Festival Curator
Bernice Chauly is a writer
and poet. Born in George Town to Chinese-Punjabi teachers, she read education
and English Literature in Canada as a government scholar. For over 20 years,
she has worked extensively in the creative industries as a writer,
photographer, actor and filmmaker and has won multiple awards for her work and
her contribution to the arts. In 1998, she began organising literary events,
and in 2005, founded Readings and CeritAku, which continue to be
platforms for established and emerging writers and poets. In 2011, she was
Festival Director for the Writers Unlimited Tour Kuala Lumpur/Makassar and
invited to curate the inaugural George Town Literary Festival. She is the
author of four books, which include poetry, short fiction and the acclaimed
literary memoir Growing Up With Ghosts (2011) which won in the Reader’s
Choice Awards. In 2012, she was invited to be writer-in-residence with the Nederlands
Letterenfonds (Dutch Foundation for Literature) in Amsterdam where she
began work on a novel. She has toured and performed in literary festivals in
Suriname, the Dutch Antilles, South Africa, Indonesia, India, Thailand, Hong
Kong, Singapore and the Netherlands. She lectures in English and creative writing
at Taylor’s University in Kuala Lumpur.
Moderator
Sharon
Bakar was born in the UK but has lived and worked in Nigeria and,
for the past 28 years, in Malaysia. She
is a teacher-trainer, freelance writer, editor, literary blogger, and most
recently, independent publisher. She is the editor of an anthology of short
fiction, Collateral Damage, published
by Silverfish Books, and was one of the judges for MPH’s Short Story Competition
in 2010. She teaches creative writing, and has run her courses in partnership
with the British Council. She organizes Readings,
a monthly event for local writers, at Seksan Gallery in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur,
and is the co-editor (along with Bernice Chauly) and publisher of the anthology
Readings From Readings: New Malaysian
Writing 1 and 2.
Moderator
Rehman Rashid is a prominent writer, award-winning
journalist, commentator and author of A
Malaysian Journey (1993). Now retired after 30 years in newspaper and
magazine journalism, he continues to observe life and the world from
a shophouse in a small town in the foothills near the shared borders of
Selangor, Perak and Pahang.
Moderator
Sharaad Kuttan is a producer with BFM89.9 in Kuala Lumpur
and has worked as an activist, journalist and teacher. As a graduate student in
Singapore, he co-edited a collection of essays on cultural politics in the
city-state: Looking at Culture (1996)
and has contributed a chapter on civil society activism to a volume on the electoral
system in Malaysia – Elections and
Democracy in Malaysia (2005). His current interests include contemporary
art practice and he has written on performance art for Sentap, a local journal of visual art. He recently moderated a
discussion on ‘Arts Policy and Kuala Lumpur’ for the radio series Hear and Now
in Malaysia. He is also a member of the International Association of Art
Critics.
Moderator
Umapagan Ampikaipakan is a literary commentator, film critic, and
radio presenter. He has a column in the New Straits Times, where he ruminates
on everything from the idiosyncrasies of Malaysian politics to his unnatural
obsession with the written word. Blessed with a critic’s pen and a reader’s
enthusiasm, he is one of Malaysia’s foremost literary voices with his Well Lit
column in the New Straits Times, as well as his radio show Bookmark on the
station BFM89.9. He is also the co-host on BFM89.9’s Evening Edition drive time
show.
Moderator
Kam
Raslan is a writer and one-time
film director. He writes the weekly Talking Edge column in The Edge newspaper,
hosts the radio shows A Bit of Culture and Hear and Now in Malaysia on BFM89.9.
His first novel was the highly successful, Confessions
of an Old Boy (2007). He is
presently writing a non-fiction book on Malaysian histories as well as a sequel
to the Dato' Hamid memoirs.
Moderator
Amir Muhammad is a Malaysian writer, publisher and occasional moviemaker.
He was born in Kuala Lumpur and started writing for the print media at the age
of 14. In 2000, he wrote and directed Malaysia's first DV feature, Lips to Lips. His films have been
screened internationally, including the Sundance Film Festival
and the Berlin International Film
Festival. Two of his films, Apa Khabar Orang Kampung and The Last
Communist have been banned in Malaysia. A retrospective of his
work was screened at the 2008 Pesaro Film Festival, Italy. He formed
Matahari Books in 2007 to publish creative non-fiction, and Fixi in
2011 for Malay pulp fiction. He has written Rojak,
Yasmin Ahmad's Films and 120 Malay Movies.
In 2012 he also produced Kopi, an anthology of short films.
Moderator
Jasmine
Low
is a marketing communications consultant who writes short stories and hosts
community arts events. Born in Penang in 1970, she grew up in Kuala Lumpur and
at 17, left for Australia to read economics at Sydney University. After a decade
of living overseas, she returned to Kuala Lumpur in 2002 to pursue her
entrepreneurial dreams. Jasmine has dedicated her life’s work to empowering
youth using arts and music. She is the Festival Director of FEYST – a digital
lifestyle and independent music festival, which has seen 45 youngsters
represent Malaysia at international festivals around the world. She was
inducted to the Voize Indie Music Awards Hall of Fame in 2010 for her
contribution to the indie music industry.
Shivani Sivagurunathan is a fiction writer and poet. Born in Kuala Lumpur and raised in
Port Dickson, she spent eight years in the UK where she studied comparative literature.
She now lives in Malaysia and lectures at University Putra Malaysia. Her short
story collection Wildlife on Coal Island,
published by UPM Press, came out in August 2011 and was later republished by
HarperCollins in 2012. Her poetry chapbook, Chiaroscuro,
and her first collection of poetry, Diorama
is due for release in 2012 - both published by Bedouin Books. Her short stories
and poems have appeared in various international journals including Agenda, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, The
Wolf and Flash. She is currently
editing her recently completed novel.
Writer
Ng Yi-Sheng is a poet, playwright, journalist, critic,
fiction writer and LGBT activist. He is the youngest-ever recipient of the
Singapore Literature Prize, which he won for his poetry collection, last boy. He teaches creative writing at
Nanyang Technological University and co-organises the monthly,
multidisciplinary event SPORE Art Salon. His recent projects include co-editing
GASPP: A Gay Anthology of Singapore
Poetry and Prose, a translation of Wong Woon Wah's poetic memoir The New Village, and a show by the new
performance poetry collection the Party Action People.
Writer
Omar Musa is
a rapper and poet from Queanbeyan, Australia. Born in 1984 of Malaysian-Australian
heritage, he has won numerous awards for poetry and music, which include the
Australian Poetry Slam (2008) and the Indian Ocean Poetry Slam (2010). The Clocks (2009) is his first
collection of poems and he has recorded three hip-hop albums in the USA. A
member of the international hip-hop group MoneyKat, he has toured Asia, Europe
and Australia and was tour support for the legendary Gil Scott-Heron in Germany
in 2009. He has been featured in literary festivals in Ubud, Singapore, Byron
Bay, Melbourne, Sydney, Jaipur, Galle, Beijing and The Hague. His first novel will
be published in 2013 by Penguin Australia.
Writer
Nii Ayikwei Parkes is a Ghanaian editor, socio-cultural commentator, poet
and author of the acclaimed Tail of the
Blue Bird (Random House), which
was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize and translated into Dutch and
German. A 2007 recipient of Ghana's national ACRAG award for poetry and
literary advocacy, he has held visiting positions at the University of
Southampton, California State University and lectures internationally. He runs the African Writers’ Evening series at
the Southbank Centre, London and was a jury member for the 2012 Commonwealth
Prize. His latest collection of poetry is The Makings of You and he is completing
a book of short stories, The City Will
Love You for Random House, as well as two projects for stage. He lives in
Accra and London.
Nii Ayikwei Parkes and the George Town Literary Festival 2012 is supported by the British
Council
Writer
Dina Zaman is currently an API (Asian Public Intellectual)
Senior Fellow and she is conducting research for her book, Holy Men, Holy Women, an extension of her column with the online
journal The Malaysian Insider. She has a keen interest in socio-religious
issues and hopes to work on inter-faith dialogues and matters in the future.
Her first non-fiction book, I Am Muslim,
was a bestseller, and her short story collection, King of The Sea was published by Silverfish Books this year. She
has worked as a columnist in many English-language media and in public relations
for over 18 years. In 1998, she was a British High Commissioner
Chevening Award scholar, and graduated with an MA in creative writing from the
University of Lancaster.
Writer
Alfian Sa’at is the Resident Playwright
of W!LD RICE in Singapore. His plays have been translated into German,
Swedish and Danish, and they have been read and performed in Singapore, Kuala
Lumpur, London, Berlin, Hamburg, Zurich, Munich, Melbourne, Copenhagen and
Stockholm. He has been nominated for the Life! Theatre Awards for Best Original
Script seven times, and has received the award twice. He was the winner of the
Golden Point Award for Poetry and the National Arts Council Singapore Young
Artist Award for Literature in 2001. His other works include Collected Plays One and Two, the poetry collections One
Fierce Hour and A History of Amnesia, and the short story
collection Corridor. His
most recent short fiction collection, Malay
Sketches, was published in March 2012.
Writer
Linda Christanty is
an Indonesian writer, activist and journalist. Her latest non-fiction book
Jangan Tulis Kami Teroris, (Don’t Write Us Down As Terrorists) examines
religious, political and gender issues in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. She has been an activist for over 23 years and spent several years in
conflict-ridden Aceh while promoting discourse on ways to transform conflict
via peace and human rights. She has won Indonesia’s top literary award, the
Khatulistiwa Literary Award twice - in 2004 for Mario Pinto’s Flying Horse and in 2010 for Rahasia Selma. In 2012, she was a nominee for the N-Peace Awards,
Role Models for Peace, an award given to champions of peace in the region.
Writer
David Van Reybrouck was
born in Bruges in 1971. He read archaeology and philosophy at the universities
of Leuven and Cambridge and holds a doctorate from Leiden. He was a visiting
scholar in Barcelona and Paris, postdoctoral research fellow in Leuven and most
recently, Cleveringa Professor in Leiden. His first book De
plaag (The
Plague, 2001) is set in post-apartheid South Africa and won several prizes. He
is the founder of the Brussels Poetry Collective and in 2009, devised The
European Constitution In Verse, which involved fifty-two poets from all
over Europe. In 2010, he published the acclaimed Congo. Een geschiedenis (Congo: A History), an ambitious and absorbing history of Africa's most devastated
country. Congo has been awarded the most prestigious prizes in Dutch letters:
the AKO-Literatuurprijs (AKO Literature prize), the Libris Geschiedenis Prijs
(Libris History prize) and the Jan Greshoffprijs. He is one of Belgium’s leading
political commentators.
Writer
A. Samad Said was born in
Melaka in 1935. He studied in Singapore during and after WW II and graduated
with Senior Cambridge Certificate in 1956. He worked as
a clerk at the Singapore General Hospital for six months and then moved to
Kuala Lumpur to become a writer. He joined the national dailies, Fikiran Rakyat,
Berita Harian and The New Straits
Times and left journalism after three decades to focus on writing. One
of the most significant writers in Bahasa Malaysia, he is renowned for his
poetry, novels, short stories, essays and plays. His works include Salina,
Hujan Pagi, Cinta Fansuri, Al-Amin, Warkah Eropah and Lantai
T. Pinkie. He received the Southeast Asia Write (SEA) Award in 1979, the Anugerah Sasterawan
Negara (National Laureate) in 1985 and Sasterawan Nusantara (Laureate of
the Archipelago) in 1999. Currently, he is co-chairman for the Malaysian
electoral reform movement Bersih.
Writer
Reggie Baay was born in Leiden in 1955 and has won much praise with his books on
the njai; Indonesian women who were housekeepers and concubines during
the period of the Dutch East Indies. Baay’s writings, himself a njai grandchild,
is seen as breaking a taboo and his book De Njai; Het concubinaat in
Nederlands-Indië (The Njai; Concubinage in the Dutch East Indies, 2008) was
reviewed by the Dutch press as ‘an indispensable book on our colonial past. His
other books, De ogen van Solo (Solo’s Eyes, 2005), Portret van een oermoeder (Portrait
of a Primordial Mother, 2010)
and Gebleekte ziel (Bleached Soul, 2012), which delve into the themes of uprootedness and lost
identity, have made him one of the most influential voices on post-colonial
narrative in the Netherlands.
Writer
Judith Uyterlinde is a writer, journalist, festival programmer
and literary talk show host. She began her career as a translator and worked
for many years as an editor and publisher for noted Dutch literary publishing
houses De Bezige Bij and Meulenhoff. Her book The Baby Void – My Quest for
Motherhood (2001) was an international bestseller and was translated into
20 languages. Her second book, The Woman Who Says She Is My Mother (2010),
an acclaimed autobiographical and historical family narrative, is set against
the Jewish experience of WW II. She
is currently a jury member for the Anton Wachter Prize and is one of the
festival curators for Writers Unlimited, the International Literary Festival of
The Hague, Netherlands. She is currently an acquiring editor of foreign fiction
for the Dutch publisher Nijgh en Van Ditmar.
Writer
Tan Twan Eng is a Malaysian author born in
Penang in 1972. His debut novel, The Gift of Rain, was longlisted for the
Man Booker Prize in 2007. His second novel, The
Garden of Evening Mists is shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012,
a first for any Malaysian author. He has a first-dan ranking in aikido. He has spoken at various
literary festivals, including the Singapore Writers' Festival, the Ubud
Writers' Festival in Bali, The Asia Man Booker Festival in Hong Kong, the
Shanghai Literary Festival, the Perth International Writers' Festival, the
Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne, Australia, the Franschhoek Literary Festival
in South Africa and the Galle Literary Festival in Sri Lanka.
Musician
Guitarist-composer
Az Samad has appeared on sixteen CDs, and worked with Grammy winners, Flaco
Jiménez and Max Baca, drummer Bernie Dresel, singer-songwriters Tara Linda and
Reza Salleh, guitarists John Stowell, Stuart Ryan, and Teja Gerken,
Cumbia-Dub band Candelaria and string jazz ensemble JazzMine. He has been on
the faculty of Berklee College of Music's Summer Guitar Sessions and has
taught at Wesleyan University in Middletown and The Freight & Salvage
in Berkeley. In 2012, he toured Europe with Tara Linda and The Tortilla Western
Trio at the Folk Segovia Festival and Töpferei Niehenke, Hasbergen. The
Amsterdam Recordings - his first solo electric fingerstyle album - was recorded
during the tour.
Musician
Isaac
Entry has been a regular feature
in KL’s live music scene with his easy blend of reggae, folk and blues. In 2010,
in collaboration with No Black Tie, KL he released his first album Isaac Entry Live at No Black Tie and in
Nov 2011, backed by a string quartet and a horn section comprising members of
the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, he performed at the Dewan Philharmonic
Kuala Lumpur. His song Happiness from the Live
at No Black Tie album currently features on Air Asia’s segment on George
Town on their Travel 3Sixty website. He divides his time between Sydney and
Kuala Lumpur.
Musician
Jerome Kugan is a writer, LGBT activist
and musician. Born in 1975 in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, he began writing poetry at
14 and won a scholarship at 18 to study writing at the University of Canberra. In
Australia, Jerome started performing poetry, learning the guitar, writing songs and
playing in an electro-synth punk band. Upon graduating, he moved to Kuala
Lumpur to work as an editor, writer and researcher. Jerome's works of poetry
and fiction has been featured in several journals and anthologies. In
2008, he released his debut album Songs
For A Shado and in 2009, he co-edited
Body 2 Body, an anthology of queer
writing from Malaysia.
Musician
Mei Chern is an experimental psychologist by training who works in
the financial services sector by day, and writes songs and articles by night.
Her songs on social justice have been used in award winning documentaries. She performed
at The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival in 2008, an international feminist music
festival in the USA, where she also released her self-titled CD.
Book Launch
Ann Lee was born in Tawau, Sabah, and
began writing for theatre when she joined the Royal Court Young Peoples Theatre
in London, while studying for a film degree. Selected for a yearlong workshop with Hanif Kureishi, she then returned to Malaysia in 1987 and wrote her first play,
Happy Families. Her plays are published in Sex, Stage and State –
Kuali Works Plays (2011), first launched at the Ubud Writers and Readers
Festival’s last year. Her work has been performed in Jakarta and Lampung, Perth,
Tokyo and New York and her most recent play Tarap Man, won a Boh
Cameronian Award for Best Original Script in 2007.
Sex, Stage + State: Kuali Works Plays by Ann Lee
Book Launch by Amir Muhammad
Readings from Readings 2 - New Writing from Malaysia, Singapore and Beyond
Edited by Bernice Chauly and Sharon Bakar
Lecture
Dr John Robertson comes from a naval background and joined the Royal Navy as a medical cadet. He graduated from Edinburgh University in 1964 going on to serve a further 6 years as a surgeon with the Royal Navy. After returning to civilian life he specialised in Psychiatry working in academic departments of several London teaching hospitals. He became a Subdean of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 1997 with responsibility for post-graduate education. He retired in 2002 and spends the winter months in Penang. He is married with two sons. His book The Battle Of Penang was published in early 2012.
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