Lucas Stewart's Blog, page 15

Burma Series at Hatchards Bookstore

Britain’s oldest bookshop, Hatchards, is holding a series of talks on Burma from the 19th to 21st March 2019.

The series kicks off with a panel session on ‘Surviving Dictatorship in Burma’ with writer Dr Ma Thida (Sanchaung), poet Ko Ko Thett, filmmaker Daw Khin Mar Mar Kyi and Vicky Bowman

Image Credit @ By Joao rafael BR

Northern Short Story Festival

I will be appearing at the Northern Short Story Festival in Leeds, UK on Saturday June 1st to launch Resist: Stories of Uprising along with Uschi Gatward, SJ Bradley and Jude Brown.  The anthology, out by Comma Press, is a collection of 20 stories reimagining key moments of protest throughout British history and includes my contribution on the ‘95 to ‘98 dockers dispute in Liverpool.

Image Credit @ noshosto

The DA Prize for Short Fiction – 2019 Shortlist

The excellent Comma Press have announced their shortlist for this year’s Dinesh Allirajah Prize Short Fiction.  This year the theme was on ‘Scent’, based on Dinesh’s short story collection.

I had the privilege of winning the inaugural prize last year.  To anyone thinking of entering this prize (and Comma Press have confirmed it will run again this year) winning the DA prize is worth much more than the just the prize money (though 500 pounds is nothing to grumble at).  You get the honour of be...

Why I Almost Gave Up On Sadaik

Sadaik has been running for nearly 7 years now, since before the end of pre-publication censorship in Aug 2012 and the dismantling of the PRSD in January 2013.  Every couple of years, I seem to go a bit flat, as if unsure there is any point in continuing with the site.  In 2014 I took a hiatus, mainly due to the frustration of trying to upload posts on an internet connection that kept cutting out.  When we moved to Africa I took another break, thinking I would be unable to keep up with the wr...

Penguin Random House to Open ASEAN Office

PRH is a publishing giant, with regional offices in all 6 inhabitable continents.  Asia is served by Penguin India and Penguin North Asia (my publisher) with a remit to cover China, Japan and South Korea.  It’s always been a surprise that South East Asia, home to over 600 million people and large English reading market has been often overlooked.

According to Publishing Perspectives, this will change in 2019 with the opening of a new PRH ASEAN regional office in Singapore to ‘discover and publ...

Green Maung

Myint Win Hlaing (1981) is an ethnic Rakhine writer and teacher born in Pan Ni La village, Rakhine State.  He is a leading member of an influential Rakhine literature circle organising talks and live literature events for his remote community.  He has published short stories both in Burmese in Shwe Amyutae and Yote Shin Tay Kabyar magazines and in Rakhine language in Rakhine Journal.  He writes under the pen name Green Maung.

*This is the tenth in a series of adapted profiles on writers taken...

James Hla Gyaw – Maung Yin Maung and Ma Me Ma

[image error]

James Hla Gyaw wrote himself into history with his story of ‘Maung Yin Maung and Ma Me Ma’.  Prior to its publication, literature in Myanmar was the reserve of monasteries and palaces.  ‘Jatakas’, stories based on the life of the Buddha were (and are) perennially popular, as were long-form poetic homages to Kings and Queens and dramas exploring intrigue and mystery in the courts.  Then along came James Hla Gyaw.

Often alternatively described as the first modern Myanmar novel or the first pop...

San Oo: The Rainy Season Setting

[image error]

More than once someone has remarked to me that everyone in Burma is a poet.  The last to do so was Petr Lom, the director of Burma Storybook as we walked down 40th street in Yangon.  Poetry is often claimed to be the most popular form of expression.  Poets in Myanmar themselves are careful to point out the distinction between poetry and writing, that they are not in fact writers, but poets; much in the same way that the inheritors of ethnic traditions in Myanmar see literature as being separ...

Mya Zin: The Bamboo Clapper Essays

[image error]

I’ve often struggled to reconcile the titles of Burmese books in English translation to their content.  A lot of the time I see no connection, no matter how hard I try to make it fit and just assume that in the original Burmese it makes sense.

The Bamboo Clapper Essays by Win Pe is no different.  A bamboo clapper is a musical instrument, made by slicing a length of bamboo down the shaft, stopping a few inches from the base and then slapping the two splits together.  I am unsure of what the s...

Mu Mu Winn: A Gentle Kind of Poverty

[image error]

When a country ‘opens’ up after isolation or conflict, a type of literature is usually not far behind.  From Cambodia, it’s hard to find works in English that don’t cover the Khmer Rouge years.  From Vietnam, the memoirs of those that survived are prevalent.  It has been too soon since Myanmar’s opening to foretell what will become the dominant theme.  Prison memoirs stand a good chance, Dr Ma Thida and Ma Thanegi already having published theirs.  Politics will undoubtedly loom large in some...