What does it mean to understand reading as a form of encounter?
As part of his Jalan Besar Writing Residency, poet and essayist Lawrence Ypil chose to lead an online Southeast Asian reading group that revisited classic and contemporary fiction in English from the Philippines. Comprising of members Aditi Shivaramakrishnan, Ann Ang, Cheryl Julia Lee, Danny Yatim, Gautam Joseph, Lily Jamaludin, Ng Yi-sheng and Siddharta Perez, Lawrence and the reading group explored intersections of history, form, and the power of place, both real and imagined, distant and near.
In this fourth edition of NEW WORKS 2020, Lawrence and the reading group will share excerpts from the texts and talk about their experiences and responses to the stories. Watch them riff off, wax lyrical, call out, re-write, pay tribute and transform in this reading of a reading of a reading — its own kind of writing.
A Q&A segment will follow the presentation.
There will be no entry fee for this edition of NEW WORKS. We do however encourage you to make a donation to Sing Lit Station (via giving.sg: https://www.giving.sg/web/singlit-station). Every dollar counts!
Lawrence Lacambra Ypil is a poet and essayist and is the recipient of the prestigious Aning Dangal award in 2019. His latest book, The Experiment of the Tropics, was the co-winner of the inaugural Gaudy Boy Poetry Book prize. His forthcoming book is Ang Pagkadiskubre sa Balak (The Discovery of Poetry), a translation of his first book of poems, The Highest Hiding Place.
Ypil received an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa and an MFA in poetry from Washington University in St. Louis on a Fulbright Scholarship. He currently teaches creative writing at Yale-NUS College.
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Our PH Lit reading group comprises of the following members:
– Ann Ang is a PhD candidate in postcolonial and world literature at the University of Oxford. She works on Anglophone writing from South Asia and Southeast Asia, and is also the author of Bang My Car (Math Paper Press, 2012).
– Aditi Shivaramakrishnan works as an arts manager, freelance editor and occasional writer.
– Cheryl Julia Lee is an Assistant Professor with the English department at NTU. Her poetry collection, We Were Always Eating Expired Things, was published in 2014 and nominated for the Singapore Literature Prize. She is also currently the critical editor of prose.sg.
– Danny Yatim is an adjunct lecturer in psychology at Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia and a writing instructor at BNDL Learning Studio.
– Gautam Joseph is a graduate student at NUS studying narratives of industrialisation and displacement from around the Indian Ocean through the experiences of two South Asian language- diasporas.
– Lily Jamaludin (bio pending)
– Ng Yi-Sheng is a poet, fictionist and researcher, author of Lion City and A Book of Hims.
– Siddharta Perez (they/she) is a curator who cultivates a research direction on forms of personal agency within legacies we inherit from national history and vernacular culture. They are currently affiliated with the NUS Museum.
VENUE: Sing Lit Station (Facebook Live)
LINK: www.facebook.com/singlitstation
EVENT WEBSITE: Facebook, Sing Lit Station
DATE AND TIME
26 Aug 2020, 8pm–9.15pm