Su Kim in Ubud

I ... took part in two panel sessions. One was entitled Wanderlust: Travelling Stories and featured Aussie outback traveller and writer Andrew McMillan and Brian Thacker, who specialises in travel off the beaten track. In the other panel session entitled Across Genres: Identity, Family and Place, I talked about multiple identities and shared stories and identity experiences from my Peranakan and Malaysian heritage. I was invited to do readings from my books with other selected authors at a Literary Lunch in a beautiful setting amidst emerald-green rice fields at John Hardy’s unique estate and at a panel session entitled Dangerous Women held at the magnificent Alila Hotel, which is dramatically set on a cliff overlooking forests with two narrow gorges running through the lush valley below. I must say that, apart from the attraction of meeting writers from all over the world, another pulling power of this festival has to be its ambience. The settings were superb, rich with the natural beauty of Bali.

I was stifling my feeling of sadness at not being in Ubud for the Writers and Readers Festival for the first time in three years. Then Lee Su Kim's piece in today's Starmag brought home to me just how much I missed being there and I could have cried. I'm really glad Su Kim had such a wonderful time though and plan to make the trip next year. Meanwhile there is the Singapore Writers Festival to look forward to this month. (BTW, I've heard a rumour that there will soon be a new international literary festival starting up in Thailand, which will be close enough for us to get to too.) One thing Su Kim gets wrong, as do the organisers of the Singapore Writers' Fest, Shamini Flint is a Malaysian, not a Singaporean author. (Ask her! ... Though just as a bowl of yong tau foo is delicious on both sides of the causeway, apart from flag-waving, does it really matter?)

Vikas for Ubud

Always chase your dreams. If you want to be a writer, then don’t get disheartened by the first couple of rejection slips. As I have discovered, it takes just one good agent to help you make your mark in the world. But the important thing is that your product must objectively be good. There are writers, I am sure, who think they have written the next Nobel Prize-winning novel, but maybe the novel is not so good. So get objective advice. Consult your friends, your colleagues, consult those who read books and if they like your book then, I don’t think you should give up, you should keep on trying and I’m sure you will hit the jackpot someday.

Slumdog Millionaire author Vikas Swarup gives encouragment to wannabe-published writers and talks about his work in an interview with Deepika Shetty for Quill magazine. It's up on Eric's blog.

Swarup's new novel is Six Suspects which he describes as an unconventional murder mystery. The author will be appearing at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival next month.

Tasty Authors, Fascinating Food

Can you resist this? From Janet de Neefe :

WRITERS’ & READERS’ MONTH AT CASA LUNA

What’s a writer’s festival without great food?

During the month of October, Casa Luna, one of Bali’s favourite restaurants set in the hillside retreat of Ubud, will honour the homes of the writers appearing at the 2009 Ubud Writers & Readers Festival by featuring their favourite recipes.

From Haiti to Zimbabwe, from coconut to corn, the Casa Luna menu will feature exotic dishes from more than twenty countries that will include Australia, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Italy, Burma, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Haiti, Turkey, Pakistan, Mexico and Nepal. The Casa Luna chefs have been chatting to the writers and gleaning family food secrets and stories that are a valued part in making these treasured dishes.

Leading this year’s Ubud Writers & Readers Festival line-up are Nobel laureates J.M. Coetzee and Wole Soyinka, Vikas Swarup, Fatima Bhutto, Mohammed Hanif, Hari Kunzru, Dany Laferriere, Kate Grenville, Lloyd Jones, Seno Gumira Adjidarma, Sonya Hartnett, Arthur Flowers, Dede Oetomo and Alison Lester.

Its master chef meets masters of pen and prose. Be thrilled by one of the most exciting and eclectic menus you will ever see representing award winning authors, poets and playwrights from all corners of the globe.

Ubud Writers & Readers Festival dates: October 7 – 11.

Contact: Janet DeNeefe janet@ubudwritersfestival.com

Mmmm ... where's the Nigerian food? Can I come along and cook jollof rice?

Let Vikram Twist Your Arm

If you need any more persuasion to go to the Ubud Writers and Readers' Festival this year do have a listen to what Vikram Seth has to say about it!



Early Bird tickets for 4 Day Passes (at 10% off) are available now! Early Bird offer ends 14 July.

Janet's Continuing Love Affair

Ubud Readers and Writers Festival director Janet de Neefe is interviewed in the Australian about her continuing love affair with Bali, the sequel she's writing to her memoir/cookbook Fragrant Rice, which will be :

... a classic tale tracing three generations of women: her Balinese mother-in-law, herself and her two daughters, centring on the traditional v the modern

and of course about the festival which this year runs from October 7 to 11 with the theme Sorrow and Joy :

Now in its sixth year, the festival will run , examining the ability of the human spirit to triumph over adversity. Complemented by the culinary tradition of languorous meals served in magnificent settings, the litfest will feature the customary seminars, debates, book launches, panels, performances and workshops. Debates on environmental issues and the rise of fundamentalism - touching on Islam in Indonesia, globalisation, censorship of the media, world poverty and the effects of the country's new anti-pornography law - will all be par for the course. De Neefe encourages local writers where she can and supports efforts to have Indonesian writing translated into English for publication overseas.

The line up is (as usual) amazing and (tentatively, because we all know how these things go) :

Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee, Wole Soyinka, Hari Kunzru, Ed Husain, 2007 Orange prizewinner Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nuruddin Farah and Australians Geraldine Brooks and Michelle de Kretser will all be present.

I hope the publicity in Australia will pull in some much needed sponsorship money for the festival which Janet, and her husband Ketut Suardana, put a great deal of their own money into.

Want to attend the festival this year? Hint - now's a good time to book your AirAsia cheapie flight!

(Pic is a photo I took at the festival last year.)

Festival Manager Needed

Here's a job someone out there might like to apply for!:

Festival Manager - 2009 Ubud Writers & Readers Festival

'One of the top six writers festivals in the world' Harper's Bazaar U.K.

The Ubud Writers & Readers Festival is seeking a Manager with Writers Festival and/or Arts Festival experience. The Festival Manager is primarily responsible for the overall management of the Festival and the Festival team. Duties include Program Administration (including budgeting), Staff and Office Management, Funding Applications, Communications and Marketing and Production Management. Fluency in Bahasa Indonesian an advantage, but not essential. The position requires the successful candidate to reside in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia for a period of 12 months.

More info: www.ubudwritersfestival.com.

Applications close 5 December, 2008.

For a full position description and details on how to apply, email

Elizabeth Henzell [e]: elizabeth@janetdeneefe.com.

The Awful Things That Happen to Imran

One author I very much enjoyed meeting in Ubud was Imran Ahmad (right above with ABC broadcaster Annie Gastin). Imran writes about his experiences growing up Muslim in Britain most engagingly in his memoir Unimagined : A Muslim Boy Meets the West which I've marked down as a must-read.

Well last night, Imran wrote to send me a link to his not-quite-a-blog with his delightful account of the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (entitled, with a beautiful irony as you will see, Why, oh why, do these awful things always happen to me?).

There's much else interesting to read on the site so do go poke around.

I am trying to twist Imran's arm to come visit us over here. My worry is that he has been totally spoiled by the Bali experience!

Potted Ubud

Okay then. Some of my personal highlights of the Ubud Writers Festival 2008.

Biggest Thrill :

Sorry for drifting to the far shores of groupiedom but Vikram Seth is one of my very favourite authors of all time and meeting him was magic.

Sessions I Enjoyed Most :

I like best the sessions where authors talk about their creative process and their path to publication and came away most inspired from the session with Australian authors Carrie Tiffany and Alexis Wright. Wright won the Miles Franklin with Carpentaria and Carrie Tiffany was shortlisted for the Orange Prize with Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living.

I also very much enjoyed the panel Crime : Fact and Fiction with Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil author John Berendt (for me, another of the stars of Ubud) , Shamini Flint, Liz Porter (whose book about forensic science I wrote about here), and Hilary Bonney author of The Society Murders about a famous Melbourne murder case. (I found this a fascinating read.)

And if I came to Ubud in love with Vikram Seth I went away besotted with Mexican magical realist Alberto Ruy Sanchez (who will be here in KL next week - and hopefully prepared to do a reading for us.)

What Made Me Proudest :

Malaysian authors were right there in the spotlight and did us all proud. I very much enjoyed the panel Malaysians Making History which featured Preeta, Chiew-Siah and the usually reclusive Faisal Tehrani.

Seeing the Ubud edition of MPH's Quill magazine in everyone's hands with three of my articles inside and tons of other good stuff and hearing from folks that they had enjoyed the interviews.

That Janet de Neefe acknowledged me in the credits in the programme, along with Eric Forbes. My part is small - blogging the festival, providing the contacts of writers at this end - so I was very touched that she'd thought of me.

Other Things I'm Happy About :

Learning about authors and books which have thus far slipped under my radar. Making lots of contacts. Authors saying yes, they'd love to drop by KL and meet readers here.

Meeting my Balinese blogfriend SapiMalas who is as much a bookaholic as I am.

Having time to network informally and look at ways we can coordinate with friends in other countries.
Most Surreal Moment :

Helping Vikram Seth weigh the Balinese gong he'd bought to send home!

Best Event not on the Official Programme :

I thank Karim Razlan for organising a magical nasi lemak dinner in his garden, under the stars for writers and Malaysian friends. (And I got to sit next to Vikram Seth!!!!).

I also loved the post-festival writers' lunch at John Hardy's place - one the world's most prominent jewellers has his "factory" in the Balinese padi fields and his showroom is a bamboo cathedral with a stream running through. Now that was another lovely balinese nasi campur and it's just a shame I could afford to buy a few samples.

Biggest Disappointments :

Several authors couldn't make it. I had so wanted to meet Indra Sinha and had even planned to interview him for Off the Edge. Aravind Adiga of course had bigger fish to fry. Nigerian short story writer and Jesuit priest Uwem Akpan had visa problems. Lisa St Aubin de Teran was a no show too. Sad sad.

Thing that Made me Most Grumpy :

Seeing all the lovely books on sale and only being able to buy a few because I couldn't carry more back, they were so expensive anyway compared with prices in Malaysia.

Getting a really bad cold and feeling like **** for much of the festival. Leaving my camera in a taxi.

Person I'd Like to Strangle :The journalist from a pan-Asian newspaper who picked up and then dropped a copy of Quill and was overheard saying sniffily that he didn't read magazines produced by Malaysians.

(More on individual sessions later.)

Ubud Interlude

So yes, I'm back. Back home and back to blogging.

Crawled in at 1.30 a.m. (thanks to a delay on AirAsia) loaded with dirty washing and a huge pile of books - mostly signed copies - and a ton of stories to tell.

But not as many photos as I wish I had ... as I managed to leave my camera in a taxi! The driver returned it to the hotel where I had been attending Camilla Gibb's book launch and I was touched and impressed by his honesty.

This was the view of rice paddies from my hotel room at dusk. (I stayed at a cheapie hotel at the end of Hanoman Street.)

This is the gateway of the Yoga Barn, just up Jalan Hanoman and next to the excellent Kafe. Ubud is the place to find peace and tranquility and beauty, tradition and new-ageyness. All the time you meet folks from across the world who come to Ubud and never leave. It's the true land of the lotus eaters. (I want to live here too!!)

This is my lunch at the little restaurant in a garden behind at Toko Toko gallery where I go for peace and quiet when the festival is on. I will miss my nasi campur so much!!

I will not miss the pre-monsoon heat and humidity though - sweated rivers this Writers' Readers' festival.

(Still when I think of some of the British literary festivals and the accounts of the rain and mud and events in tents, I know I that I have no cause to complain.) More to come!

Bali Interlude

Ah yes. Sorry. Forgot to tell you that I have defected to Bali for a few days to attend the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival which starts on Thursday. Blogging will be a bit intermittant as I tend to get caught up in things, but I will be reporting about it all here and posting my photos. There are plenty of Malaysians on the programme this year (Preeta Samarasan, Chiew Siah-Tei, Faisal Tehrani, Bernice Chauly, Shamini Flint) and now I hear that Amir Muhammad (much-banned filmmaker, columnist and publisher as well as much else) will be here too. (He's been roped in for the "Carnival Street Party" which sounds like fun.) Sharanya Mannivanan, Indian poet, who says in her bio that she has lived "elsewhere" is also on the programme and if anyone is taking bets on the outcome of The Better Read than Dead Poetry Slam, my money would be on her. (She just has to fix the audience with those langourous eyes and give 'em the poem about everything wanting to make love to her!) it will be great to catch up with her again. There is so much good stuff on the programme though with sessions running in two venues concurrently, am having to make some tough (heartbreaking!) choices about what to attend. Am anticipating melting into a little pool of goo on the floor when I meet Vikram Seth, one of my all time most loved authors. If that happens I may not be blogging at all. Okay. Got to go and get my chakras balanced. Ubud is that sort of place.

Bacon on Bali Menu

I'm getting all excited about going to Bali in a few days time for the Ubud Writers and ReadersFestival and am so happy that Eric has blogged an interview with author Charlotte Bacon (left), a Hemingway prize winner who has relocated to Bali with her husband. He has also posted a piece from the Bali Post written by Alexis Wright about how her Miles Franklin winning novel, Carpentaria, came to be written. The festival programme is up here to whet your appetite if you need last minute convincing.

Literary Curry

If you picked up the free copy of MPH's Quill magazine, you will have read my interview with Janet de Neefe, who founded the Ubud Readers and Writers Festival. Janet and her husband Ketut Suardana run two of Bali's most famous restaurants, Casa Luna of Ubud and Indus of Campuan, (website here) as well as Honeymoon Guesthouse where regular cookery classes are held. Janet is also the author of Fragrant Rice: My Continuing Love Affair with Bali published by Harper Collins Australia.

Sadly, there was one question that had to be cut due to space constraints, and since I asked it for you, I append it here because this dish is absolutely yummy!: Could you give us a typical Balinese recipe that our Malaysian readers might enjoy? KARE AYAM Chicken curry Probably the most wonderful aspect of making a curry is the heavenly aromas that drift through the house when food is being prepared. Balinese chicken curry is lighter than its Indian counterpart. You can also replace the chicken with any other meat, fish or vegetable. For maximum flavour, I always use chicken thigh or leg with the bone for a curry. However, you can use chicken breast or boned meat if you prefer. Use fresh galangal and turmeric for this dish as the flavour, aroma and texture will be far superior to the powdered varieties. Serves 3-4 750 g chicken pieces 1-2 cups coconut milk 5 tbs oil for frying 1 lemongrass 3 salam leaves (These are a kind of Indonesian bay leaves) 4 lime leaves sea salt 2 tsp tamarind Spices: 5 small red shallots 7 small cloves garlic 3 large red chilli 2-3 bird's-eye chillies 1 tbs ginger 3 tbs galangal 3 candlenut 1 tbs fresh turmeric ½ tomato 2 stalks of lemongrass 1/4 tsp shrimp paste 2 tsp coriander seeds 1/4 tsp cumin (opt) 1 tbs palm sugar Blend all the spices in the container of a food processor until paste-like. Add a little water if necessary. Bruise the extra lemon grass and tie into a loose knot. Heat the oil in a wok over a medium flame. Throw in the spices, lemongrass, lime leaves and salam leaves. Push them back and forth confidently for 30 seconds until fragrant and shiny, making sure they don’t burn on the base of the wok. Add the chicken and toss around until sealed or half-cooked. This will take at least two minutes. Add two cups of water and boil for about fifteen minutes or until the meat is cooked. Now add the final layer of coconut milk. Bring to the boil, simmer for a minute and then turn off. Check seasonings and serve topped with shallots. Add sea salt to taste. Alternatives: Potatoes, beans, or carrots may be added, or tempe/tofu may be used as a meat substitute.

Malaysians for Ubud

Fancy a book-lover's dream holiday?

This year's Ubud Writers & Readers Festival will take place from the 14-19 October and has the theme Tri Hita Karana, which refers to Balinese concept of balancing Man, Nature, God.

There are plenty of literary superstars going to be there including Vikram Seth (be still my beating heart!), Indra Sinha, John Berendt, Camilla Gibb and Alexis Wright.

Malaysians will be out in force, represented this time by Preeta Samarasan, Chiew-Siah Tei, Faisal Tehrani, Amir Muhammad, and Bernice Chauly. Sharanya Manivannan, now living in India, is also invited.

A Good Woman of China ... in Bali

In case you fancy a little literature with a Bali break in January! (Air Asia flights under RM200 one way at the moment.)

Here's more about Xinran.

Are Asian Stories Different?

Hang on! There's something else as well!

I dropped by Nury Vittachi's blog and found that after deliberately not writing about the controversy for months

because it is important that the focus goes on the writers, not on the backstage shenanigans

he was lured out to comment once more on the choice of judges for the prize:

Not only was it racially and culturally insensitive, but it raised some massive issues ...

he said. And this seemed to be the massivest:

Asian story arcs differ significantly from Western ones.* Our narrative traditions are also totally different. And modern Asian story conventions are simply not the same as classic ones, nor Western ones, nor do they trace their roots to the Greek drama form which is the bedrock of Western tale-spinning. I failed miserably to get any of the organizers to understand these issues or take them seriously.

(*My emphasis.)

Now this question intrigues me because I must say that I hadn't given it much thought until The Stars Rise in the East panel discussion at the Ubud Writers' and Readers' Festival when Xu Xi (who is incidentally one of the shortlisted authors for the Man Asian) talked about how Asian ways of telling stories differ from western ways.

Let me quote Ann Lee's article on the festival which appeared in Off the Edge, because clearly Ann was taking better notes than me!:

Xu Xi, maintains that there are Asian ways of storytelling - a climax at the end of the story is 'very western, very Greek'. She suggested, wryly, that perhaps as in the tale of Buddha, a short story should just 'mosey along, this way and that, and then one day achieve enlightenment if it happens'.

Xu Xi slipped in a very interesting example from the work of psychologist Richard Nisbett showing how groups of Asians and westerners tended to read the same news article very differently. (I wish I had the exact quote ...).

So Nury's point, I suppose, is that because Asians think differently, this is going to be reflected in the way that Asian authors write and therefore the best people to judge the writing and understand the cultural nuances are people with the same way of perceiving the world i.e. other Asians.

The influence of different writing traditions would, I suppose, have to be factored in too.

Now all this leaves me once again with more questions than answers. Would be grateful if you could help me out, dear reader, because you are likely to have a broader perspective than I have.

The Man Asian prize remember is for a novel, that most western of literary forms.

First, do Asian stories and Asian novel (particularly for us here Malay novels, Chinese novels) have a different story arc from western novels?

Would this be true also of Asian movies vs their western counterparts?

Is good storytelling the same thing in all cultures?

Are Malaysian novelists writing in Malay or in Chinese or in English more influenced by the literary traditions of those languages, or by western writing ... or indeed by other factors?

(As British novelist Patrick Gale pointed out in another session at Ubud, the dominant form of story telling now is the computer game and probably this is even truer in Asia than in the west!)

And if one of the aims of the prize is win Asian writers greater exposure and acceptance internationally, doesn't their work also have to succeed by western standards?

I've a feeling that Nury has opened up a big can of worms with this talk about story arcs and I suspect it would take a lengthy academic thesis to even begin answering the question!

Still, the debate could be very interesting!

Writing The World

A novelist writes about another novelist who is writing two novels about two other novelists, one writing novels to tell lies, the other to search for truth. In the 42 novels about 42 novelists they write, there are some novelists completely unaware of the lies they tell or deliberately telling lies or some that look for truth knowing pretty well they won’t find it or some skeptical about the truth they find. And those 47 novelists write 560 novels describing 1,585 novelists, and among those 1,585 novelists, while some novelists behave childishly even after having grown old in dozens of novels, others (some of them women) hang on to some ideals because of their Western education, and, despite marriage and family worries, become social reformers in about 60 novels, yet others rebel for reasons of their ideals or nation or selfishness and start a revolution against poverty and inequality in 920 novels, and only one novelist, leaving his home and family and traveling around the country, fights for the freedom of his nation and writes a beautiful novel about another novelist who, like himself, leaving his home and family to travel around the country, fights for the freedom of his nation, and finally gets killed. The main character of another novel about another novelist, a person from the same town as that of the dead novelist, suffers from loneliness even while stressing the need for subjectivity, forgets the very existence of the dead novelist and writes a novel about 2,088 novelists who in turn write 5,831 novels narrating the eternal plight of society’s oppressed peoples and 3,216 novels depicting the interior landscape of women. In 9,057 novels those 2,088 novelists write there appear 13,702 novelists whose 20,829 novels tell the story of only one novelist who, although he tries to write a single novel about one other novelist, fails to complete that novel, meets the other novelist and, to kill him, boils down all the novelists, including himself, numbering 13,701, 9,057, 2,088, 1,585, 47, 2, 1, and finally becomes the single novelist known as the novelist of all novelists.

I heard Christopher Merrill, Director of the The University of Iowa's International Writing Program, read this great piece at the Ubud Writers' and Readers festival back in September. It was written by Indian writer S. Diwakar, and translated by him and Merrill from the origianl Kannada.

I am actually as pleased as punch to find the text of the whole inspiring talk Merrill gave at Ubud on the Words Without Borders website. He talks about the power of bringing writers from all over the world together.

Quiz question of the day - who these writers mentioned in his essay?:

A British novelist and a Malaysian poet share a passion for puppets.

And what project came out of the friendship? The answer is actually way back on this blog. I just want to see if you are paying attention! (Okay, I'll buy the winner lunch.)

Sadly, I missed part of Merrill's talk at Ubud (which always involves making tough choices between one session and another), but his book about his spiritual journey Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain sounds very much like one I'd like to read.

The q&a at the end of the session raised some evergreen questions about the writing process.

He was asked about whether writers block actually exists and replied by saying:

Why doesn't anyone ever ask if electricians have electricians' block?

And he quoted another writer (and I didn't get down the name of the guy who said this first - sorry!) :

Any poet can write a poem on any day of the week if your standards are as low as mine.

In other words, what matters is not that you wrote something good, but that you actually wrote something!

And of course he was asked whether creative writing can be taught. You can't teach genius, he replied, but then went on to describe how even the great short story writer, Flannery O'Connor, had to learn her craft at the University of Iowa.

No-one has any doubt you can teach art, sculpture, figure-skating. So why should there be any doubt that creative writing can be taught?

Sunday Literary Fix from the Star

Also in Starmag today - a feature by Tan Karr Wei about the winners of the Apostrophe sixteen word short story competition and their Bali trip. (A shame there isn't a bit more about the actual festival apart from a passing mention. This is one of the major literary events in the region, and the Malaysian authors who attended did the country proud!)

The battle of the performing poets at Wayang Kata IV is featured in a very entertaining piece by Daphne Lee.

I do like her little diversion about the Sylvia Plath film where a poetry recital leads to some passionate table-top sex! Rest assured though, nothing happened like that the other night. You'd have to go to the Ubud Writers' Festival to find that!

(Divya, the one poet I didn't manage to get a photo of the other night, is pictured here, right. And of course, that's Priya K. to her left.)

The education section of the Star has a very nice article by Sarah Chew about some of the excellent initiatives in Malaysian schools to encourage kids to get their hands on books.

I was really pleased too, to read about how some schools are encouraging parents to get in on the act. The student-teachers I was working with earlier this year had seen parents helping in UK schools and knew what a big difference such involvement can make. And now it seems that the idea is percolating into Malaysian classrooms. Great!

Kam on Censorship

Kam Raslan's thoughts on censorship from a piece on the Ubud Writers' and Readers' Festival he wrote for his website. (Kam spoke on a panel about the topic - sadly it was one of the sessions I didn't get to attend.):

The thought struck me that, from my experience in Malaysia, censorship works as an agreement between the people and the censor. If people really didn't want censorship, then it could be deposed in a day. But the audience agree to a compact where difficult and sensitive issues will be ignored. It makes life easier. And post 9/11 western countries, especially America, have entered into that agreement. Life led in the gentle cloud of censorship is tranquil and safe because history, science, religion and race are all ignored. Instead we can focus our attention on Britney. Censorship helps us deal with the difficult complexities of the world by simplifying it.

(Pic shows meself and Kam getting huggy at the closing party of the festival.)

Some More Ubud Photos

Last year's Booker winner, Kiran Desai talking about the way the immigrant experience has shaped her work, at a panel discussion called A Stranger at Home.

Award-winning Australian novelist Adib Khan.

Muhammad Cohen with British author Patrick Gale.

The Young Ones

It was Tara June Winch (below) who started it:

I'm more of a reader, than a writer

she confessed in the Breaking the Ice panel at Ubud Writers' and Readers' festival and all the other panel members chimed in to say that they felt the same way! (Thanks goodness they are able to drag themselves away from what they're reading from time to time to pen something themselves, or where would we be?)

The panel moderated by Rosemary Sayer brought together four young, first-time writers (including Tan Twan Eng) to talk about how they got started, whether they're able to support themselves from writing yet, and to read from their work.

Tara read a piece from her first novel, Swallow the Air, and it completely blew me away, the language is so sensual. I'm not surprised that she has won several awards already, including the Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelists award and been nominated for others.

Ratih Kumala (below) is an Indonesian author and has written two novels, Tabula Rasa and Genesis and a collection of fiction Larutan Senja. She makes ends meet by writing the scripts for the Indonesian version of Sesame Street (where it's called Jalan Sesama)! This session was the first time that Ratih has read her work in English, and I thought it came across very well.

Pakistani-Australian author Azhar Abidi's novel Passarola Rising sounds intriguing and magical. Set in C18th Europe, it describes the fictional journey of a couple of Brazilian brothers aboard their highly unusual airship the Passarola (which means "great bird"). You can read more about the book, and an interview with the author on the Penguin website.

Azhar also explained how difficult it was to shake the narrow expectation that a writer born in Pakistan should limit himself to writing about the subcontinent.