Lion City Lit: Quarterly Literary Review Singapore

Asian Books Blog is based in Singapore. Lion City Lit explores in-depth what’s going on in the City-State, lit-wise. Here Lucía Damacela continues her occasional series of conversations with founders and editors of Singapore-based online literary magazines. Today, the focus is on the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, (QLRS), the longest- running online literary magazine in the country.

500 words from Quincy Carroll

500 words from...is a series of guest posts from authors writing about Asia, or published by Asia-based, or Asia-focused, publishing houses, in which they talk about their latest books. Quincy Carroll is a writer from Massachusetts. After graduating from college in 2007, he moved to Hunan, China, for three years. He currently works at a school in Oakland, California. He published his debut novel Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside through Inkshares, a crowd-funding platform.  Here he talks about how crowd-funding got his novel off the ground.

500 words from Jeffrey Wasserstrom

500 words from...is a series of guest posts from authors writing about Asia, or published by Asia-based, or Asia-focused, publishing houses, in which they talk about their latest books. Jeffrey Wasserstrom is an American historian of modern China who teaches at the University of California, Irvine. He edited a fantastic new reference book, the Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China. Here he talks about selecting the illustrations.

Classics corner: A Pail of Oysters, by Vern Sneider

Asian Books Blog generally covers new books, but in this new series, classics corner, guest writers will introduce older titles you may like to read. Jonathan Benda kicks off the series by discussing A Pail of Oysters, by Vern Sneider

A day in the life of Michael Cannings

A day in the life of…is an occasional series in which people working in the publishing industry talk about their typical working day. Here, Michael Cannings, one of the founders of Camphor Press, a British-Taiwanese publishing house specialising in books about East Asia, in particular Taiwan, explains there is in fact no typical working day in his life…

Indie Spotlight: Marco Lobo

Indie Spotlight is Siobhan Daiko’s monthly column on self-publishing. This month she talks to indie author Marco Lobo.

Lion City Lit: Q & A with Eric Tinsay Valles,

Asian Books Blog is based in Singapore. Our regular column, Lion City Lit, explores in-depth what's happening in the City-State lit-wise. Here, Elissa Viornery interviews Eric Tinsay Valles, Festival Director of the National Poetry Festival (NPF). This will run from July 29 to 31 at the National Museum, Lasalle College of the Arts, and other venues. 

Guest post: Alec Ash

Beijing-based Alec Ash has just published Wish Lanterns: Young Lives in New China (Picador) a vivid account of young people in China – people born after Mao, with no memory of Tiananmen – seen through the lens of six millennials’ lives. Dahai is a military child and netizen; Fred is a daughter of the Party. Lucifer is an aspiring superstar; Snail a country migrant addicted to online games. Xiaoxiao is a hipster from the freezing north; Mia a rebel from Xinjiang in the far west. They are the offspring of the one-child policy, and they face fierce competition to succeed: pressure starts young; their road isn't easy. Through their stories, Wish Lanterns shows with empathy and insight the challenges and dreams that will define China's future – but at the same time their stories are those of young people all over the world. They are moving out of home, starting careers, falling in love...

Q & A: Xu Xi

Xu Xi 許素細  is the author of ten books, most recently the novels That Man In Our Lives (C&R Press, September 2016) and Habit of a Foreign Sky (Haven Books, 2010), a finalist for the Man Asian Literary Prize; the story collection Access Thirteen Tales (Signal 8 Press, 2011).  Forthcoming books include Interruptions (Hong Kong University Museum & Art Gallery, September, 2016), a collaborative ekphrastic essay collection in conversation with photography by David Clarke; a memoir Elegy for HK (Penguin China/Australia, 2017) and Insignificance: Stories of Hong Kong (Signal 8 Press, 2018).  She has also edited four anthologies of Hong Kong writing in English.  Since 2002, she has taught for low-residency MFA programs, including at Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Montpelier where she was elected and served as faculty chair, and at City University of Hong Kong where she was appointed Writer-in-Residence and founded and directed Asia’s first low-residency MFA.  From January to May, 2016, she was Distinguished Visiting Writer-in-Residence at Arizona State University’s Virginia G. Piper Center of Creative Writing.  She is also co-founder, with author Robin Hemley, of Authors At Large, offering international writing retreats and workshops.  A Chinese-Indonesian Hong Kong permanent resident and U.S. citizen, she currently lives between New York and Hong Kong.

Lion City lit notes: June 25 launch of Tales of Two Cities

Asian Books Blog is based in Singapore. Our regular column Lion City Lit explores in-depth what’s going on in the City-State, lit-wise. Lion City lit notes provide quick updates between columns. By Lucia Damacela

June 25: Launch of Tales of Two Cities: Singapore and Hong Kong 

Tales of Two Cities is an anthology that comprises twenty three short stories in which writers from The Singapore Writers Group and the Hong Kong Writers Circle introduce their respective cities to the readers. Told from a variety of unexpected angles, the stories are grouped by theme: the changing city; the historical city; the mystical city; the capricious city. Published by Ethos Books, Tales of Two Cities will be launched at Kinokuniya (Ngee Ann City, Orchard Road) on Saturday June 25, from 4 to 5. A review of the book was previously published in this blog. Authors from The Singapore Writers Group will read excerpts and answer questions about their stories and about the process of putting the collection together. There will be a lucky draw and authors will sign copies of the book.This event is open to the public. Admission is free.

Bookish Asia / John Grant Ross

Bookish Asia is a wonderful site I’ve recently discovered; it features book reviews and author interviews focussing on books about East Asia categorised by country, or region. Here one of the founders, John Grant Ross, provides a profile of the site.

The Sunday Post: suspended over summer

The Sunday Post will be suspended from now until mid Sept as I'm travelling quite a lot over the summer, and while I'm flitting here and there I'm sure I'll only be able to manage 1 post per week. New posts will generally go up each Thursday. Thanks for reading Asian Books Blog. 

Q & A: Lisa Beazley

Lisa Beazley is a Singapore-based expat who has just brought out her first novel, Keep Me Posted. The protagonist, Cassie, is close to her sister, Sid. Cassie has a great husband, but for much of the novel she fails to realise it. She lives in New York. Meanwhile Sid has a horrible husband, and she fairly quickly realises it.  She lives in Singapore. The sisters share all their secrets in traditional, pen-and-paper letters. But Cassie scans them, and stores them online. Alas, she gets her privacy settings wrong, and so anybody can view them.  Private letters as public property? All hell breaks loose…

So: over to Lisa …

Lion City Lit: Swag

Asian Books Blog is based in Singapore. Our regular column Lion City Lit explores in-depth what’s going on in the City-State, lit-wise. Here Lucía Damacela continues her series investigating Singapore online literary magazines by highlighting new kid on the block, Swag.

The Sunday Post

A rojak* of items that caught my eye this week…

Indie Spotlight: email lists

Indie Spotlight is Siobhan Daiko’s monthly column on self-publishing. This month she advises indie authors on the importance of maintaining an email list.

Lion City Lit: Marion Kleinschmidt and Coill.net

Asian Books Blog is based in Singapore. Our regular column Lion City Lit explores in-depth what’s going on in the City-State, lit-wise. Here Raelee Chapman talks to Marion Kleinschmidt.

Marion a native of Bavaria, but now dividing her time between the USA and Singapore, is the founder  of Coill.net  which provides dynamic, bootcamp-style online courses to help writers of all levels to lift their game. She here discusses her upcoming Singapore-based hands-on writing retreat, and the writing scene in Singapore in general. Marion has worked for the last 12 years as freelance copywriter, editor, translator and creative writing coach. A prolific member of Singapore Writers Group, she has published short fiction in Germany and Singapore. She started to run highly successful writing retreats in Bintan and Batam last year. 

The Sunday Post

A rojak* of items that caught my eye this week…

500 words from Brian Stoddart

500 words from...is a series of guest posts from authors writing about Asia, or published by Asia-based, or Asia-focused, publishing houses, in which they talk about their latest books. Here Brian Stoddart, an Australian academic who worked in Malaysia in the 1990s, talks about A Straits Settlement the latest in his Superintendent Le Fanu series of crime novels, set in the colonial-era of the 1920s, and published by Hong Kong based Crime Wave Press.

A Straits Settlement, the third book in the series, following A Madras Miasma and The Pallampur Predicament, both set in south India, sees Superintendent Le Fanu promoted to Inspector-General of Police, and broadens his geographical horizons across the Bay of Bengal into the British-controlled Straits Settlements, where for the first time he encounters Chinese and Malay cultures. As soon as he arrives he becomes entangled with Chinese secret societies and the British colonial intelligence services. Not to mention the mysterious Chinese woman who causes him to wonder about the British imperial future.

So, over to Brian…

The Sunday Post / Imprint Cover

The Sunday Post is suspended this week, but here is the cover of Imprint, the annual anthology from Hong Kong WiPS - see the previous post for details!