Category: Talks and Events

6 – 12 March 2023. When I took on the role of festival manager at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival in September 2022, little did I realise what an enriching, yet challenging life experience it would be.

In six fast and furious short months, our small team – working always in collaboration with a vast network of similarly-minded book lovers and readers – pulled together a literary extravaganza for the first fully in-person literary festival in Hong Kong since the pandemic started. The stars were fully aligned as we played host to literary luminaries, children’s authors, historians, journalists, essayists, poets and illustrators: Shehan Karunatilaka, Emily St John Mandel, Pico Iyer, Dung Kai Cheung, Wong Yi, Jonathan Kaufman, Candy Gourlay, David A. Robertson, Christopher Cheng and Petr Horacek, to name but a few. Our ambitious programme unfolded on the same week as the Young Readers Festival, making it a literary celebration to remember for everyone involved: speakers, moderators, sponsors, partners, volunteers and of course, our wonderful audiences. Highlights included moderating two sessions (one with Pico Iyer, and another with Pico, Emily St John Mandel and Jim Hildebrandt) as family and friends sat in the audience, and working with the most tenacious, committed and passionate team of book lovers on the planet.

1 March 2023. I had the pleasure of being part of a panel moderated by Dr Anitha Devi Pillai with fellow author Babitha Justin and generously hosted by the National Reading Movement of Singapore about our short stories that appear in the teen anthology, Tapestry of Colours, Vol. 1 (published by Marshall Cavendish). Grateful for the opportunity to talk about a very personal incident during my year-long exchange in Tokyo, Japan over 30 years ago, and to Dr Anitha Devi Pillai for giving my voice a space in her wonderful anthology. Click here to watch the panel discussion in its entirety.

2 – 5 February 2023. I was invited to attend the Global Association of Literary Festivals’ conference and Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai, UAE as the representative from the Hong Kong International Literary Festival. It was an eye-opening experience, a wonderful opportunity to learn from an incredible cast of experienced, passionate and dedicated festival directors from all over the world. I was also able to meet and listen to some of my favourite authors and poets in the flesh!

12 November 2022. Following on from a reading in KL on 29 October 2022 organised by Sharon Bakar of Readings KL, I had the privilege of being in conversation with Malaysian literary novelist, Preeta Samarasan at an event in our hometown of Ipoh, generously hosted by Peter Bucher and The Sharpened Word, a local literary organization. Moderated by Aida Nazeri and Dr. Paul GnanaSelvam, our conversation took place in a gorgeously restored heritage building on 22 Hale Street. I revisited my prose poem, Life We Can No Longer See, first published by online literary journal, Cha in 2019 while Preeta shared her latest riveting work, Tale of the Dreamer’s Son, published by World Editions in 2022.

The conversation was particularly memorable as it was attended by our respective parents, our secondary school English teacher, and was our first literary appearance in our beloved childhood town. The local press teaser can be found here.

7 September 2022. I am so pleased to announce that I am now represented by Karly Dizon of Fuse Literary! I am looking forward to working with Karly on my creative works. Click here for more details.

1 July 2022. SCBWI announced the results of the Ann Whitford Paul – Writer’s Digest Manuscript Award 2022 for the most promising picture book writers and my unpublished picture book manuscript, The Magic in Ming’s Hands, received an honorable mention – out of nearly 900 submissions – from the respected picture book doyenne herself! The announcement, together with a brief description of my manuscript, as well as those of the winners, can be found here.

12 May 2022. The results of the annual UK WriteMentor Novel and Picture Book Awards for unagented and unpublished writers were announced in a live ceremony. Imagine the shock when judges Clare Wallace and Lydia Silver chose – out of over 1,000 entries – my picture book text, The Magic in Ming’s Hands and Aoife Doyle’s novel, The Music Weaver’s Call as the winners! I feel such immense gratitude to Stuart White, the founder of WriteMentor, and his team as well as the kidlit writerly community for inspiring, encouraging and supporting kidlit creators everywhere. The replay of the awards ceremony can be seen on YouTube here. It was worth staying up until 2 a.m. for!

7 March 2022. The 11th annual Hong Kong Young Readers Festival 2022 kicked off with an international and local author line-up featuring admired luminaries such as Michael Morpurgo, Malinda Lo, Elena Favilli and Christina Soontornvat. I was honoured to be included on the roster for the first time and enjoyed sharing one of my author talks via Zoom, “What You Can Do With Your Phone – Make Good Art.” Details of the festival can be found here.

20 January 2022. We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) announced their selection of 17 aspiring writers for their year-long 2022 Mentorship Program and I found out I’d been chosen by critically-acclaimed children’s author, Cindy Baldwin, to be her middle-grade mentee. To say that I was overjoyed is a little bit of an understatement! I am looking forward to displaying my lovely WNDB badge (below) and most of all, to working with my mentor to bring out the best in the middle-grade manuscript that I have been working on since 2020.

WNDB is an American “non-profit and a grassroots organization of children’s book lovers that advocates essential changes in the publishing industry to produce and promote literature that reflects and honors the lives of all young people.” The full press release can be found here.