a couple of mornings and we were talking about the series and how it had given so many writers - including myself - a start.

Sharanya Manivannan got her start as a published writer with a piece in the anthology I edited (though it would only have been a matter of time before she broke through somewhere).

And I was on cloud nine after going to Mohammad Cohens' book launch for Hong Kong on Air during the Ubud Festival (left): the first chapter had appeared as "an extract from a work in progress" and it was the first piece of fiction he had had published, a validation that he tells me he is still grateful for.

Repeat this story through the other collections - the grateful writers who got a break, who knew their work was worth something because the book itself was worth something; the unsuccessful writers who kept reaching higher because the collection set the bar, and perhaps after some time reaching it.

As Deepika says:

I'm sure the reasons for this are sound. Publishing isn't for the faint-hearted and Raman did open so many possibilities for aspiring authors, some of whom are now full-fledged novelists. And for that he deserves to be applauded. I do hope that someone will see the potential of such a publication and continue what he so bravely started.

I don't know the reason behind the decision but will have a chat to Raman and find out. And perhaps there is some way to keep this anthology going, or begin to something along the same lines. We need it.

Update:

Raman says the series hasn't achieved what he wanted it to achieve when he started the project. I didn't press further 'cos I didn't want to hear any more about how terribly disappointing Malaysian writers are. And anyway, I don't believe it.

Postscript:

Amir Muhammad's take on the matter. Amir was the editor for Silverfish New Writing 1. He describes the move to discontinue the series as:

... an impoverishing one ...

but reckons the series would have been much stronger if the focus had remained on Malaysian and Singaporean writers.

And yes, as Amir says, Raman has probably got the next plan for world literary domination up his sleeve!

Another Postscript

From another editor, Robert Raymer, on Raman's blog:

I do hope you reconsider. This series has been a great inspiration for a lot of writers. It's the carrot on a stick that I hold out for my creative writing students (this semester I'm even teaching a class for lecturers), that by completing their story and rewriting it later they have somewhere to sumbit it too, by March 31th. That deadline gets them going! Several of my students have in fact been published in the Silverfish Series (2 in SF6!). I know I have personally benefited, both in my stories being accepted (four including two in SF7!) and also as one of the editors (SF4) who has had the pleasure of discovering some talented writers (including at least two who have popped up in SF7!

An Armless Enough Read

Dropped by Silverfish to see what gossip I could glean, and saw on the counter The Missing Arms of Venus de Milo: Reflections on the Science of Attractiveness.

Now I'm a sucker for books about evolutionary biology especially when difficult subject matter is enjoyably readable for a lay audience, so I was pretty interested. Then I realised that the name of the author seemed familiar ... and then it clicked, Viren Swami's short story The Monkey of the Inkpot was included in Silverfish New Writing 6. How great to have a very interesting popular science book written by a Malaysian author and published in the UK (by independent publisher Book Guild)! I hesitated about buying it because it was RM120 which seems a bit ouchy (although this is in fact a close ringgit equivalent to the £16.99 UK price). I hope that a paperback version is in the pipeline. (Can see I'm rapidly talking myself into going back for a copy ...)

I lifted this blurb from the Silverfish website:

We are constantly told that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. But what if, just as our lives are governed by universal physical laws, the notion of beauty could be reduced to a system of immutable facts? Could there be one universal concept of beauty by which we are all measured? In Viren Swami's intriguing investigation into the science of attractiveness, the author sets out to deconstruct the myths and uncover some of the truths about beauty. Taking the Venus de Milo as his constant companion, Swami embarks on a fascinating journey through historical, cultural, economic and social contexts of this age old debate. On his way he encounters an impressive gallery of advocates and adversaries: from Plato to Michelangelo, from Rubens to Manet, from Darwin to Stephan Jay Gould; Shakespeare to Naomi Wolf. The definitive guide to psychologists, art historians and philosophers of science, this highly accessible and wide ranging exploration is also an indispensable introduction for any of us who has ever wondered what constitutes the body beautiful.

Viren Swami is currently living in London. He is a Research Associate at the University of Liverpool, UK. He received his doctorate from University College London, where he specialized in evolutionary psychology. His current research interests include interpersonal attraction, especially across cultures, and gender studies. He has also written (with Adrian Furnham) The Psychology of Physical Attraction, as well as numerous psychological studies.

He has also translated George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia into Bahasa Malaysia and is currently translating Kafka's Metamorphosis. How nice to see a scientist bridging the literary divide.

Send Them Stories Out!

The 2007 Commonwealth Short Story Competition is now accepting enties. Ist prize - a cool £2,000! Deadline 1 May 2007.

Rules and further information here.

Don't forget too that the editors of Elarti want your fiction (in English and Malay) and the closing date for Silverfish New Writing 7 is March 31st.

Get writing!!

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!

Wena Self-Published

I mentioned Wena Poon in the previous post as one of the writers who has a story in SNW6. I first came across her work when I edited Collateral Damage and she submitted one of my favourite stories - Kenny's Big Break - in which a teenage boy swipes his sister's wedding ang-pow to pay for his studies overseas. Re-encoutering her work in SNW6 made me wonder: why doesn't this very-talented writer have a book out? I would definitely want to read it, as I've read both of these stories with a big grin of delight on my face, and Wena's stories have been widely published.

It turns out that she's gone the self-publishing route with her first sci-fi novel Biophilia. (Which I just - heaven help my poor overheated credit card - one-click ordered from Amazon). On Raman's website, Wena talks about her experiences with POD publishing with Amazon's BookSurge and encourages other local writers to do the same.

Personally I think it high time that some publisher in this part of the world would give Wena (who is Singaporean, but living in the US) a proper publishing contract.

I know I would.

SNW6 - Best Yet?

Am going to wax lyrical for a moment or two about Silverfish New Writing 6 which I thoroughly enjoyed - and it seems to me that the standard of writing in this latest anthology is the highest yet.

The Silverfish New Writing series gives many local writers their first experience of being published (myself among them). And while many still snipe that the writers should be paid for their efforts beyond the free copies they receive (something I don't dispute) - I feel that the very fact that writers manage to get their work into an edited collection of this kind, and in competition with a couple of hundred others (many from overseas), has real meaning.

(The closing date for stories for Silverfish New Writing 7 is March 31st. Details here. ).

SNW6 is edited by local academic Dipika Mukherjee, who also co-edited The Merlion and the Hibiscus, Penguin's very interesting collection of Malaysian and Singaporean short stories which was published back in 2002.

The stories I liked best in the collection were: Dumb Dumb by Rebecca Chew - who really manges to get inside the skin of a disillutioned adolescent boy, with very comic results; Addiction by Wena Poon (she's thoroughly entertaining, her characters so engaging - I want a whole book from this lady!); Bonsai Monkey by Arthur Goh (a beautifully observed slice of Malaysian life, with a very satisfying ending); and of course Saras' story Dey Raju (charming and funny... and I feel a personal connection to it because it was born on a night when we wrote together).

I also very much enjoyed In God's Belly (an extract from a novel in progress) by Thaatchaayini Kanantu, Nurfa-izah Tubi's poignant Ever After, and The Swamp Creek by Nadiyah Elias. All I can say is ... more, please!

Farting Frank by precociously good 17 year old Colin Gan is silly fun, and O Thiam Chin (remember his struggles to get published?) weaves a very dark tale in Creation. I was happy to find a story from Peter Brown (Dysfunction), whom I've known for years as a singer songwriter. Here he puts a human face on local social problems with a convincing cast of characters. (Peter will be reading this saturday at Sek San's.) Hi, I'm MS by Arun Subramaniam was unusual - a story told from the viewpoint of a disease!

What didn't work quite so well for me: Round Trip by Angelia Poon (well-written, good characters, but too involved for a piece of short fiction); The Prince of Frogs by Craig Cormick (clever structure but at the expense of real character development - and a bit self-conscious); and The Kampong by Randolph Williams (messy structure, a bit of a white-man's fantasy piece).

I guess, though, that every reader will have different favourites - as I found when I edited Collateral Damage. And that's the great thing about a collection like this -it's like a box of chocolates which you can dip into and extract what you fancy*.

The book can be found in most of the local bookstores and it is also available my mail order from Raman's site.

And if any of these writers drop by this blog and would like to do a reading later in the year ... consider yourself invited.

(Just a thought - if life's a box of chocolates, why do I end up with all the nuts?)

Silverfish Swarming

One of the beacons of hope Amir Muhammad saw burning for local writing in English in the Kakiseni article I linked to yesterday was Silverfish New Writing. Five years on, the annual anthology is still going strong, and Silverfish New Writing 6 was launched last night at the Impiana Hotel, KL. The event, like the book, was sponsored by HSBC (under its HSBC in the Arts banner). Here are my (blurry as always) photos of the event.

Guest Ioalanda Capodanno with Professor Quayum, co-editor of Silverfish New Writing 3

From left: Datuk Shan (whose stories have appeared in earlier Silverfish collections), New Writing 6 editor Dipika Mukherjee, my buddies and writing running mates Saras Manickam and Soo Choon.

Thaatchaayini Kananatu, who wrote the story In God's Belly signs my book ...

... as does Peter Brown (Dysfunction). (Peter is a singer-songwriter and I've often enjoyed listening to his band Passion.)

A bit blurry, but this captures Raman quite well, doesn't it?

Phek Chin (far right) and Usha (centre) of Silverfish with a friend.

There were speeches from Deputy Chairman and CEO of HSBC Dato' Zarir J Cama, who told us that P.G. Wodehouse had also been a banker with HSBC (bet you didn't know that!), Raman (who quoted the Paul Auster speech about the uselessness of literature and talked about how we all need stories), and then a short word from Dipika Muhkerjee who had flown all the way back from Holland for the event, before the grand unveiling of the book.

The writers and editor up on stage with artist Shahril Nizam Ahmad who designed the cover, next to Raman.

Saras, relishing being a published writer at last, signs copies.

Junaida bte Hassan (A Whistle in the Night) took time off work to travel all the way up from Singapore.

I met many other interesting people and had a very enjoyable evening. I will write more about the book later when I've finished it.

Postscript:

Raman's much nicer photos of the event are here.

Rarity Value

Couldn't believe this little gem on Raman's website. There's a copy of the first Silverfish New Writing (which has my story in) being offered on being offered second-hand via Amazon.co.uk. at the incredible price of GBP 86.99 (which translates as RM602)!

Wah! I can autography a copy for you and send it for .... let's say half that amount.

Best of Silverfish

Raman's Silverfish litmag announces the release of a complilation of 25 best pieces from the Silverfish New Writing series, comprising Malaysian short stories. The editor is Nesa Sivagnanam who is a sub-editor at The Edge.

A list of stories is included on the website. I'm relieved that Eileen Lui's short story Chewing Gum Boy (from the collection I edited) made it in there.

Don't think I will be buying this volume as I've collected the whole set of New Writing over the years. But then again, it would make a nice gift for friends overseas.

The Silverfish Bug

Our friendly bookshop owner, Mr. Raman, was interviewed in yesterday's Star by Martin Vengadesan.

Raman has two books out this month. First of all, there's the next volume in the Silverfish New Writing series. No.5, edited by professor Ronald D. Klein of Japan’s Hiroshima Jogakuin University, is launched next Saturday.

Raman seems to be a little unwhelmed by the quality of some of the stories Klein has chosen :

“Well, you can’t expect all of them to be of equal quality, but I would say that almost all of them have their moments. I am particularly impressed with The Geology of Malaysia by Christopher Yin, and A Wedding and a Funeral by Matthew Thomas. I really love The Geology of Malaysia. Of course, there are one or two that make me think, ‘Hmm, how did that get in there?’ But I’m adamant about leaving the decision to the editor.”

Three things of interest for me about this collection:

1) Raman has sponsorship for this volume from HSBC. Well done!

2) Apparently, Singaporean and Australian authors feature prominently in this volume. Again! Where the bloody hell are our local writers and why aren't they keeping pace? So quit moaning if you're a writer who says no-one give you a chance because how many of you accepted this challenge?

3) One of the stories I rejected (not telling which or why) for my anthology Collateral Damage made it into this volume. It may well have been completely revised, or it may just be that different editors see things differently. Both possibilities should be seen as encouragement for those of you who have had work rejected along the way.

The second new release is of course Raman's own collection The Wedgwood Ladies Football Club and Other Stories which I told you about the other day. Raman has this to say about his first book:

“I must say that this has been a terrifying experience ... I don’t even consider it a book, just a collection of stories. It was a fun project, done during my free time, and I never had any intention to publish it. I just showed it to a few friends, who said I should take it further.”

Raman did not show the book to me before it was published. (I'm probably the "inner critic" of his worst nightmares!) But I'm glad he found friends to give him useful feedback.

I've dipped into the book. Of course I had to read the essay he wrote about his troubled friendship with Bernie Tan who wrote Firefly, published by Silverfish in 2000.

“I just felt I had to say these things. I didn’t go to her funeral, and this is a sort of obituary. Most obituaries lie, painting a rosy picture of a person even if he or she was awful. That’s not how I intended this to be. I knew her, she was very different, and I had to say something. I have absolutely no regrets about publishing it.”

I found it a very honest piece and I'm glad he included it. Just as I'm glad I know the rest of the story. Firefly was an interesting read, but poorly edited and full of grammar errors. Now I think I know why - Raman had more or less washed his hands of Bernie after a huge-blowup with her. But then, should you put anything out on your own imprint which is less than perfect?

I have only read one of the stories in the book so far, so jury is still out for the moment.

Oh ... by the way, a little poke in the eye for all those who decry the Silverfish New Writing series as a pathetic bit of vanity publishing: one writer launched by the series is now following in Tash Aw's footsteps (and Ishiguro's and Toby Litt's and Ian MEwan's and ...) and attending the M.A. in Creative Writing at University of East Anglia.

What was that that Raman said about Silverfish writers being lazy?

By the way, Mr. Raman said "Hurrrrmmmmmmmpppphhhhhh" to this particular piece of gossip "It doesn't mean she'll get published."

You show him, girl! I sincerely wish you all the best ...

Postscript:

Entries are being accepted for Silverfish New Writing 6. Details here.

Giving Writers a Chance

Minishorts raised some important issues in her comments to my entry about Silverfish writers and I thought I'd like to answer them. She wrote:

i'm not sure how silverfish does the screening process, but somehow when i read the anthologies, i feel many others could have been given a chance.

as for every 20-story anthology, where are the other 100 stories that got rejected (and there would have been more than just a hundred submissions, i believe). there have been multiple opportunities not to waste these works (whether or not they're works of art). sometimes, all it takes is a small recognition from a significant publishing house to fuel a spirited writer/author.

as for writing a novel, let me put it this way... i've come this far (which is not very far at all) to notice that there's a great deal of 'knowing the right people' to get that dream off the ground. Seriously.

I'm just being honest about this.

I can tell you about the "screening process" because I was editor of one of the collections, Collateral Damage.

Now let me say at the outset that editing is a very personal thing. Every editor has his/her own set of prejudices about the kind of fiction they like and this will be reflected in the selection made. It's for this reason that any publisher of anthologies will make sure that each collection is edited by a different person - as Raman has done.

I received all manuscripts submitted - there was no prior screening, and did not know the identities of the writers involved. (I was able to guess one or two from the style and subject matter, but was careful not to let this influence me.) I read all of them. There were, if I remember correctly just 97 manuscripts, not at all a large number. (I think many got put off by the title of the collection, which had been chosen before I came on board, and which I decided to interpret as widely as possible to give everyone a fair chance.) A large number of the manuscripts came from non-Malaysians and Malaysians living overseas. How many local writers actually grasped this opportunity? And a large proportion came from writers who had already been published in the series. How many new writers made the effort?

Now quality is important: you can't put out an anthology and expect people to pay just for the kindness of it. Each story has to earn its place. I describe my criteria for selection in my forward to the book.

Some of the stories (fortunately, a minority) were so badly written that it was an effort to read beyond the first couple of paragraphs. Attrocious grammar and spelling, cliched language, the point of view jumping all over the place ... how much of a chance do such writers deserve?

Some stories were excellent (a larger minority) and earned their place in the book immediately.

The rest of the stories I reread, reread again. There were tough decisions to make. In the end I went with what I felt were the most interesting pieces to make up numbers. (I'm the first to admit that there is a certain patchiness to the collection. The reviewer in the NST compared the collection to Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans - an analogy I quite liked!)

Of the stories I selected, I felt that some of them needed to be edited or worked on further and contacted the writers with suggestions that I felt would improve their work. It was entirely my own decision to do this. I did not have the time or opportunity to actually sit down with any of the writers (and many were overseas anyway) so we corresponded by e-mail. Most of the changes I suggested were made. But where writers didn't want to make changes, I respected their decision. All this was very time consuming, but worthwhile. (And Robert Raymer who edited the next collection was perhaps even more supportive to his writers.) My point - isn't this giving writers a chance? Would editors in the UK or US, where the pool of good writing to choose from is much larger, have taken the trouble?

Now let's think about the stories that didn't make it into the collection.

Minishorts writes "there have been multiple opportunities not to waste these works" and I think she's got a point here.

Some promising stuff got rejected. I did indeed feel sad about it. (And have been on the receiving end of such rejection myself so know how it feels.) Editors aren't unkind vicious creatures who rub their hands together in glee when consigning other people's work to limbo!

Many of the stories frankly needed more work. There were good ideas, interesting characters perhaps but a great deal more effort in polishing and shaping was required in many cases. And of course writers need to learn more about the craft of writing.

The best way to learn is simply by reading enough quality writing. If you want to learn how to write short fiction, immerse yourself in the best short story writers and learn from the masters.

I also think that new writers need more support in terms of facilities to workshop their stories. Courses, workshops, resources, facilities, writing groups, readings. We do need to fuel our new writers, as you say Minishorts, but it does not have to be the responsibility of a publishing house.

I applaud those people who are doing something to help local writers. Names that spring to mind are Bernice, RuhayatX, Pang, Beth Yahp and MPH Writer's Circle. And Raman's Silverfish which has played an enormously important role in encouraging local writing in English. These are all small-scale initiatives sure, but don't you feel a groundswell of something happening here?

There are no magic wands to be waved but a great deal of collective responsibility on the part of those who care about the state of local writing.

So over to you now, Minishorts. What would you like to see happening? And more importantly - how do you think it could be got off the ground?

A Lazy Colony of Silverfish??

Article on Raman of Silverfish in the NST today. (Article behind subscription.)

Raman talks not only about his bookshop and how it's facing the challenge of larger competitors, but also about his publishing venture which has put out 14 books so far, six of them anthologies.

This from the article:

He believes there is a strong demand for books in English by local authors.

“It is an irony. We complain that Malaysian readers prefer buying foreign writers. This is rubbish. But we have to stop insulting them by offering low-quality books.”

He also feels that it is important for local authors to get their work published locally. While there is a lot of glamour in getting published abroad, it is also a make-it-or-break task.

“Britain publishes roughly 10,000 books a month. When you publish there, you are one in 10,000. Also, there is a lot of pandering to their taste and a kind of selling out. The big publishing houses want the exotic East, they are purely commercially driven,” he explains.

Raman, however, has one grouse. He is disappointed with the local writers who have contributed to his six anthologies. Discounting previously-published authors, the new writers have yet to come up with a book of their own.

“There are a lot of people calling themselves writers in this country but they have yet to become authors. We have about 50 writers (in the collections) and not one has become an author. I am very disappointed,” he says.

“They used to complain there was no platform for writers and I have given them a platform. I think they are just lazy.”

Laziness?? Is what Raman says entirely true? I know of one excellent Silverfish writer who had his manuscript rejected ... probably because it would have attracted too much controversy. (The writer is gay.) It's every publisher's right of course to decide on the type of books they want to publish. But the writer did submit his work and ergo was not "lazy".

The word "lazy" is unkind in the sense that many of the writers have gone on to achieve significant recognition elsewhere e.g. Datuk SHANmugalingam whose work has appeared in various collections of stories and poetry including the much more prestigious The Merlion and The Hibiscus (Penguin), James Lee who of course has become an award-winning filmmaker and my friend RuhayatX (whose incisive and witty articles appear in the NST and on the Malaysiakini website) has set up his own publishing company to encourage young Malay writers. Lazy, huh?

Still, I think Raman has a point and I certainly stand guilty as charged. (This is good kick-up-the-butt stuff for me - and I hope for the other Silverfish writers.) I've short stories to complete and the first draft of a novel that needs reworking. Okay, will make a redoubled effort to get down to it.

Hey guys - let's show him!