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.

Writer

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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WITH THE SUPPORT OF: