Wednesday 18 September 2013

Listings / book club / self-publishing


As I said in August, I am starting to run listings of literary events across Asia, excluding West and Central Asia, but extending west to east from the Indian Sub-continent to Japan, and north to south from Mongolia to the southern tip of the Indonesian archipelago.

If you do want to submit listings, I will accept them up to three months before the event takes place.  I will assume the language of the event is English, unless otherwise stated.  If you would like to have an event included please e-mail details to asianbooksblog@gmail.com.  Please make it as easy as possible for me to extract information, and follow the format below as closely as you can. The two examples are both real listings, not invented, so make a note, should you be interested in attending.


What?             Short Story Boot Camp: a series of creative writing workshops on how to create and craft short stories, led by Felix Chong and Verena Tay
When?            Sat 28/9 and Sun 29/9, 10 am – 5 pm
Where?           The Living Room, The Arts House, 1 Old Parliament Lane
Singapore 179429
Cost?               SG$ 120. Concessions apply


What?              Book reading from Kampong Spirit: Gotong Royong - Life in Potong Pasir, 1955 to 1965, by Josephine Chia
When?             Sat 21/9, 3:00 pm
Where?            Select Books, 51 Armenian St, Singapore 179939
Cost?                Free           
Booking           Not required

I am working on creating a proper listings page, until then I will post listings weekly at the bottom of more general posts.

Just a reminder that I have also launched a book club.  The first selection is Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan, published in paperback by Doubleday.  I will post my thoughts on Sunday 29th Sept, so if you’d like to read it before then, and post your own opinions that would be great.

Since self-publishing is becoming so accepted, and important to those of us living outside of, and feeling excluded from, the big centres of commercial publishing, ABB is going to provide a monthly round-up of five or six interesting looking self-published titles from around Asia. 

Alice Clark-Platts will write the round-ups.  Alice is a human rights lawyer with a passion for literature, high, low and trashy. She is the author of Warchild, a political thriller, and she is currently working on her next novel, The Weir.  In 2011, Alice founded The Singapore Writers Group, which currently has over 350 members. The Group is involved with others across the world in an exchange of ideas and information. Alice blogs on life and writing at www.mycoffeewithconnie.com, so take a look!

If you are a self-published author, and you would like to have your book considered, please e-mail asianbooksblog@gmail.com.  No children’s / young adult, erotica, self-help, religious titles, cookery, autobiography, so-called lifestyle titles, true crime or anything else Alice or I decide to take against.

The ban on erotica is not a ban on books with sex scenes, even ones where you have to flip through to find the clean bits, just an attempted ban on boring books.  All other genres of adult fiction are fine: chick lit, lad lit, sci-fi, and so on are as welcome as lit lit.  All narrative non-fiction is likewise welcome. All books should have something to do with Asia, or with Asians.

The first of Alice’s round-ups will be posted in mid October.