Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 by HKILF

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015

香港國際文學節

26 October - 8 November

Jabari Asim

Monica Cantieni

Susan Choi

Margaret Drabble

AC Grayling

Lev Grossman

Ken Hom

Luke Kennard

Benjamin Law

Mike Meyer

Haresh Sharma

Anna Smaill

Jeffery Wasserstrom

Rebecca Swift

PP Wong

Xu Zechen

Photo Credit: Jabari Asim (Shef Reynolds II), Monica Cantieni (Manuel Fischer, FRESHPIXEL), Susan Choi (Adrian Kinloch), Margaret Drabble (Ruth Corney), AC Grayling (Rugby School), Lev Grossman (Mathieu Bourgois), Haresh Sharma (The Necessary Stage), Anna Smaill (Natalie Graham), Jeffrey Wasserstrom (Gina Bock), PP Wong (Guo Sheng)

Welcome to the Hong Kong International Literary Festival. Now in its fifteenth year, the Hong Kong International Literary Festival continues to present celebrated writers and discuss compelling ideas. Dame Margaret Drabble, Professor A. C. Grayling, and over thirty novelists, poets, historians, scholars, journalists and playwrights from across the world will converge in Hong Kong to participate in more than thirty-five events over eight days, to inspire, stir and excite. Short form literature continues to be at the forefront of Hong Kong’s literary landscape. Perhaps we can attribute this to the transitory and dynamic nature of the city: do Hong Kong-ers favour short literary fixes that fit easily around their busy lifestyles? This year, we pay particular attention to short works, in the form of fiction, essays, poetry and journalism. We are thrilled to have renowned philosopher Professor A. C. Grayling join us to talk about his new collection of essays, The Challenge of Things. Writers from the UK, America, China and Hong Kong, amongst others, assemble for lively and insightful discussions as part of our ‘Short Works, Big Ideas’ events. This year we present some of the world’s finest women writers. What makes their vision unique, their stories memorable and their messages universal? Grasp the opportunity to listen to Dame Margaret Drabble, Susan Choi, PP Wong, Monica Catieni, Anna Smaill and others. You are invited to reflect on issues that regularly fill the pages of newspapers worldwide: race, identity and immigration. We feature speakers who have talked widely about discrimination, and we are proud to offer a platform for them to continue to do so. Jabari Asim lends his perspective to black voices and Benjamin Law explores attitudes towards homosexuality across Asia. Join us as we look at cultural issues closer to home and offer insights in to the urbanization of China with fascinating talks from Mike Meyer and David Bandurski. We are committed to supporting the Hong Kong writing scene and are pleased to launch ‘Our Future Voices’ this year, an initiative that invites creative writing students to unite and share their work. Be a part of our celebration as we continue to encourage our emerging talent and enjoy the best of spoken word and performance poetry with budding writers from HKU, CUHK, HKBU, CityU and HKIEd. We are also dedicated to providing young people with the unique opportunity to meet and hear some of today’s most distinguished writers speak. This year, with the continued support of our Festivalgoers and sponsors, we aim to reach more secondary schools through our Schools Programme. Our ambition is to build on our ever growing number of participating schools every year. Please help us do this by becoming a Festival Supporter. Share the joys of reading, writing, learning and debating with us. Discover something new and immerse yourself in the flourishing literary landscape of Hong Kong. We look forward to the next fifteen years!

Christine Van

Winnie Ng

Co-chairs Hong Kong International Literary Festival Limited

Booking Information

Public ticketing starts September 10, 2015. Visit www.hkilf.eventbrite.hk to buy tickets. A limited number of concessionary tickets are available for full-time students on a first-come, first-served basis. Full-time students are entitled to a discount of 50%. Please show your Student ID card on entry to the event. For any enquiries, please contact us on (852) 2877 9770 or email us at info@festival.org.hk.

Please help us make our events successful. All events are free-seating, although a small number of seats may be reserved for special guests. Please arrive on time, as late admissions are disruptive to speakers and audience. You may not be admitted after the beginning of an event; in that case, no refund will be given. The Hong Kong International Literary Festival Limited reserves the right to photograph and record video of all events and to make those photographs and videos available on our website. Any photography or video recording by audience members during the events is not permitted. Please also note that the event details contained in this brochure are subject to change, but we strive to keep variations to a minimum. We look forward to seeing you at the Festival!

| BOOKING INFORMATION

Contents

Festival at a Glance ............................................................................p4 Event Details ......................................................................................p10 Participant Information ......................................................................p28 Schools Programme...............................................................................p45 Venues ...............................................................................................p46 About Us ............................................................................................p48 Acknowledgments ..............................................................................p49

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 |

Festival at a Glance

26 / 10 MON

Festival Warm Up: Cooking with Ken Hom 7:30PM | $1000 | 2 hours Easy123 Dining and Cooking Studio Tsim Sha Tsui Event includes food sampling and wine »p.10

31 / 10 SAT

Xu Zechen: Running Through Beijing

Anna Smaill: The Chimes

11:00AM | $220 | 1.5 hours Level 6, KEE Club

1:00PM | $420 | 2 hours Level 7, KEE Club

Event includes free-flow tea or coffee »p.10

Event includes lunch and tea »p.11

Festival Symposium:

Short Works, Big Ideas Part I

Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East with Benjamin Law

3:30PM | FREE | 1 hour Upstairs, The Fringe Club

3:30PM | $300 | 1.5 hours Level 6, KEE Club

»p.11

Event includes a glass of wine »p.11

Our Future Voices

Festival Symposium:

4:45PM | $100 | 1 hour 15 mins Upstairs, The Fringe Club

Short Works, Big Ideas Part II

»p.12

7:00PM | FREE | 1.5 hours Upstairs, The Fringe Club »p.12

Jabari Asim: The N Word 9:00PM | $180 | 1.5 hours Upstairs, The Fringe Club »p.12

| FESTIVAL AT A GLANCE

1 / 11 SUN

Philosophy

Fantasy

Race & Identity

Feminism & Sexuality

Asia, China, Hong Kong

Poetry & Short Works

Culture and Coding 12:00PM | $250 | 1.5 hours Gordon King Lecture Theatre, Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences »p.13

The Strange and the Surreal: Experimenting in Fiction 2:30PM | $150 | 1.5 hours Gordon King Lecture Theatre, Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences »p.13

A. C. Grayling on Happiness

The Family Law

3:00PM | $250 | 1.5 hours Hong Kong Jockey Club Lecture Theatre, Olympic House, Causeway Bay

4:30PM | $500 | 2 hours Official Residence of ConsulGeneral of Australia, Deep Water Bay

»p.14

Event includes drinks and canapés »p.14

In Conversation with Luke Kennard

Black Stories Matter

5:00PM | $150 | 1.5 hours Gordon King Lecture Theatre, Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences

7:00PM | $150 | 1.5 hours Gordon King Lecture Theatre, Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences »p.15

»p.14

2/ 11 MON

Leftover Women: Leta Hong Fincher

A. C. Grayling: The Challenge of Things

6:30PM | $135 | 1 hour Upstairs, The Fringe Club

7:00PM | $250 | 1.5 hours Wang Gungwu Theatre Graduate House, HKU

»p.15

»p.16

Imagination Beyond Genre 8:00PM | $135 | 1 hour Upstairs, The Fringe Club »p.16

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 |

3 / 11 TUE

4 / 11 WED

Philosophy

Fantasy

Race & Identity

David Bandurski: Dragons in Diamond Village

Writing Drama with Monica Cantieni

6:30PM | $135 | 1 hour Upstairs, The Fringe Club

8:00PM | $250 | 1.5 hours Upstairs, The Fringe Club

»p.16

»p.17

Monica Cantieni: The Encyclopaedia of Good Reasons

Susan Choi: American Woman

6:30PM | $150 | 1 hour Upstairs, The Fringe Club

8:00PM | $150 | 1.5 hours Upstairs, The Fringe Club »p.17

»p.17

5 / 11 THU

Elsie Sze: Ghost Cave 6:30PM | $135 | 1 hour Upstairs, The Fringe Club »p.18

Jason Ng: 10 Years in Hong Kong 8:00PM | $135 | 1 hour Upstairs, The Fringe Club »p.18

6 / 11 FRI

PP Wong: The Life of a Banana

Shanghai and Hong Kong: Tales of Two Cities

10:00AM | $200 | 1.5 hours Blue Room, The Helena May

6:30PM | $200 | 1.5 hours Upstairs, The Fringe Club

»p.19

How to Get Published 8:30PM | $150 | 1.5 hours Upstairs, The Fringe Club »p.20

7 / 11 SAT

Rebecca Swift’s TLC

Reading the Stars

11:00AM | $135 | 1 hour Upstairs, The Fringe Club

11:00AM | $220 | 1.5 hours Level 6, KEE Club

»p.20

Event includes free-flow tea or coffee »p.21

| FESTIVAL AT A GLANCE

Feminism & Sexuality

7 / 11 SAT

Asia, China, Hong Kong

A Sense of Belonging 1:00PM | $420 | 2 hours Level 7, KEE Club Event includes lunch and tea »p.21

Poetry & Short Works

Mike Meyer In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland 2:00PM | $135 | 1.5 hours Upstairs, The Fringe Club »p.22

Magic for Grown-ups

Four Poets in Hong Kong

3:30PM | $300 | 1.5 hours Level 6, KEE Club

4:30PM | Free | 1.5 hours HKBU

Event includes a glass of wine »p.23

»p.22

Festival Symposium:

The Future of Journalism

The Umbrella Movement: One Year On

4:00PM | Free | 1.5 hours Upstairs, The Fringe Club

7:00PM | $100 | 1 hour Upstairs, The Fringe Club

»p.23

»p.24

An Evening with Dame Margaret Drabble

Haresh Sharma On Stage

7:00PM | $1200 | 2 hours Main Lounge, The Helena May

8:30PM | $150 | 1.5 hours Upstairs, The Fringe Club »p.24

»p.24

8 / 11 SUN

A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman

Doug Clark: Gunboat Justice in China

11:30AM | $250 | 1.5 hours Wang Gungwu Theatre, Graduate House, HKU

2:00PM | $180 | 1 hour Gordon King Lecture Theatre, Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences

»p.25

Cross-Cultural Love 3:30PM | $200 | 1.5 hours Gordon King Lecture Theatre, Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences »p.26

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 |

《號外》創刊於 1976 年，是一本擁逾 38 年歷史的時尚生活月刊，內容由 ART、 CULTRUE、DESIGN、 FASHION 及 SOCIETY 結集而成，在香港極具代表性。針對來自藝文界的菁英讀者群，其自創刊以來不斷以獨特的視野檢視本土文化，而由 2014 年起，更隨書定期附送增刊《BOOK REVIEW》，推廣深度閱讀，每期從一主題探索閱讀與人生的關係。一如村上春樹所言：「如果讀的東西與別人雷同，思考方式也只能跟別人一樣。」《BOOK REVIEW》關注閱讀品味如何塑造思考模式。

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《號外》於各大書報攤，主要 7-11，CIRCLE K 及下列零售連鎖店發售：特約銷售地點：

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Event Details 26 / 10 MON

Cooking with Ken Hom 7.30pm | $1000 | 2 hours Easy123 Dining and Cooking Studio, Tsim Sha Tsui Join culinary legend Ken Hom as he whips up a feast in an open kitchen. After sampling some of his classic Asian delights, hear Hom talk about his career as a chef, TV presenter, author and charity ambassador whilst enjoying a glass of wine or two. There will also be a chance for a Q&A and book signing. Very limited places - to reserve tickets contact vanessa.wong@festival.org.hk. Ticket includes food sampling and wine.

31 / 10 SAT

Xu Zechen: Running Through Beijing 11:00AM | $220 | 1 hour 30 minutes Level 6, KEE Club “Running Through Beijing captures the taste and tension of Beijing better than any I’ve ever read.” - Los Angeles Review of Books Xu Zechen is among the very best upcoming young writers in China and in his latest novel, Running Through Beijing, he introduces us to Dunhuang, a lost soul who has recently been released from prison for selling fake IDs. Xu draws on his reallife experiences to guide us through an underworld of thievery, pornography, prison, bribery and police in this heart-breaking and thrilling journey. With interpreter and moderator Sebastian Veg. Ticket includes free-flow tea or coffee.

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Anna Smaill: The Chimes 1:00PM | $420 | 2 hours Level 7, KEE Club Critics have described Anna Smaill’s debut novel, The Chimes, which has been long-listed for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, as “intriguing, ambitious, fresh and original.” The story is set in a dystopian London where memories and the written word are forbidden, and music has replaced them. Join Smaill at this leisurely lunch to hear how her own passion for music, and training as a violinist, inspired her to write this novel. Moderated by Phil Whelan. Ticket includes lunch and tea.

Festival Symposium: Short Works, Big Ideas Part I 3:30PM | FREE | 1 hour Upstairs, The Fringe Club Don't miss the opportunity to hear a prominent overseas writer talk about writing in short form. Audience members will be offered advice and inspiration on how to pen small, but perfectly formed, stories. Please check the Festival website for more details. Moderated by Sreedhevi Iyer.

Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East with Benjamin Law 3:30PM | $300 | 1 hour 30 minutes Level 6, KEE Club Benjamin Law considers himself lucky to live in Australia: he can hold his boyfriend’s hand in public and lobby his politicians to recognise same-sex marriage. But as the child of migrants, he’s also curious about how different life might have been had he grown up in Asia and in his latest best-selling book, Gaysia, he does just that. Listen to Law regale us with his hilarious, moving and at times outrageous tales of Balinese nudist resorts, Thai lady-boy beauty contestants and Indian yoga classes designed to cure his homosexuality. Ticket includes a glass of wine.

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 |

Our Future Voices 4:45PM | $100 | 1 hour 15 minutes Upstairs, The Fringe Club Hong Kong boasts a dynamic and vibrant literary landscape and you can discover the work of budding writers in magazines, books and blogs. Creative writing students from HKU, CUHK, HKBU, CityU and HKIEd unite to showcase some of their latest work. The Festival invites you to sit back and enjoy some of the finest performance poetry and spoken word Hong Kong has to offer. Come and meet the next generation of local writers!

Festival Symposium: Short Works, Big Ideas Part II 7:00PM | FREE | 1 hour 30 minutes Upstairs, The Fringe Club Short fiction has gone out of fashion in some parts of the world, displaced by ever-longer novels. Here in Hong Kong, contemporary writers lean toward short works and poetry as a form of creative expression - is this a reaction to our lifestyles that are so time-poor? Award-winning poet Luke Kennard is joined by local poets Tammy Ho and Sonia Wong for a lively exchange on the place of poetry in modern day literature in Hong Kong and further afield. Moderated by Elbert Lee.

Jabari Asim: The N Word 9:00PM | $180 | 1 hour 30 minutes Upstairs, The Fringe Club The debate over the N word touches many aspects of American popular culture. Does it ever have an appropriate place in the media? Are rappers justified in using it? Should The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which repeats it 215 times, be taught in school? As the cultural critic Jabari Asim explains, none of these questions can be addressed effectively without a clear knowledge of the wordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s legacy. Here, he will draw on a wide range of examples from science, politics and the arts to explore the etymology of the word and its evolution.

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1 / 11 SUN

Photo Credit to Rugby School

Culture and Coding 12:00PM | $250 | 1 hour 30 minutes Gordon King Lecture Theatre, Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences Born in the age of tablets and smart-phones, todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s digital natives are being taught science and technology with increased rigor in schools while humanities subjects such as literature are often neglected. Renowned philosopher, Professor A. C. Grayling and poet Luke Kennard come together to explore this challenge and the increased importance of preserving literary culture in education. Moderated by Elizabeth Ho.

2:30PM | $150 | 1 hour 30 minutes Gordon King Lecture Theatre, Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences A new generation of fiction writers is pushing the boundaries of storytelling and breaking traditional writing conventions by favouring surrealism over realism. Breakthrough writer Anna Smaill, author of The Chimes, a fantasy novel with a complex structure and lexical inventiveness talks with a local writer about experimenting in fiction. A chance to hear from some innovative and exciting writers.

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 |

Photo Credit to Natalie Graham

The Strange and the Surreal: Experimenting in Fiction

3:00PM | $250 | 1 hour 30 minutes Hong Kong Jockey Club Lecture Theatre, Olympic House, Causeway Bay “The first lesson of happiness is that the surest way to be unhappy is to think that happiness can be directly sought.” — Professor A. C. Grayling Is happiness the key to a successful and prosperous life? What exactly is happiness? And what makes us happy? Is happiness an impossible pursuit? Join A. C. Grayling as he explores these questions and the difficulties we face in seeking happiness.

The Family Law 4:30PM | $500 | 2 hours Official Residence of Consul-General of Australia, Deep Water Bay Meet the Law family - eccentric, endearing and hard to resist. Your guide: Benjamin Law, the third of five children and a born humourist. In this session, Law will try to answer some puzzling questions: Why won't his Chinese dad wear made-in-China underpants? Why was most of his extended family deported in the 1980s? Will his childhood dreams of Home and Away stardom come to nothing? What are his chances of finding love? Don’t miss the opportunity to gain an insight in to Law’s irresistibly wicked memoir, The Family Law. Moderated by David Nunan. Ticket includes drinks and canapés

In Conversation with Luke Kennard 5:00PM | $150 | 1 hour 30 minutes Gordon King Lecture Theatre, Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences Luke Kennard was nominated for the Forward Prize at the age of 26 for his collection The Harbour Beyond The Movie. Now a household name, Kennard has had four volumes of poetry published. His poetry is characterised by his use of comedy, irony, satire and self-deprecation. Don’t miss the chance to hear animated and lively readings from each of his four irreverent collections of poetry.

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Photo Credit to Rugby School

A. C. Grayling on Happiness

7:00PM | $150 | 1 hour 30 minutes Gordon King Lecture Theatre, Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences

Photo Credit to Shef Reynolds II

Black Stories Matter

Storytellers were everywhere in Jabari Asim’s neighbourhood. In barbershops and candy stores, on street corners, in classrooms and at Chinese takeouts, on park benches and front porches, North St. Louis residents of every age and variety spun engrossing, complicated yarns. Their repertoire included everything from tall tales to recollections of real events. People he encountered daily had an experience to share, from how they got over, to how they barely escaped going under. Asim believes the universe is made of stories, not of atoms and here he will explore powerful narratives of race, control and America.

2 / 11 MON

Leftover Women: Leta Hong Fincher 6:30PM | $135 | 1 hour Upstairs, The Fringe Club The Women’s Federation in China have defined “leftover” women as “unmarried women over the age of 27.” Despite intentions to transform gender relations, and contrary to many claims made in the media, women in China have experienced a dramatic rollback of rights and gains relative to men. In Leftover Women, Hong Fincher lays out the structural discrimination against women and speaks to broader problems with China’s economy, politics, and development. Moderated by Linda Kennedy.

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 |

A. C. Grayling: The Challenge of Things 7:00PM | $250 | 1 hour 30 minutes Wang Gungwu Theatre, Graduate House, HKU In his critically acclaimed latest book, The Challenge of Things, Professor A. C. Grayling presents a collection of essays on the world in a time of war and conflict. In describing and exposing the dark side of things, he also explores ways out of the habits and prejudices of the mind that would otherwise trap us forever in the deadly impasses of conflicts of all kinds. Join us for what promises to be a thought-provoking and insightful discussion.

Imagination Beyond Genre 8:00PM | $135 | 1 hour Upstairs, The Fringe Club Writers and readers, do you feel tired of everyday life and objects? Join local author Dorothy Tse and poet Collier Nogues as they explore how imagination and writing can challenge the limits of our perceptions. Tse’s surrealist short stories Snow and Shadow and Nogues’ stunning erasure poetry collection The Ground I Stand On is Not My Ground push the limits of genre and boundaries of structure. The two writers come together to discuss their creative writing process and question how imagination can extend the meaning of words.

3 / 11 TUE

David Bandurski: Dragons in Diamond Village 6:30PM | $135 | 1 hour Upstairs, The Fringe Club David Bandurski spent nearly ten years reporting and researching for his latest book Dragons in Diamond Village. Packed with intimate portraits and in-depth journalism, it is a stunning and detailed work of non-fiction, which tells one of the most important stories of our time: what is actually happening on the front lines of China’s unpredictable and unprecedented journey towards urbanization?

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Photo Credit to Manuel Fischer, FRESHPIXEL

Writing Drama with Monica Cantieni 8:00PM | $250 | 1 hour 30 minutes Upstairs, The Fringe Club In this interactive workshop, participants will be led by media expert Monica Cantieni to produce their very own audio drama. Bring along your laptop and a bold imagination! Limited places!

4 / 11 WED

Monica Cantieni: The Encyclopaedia of Good Reasons 6:30PM | $150 | 1 hour Upstairs, The Fringe Club “My father bought me from the council for 365 francs,” recalls the young female narrator in Monica Cantieni’s debut novel The Encyclopaedia of Good Reasons, or Grünschnabel as it is known in its original language. Set in the time of the 1970 Swiss referendum on immigration, Cantieni uses humour and warmth to introduce us to a host of colourful characters who struggle to make Switzerland their home: Eli, the Spanish bricklayer; Toni, the Italian factory worker with movie star looks; Madame Jelisaweta, the Yugoslav hairdresser; and Milena, the mysterious girl in the wardrobe.

Susan Choi: American Woman 8:00PM | $150 | 1 hour 30 minutes Upstairs, The Fringe Club “A tightly plotted thriller that is also an imaginative thought experiment conducted with the past…Brilliant and often hilarious.” - Chicago Tribune Susan Choi’s Pulitzer-nominated American Woman is an exhilarating re-imagining of the Patty Hearst kidnap saga that gripped the world over forty years ago. Choi’s novel explores the psychology of young radicals, the intensity of their isolated existence, and the paranoia and fear that undermine their ideals. Moderated by Xu Xi.

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 |

5 / 11 THU

Elsie Sze: Ghost Cave 6:30PM | $135 | 1 hour Upstairs, The Fringe Club Elsie Sze’s Ghost Cave: a novel of Sarawak is a work of historical fiction, set mainly in the jungles of Borneo in the mid-1800s and 1960s, and follows the adventures of two young men. Ah Min, a Chinese immigrant, and his best friend seek their fortune and explore a humid land of beguiling women, of fragrant spices and of ghosts. The oppression of the English White Rajah draws the men into a rebellion that will have catastrophic consequences. Sze will be in conversation with Jason Ng.

Jason Ng: 10 Years in Hong Kong 8:00PM | $135 | 1 hour Upstairs, The Fringe Club Local writer Jason Ng left Hong Kong in his teens and returned ten years ago. He often tells overseas friends, “Hong Kong is like a diva that gets a makeover every few years.” In the past decade alone, the city has gone through several rounds of transformation that rendered guidebooks obsolete. Through a combination of comedy, candour and experience, Ng explores the challenges of living in this concrete jungle.

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6 / 11 FRI

PP Wong: The Life of a Banana 10:00AM | $200 | 1 hour 30 minutes Blue Room, The Helena May PP Wong’s teenage narrator Xing Li is what some Chinese people call a banana - yellow on the outside and white on the inside. Although born and raised in London, she never feels like she fits in. When her mother dies, she moves with her older brother to live with venomous Grandma, strange Uncle Ho and Hollywood actress Auntie Mei. Her only friend is Jay - a mixed raced Jamaican boy with a passion for classical music. In order to find her own identity, she must first discover what it means to be both Chinese and British. Wong’s hugely successful and Bailey’s Award long-listed novel The Life of a Banana is both a moving and hilarious coming-of-age story that tackles a whole range of issues: racism, mental illness, bullying and grief. Ticket includes your morning tea or coffee.

Shanghai and Hong Kong: Tales of Two Cities 6:30PM | $200 | 1 hour 30 minutes Upstairs, The Fringe Club

Photo Credit to Gina Bock

Shanghai and Hong Kong have long played special roles as economic and, at times, political and cultural gateways between China and the wider world. They have also sometimes switched roles with one another: Shanghai was once called China's Hollywood, but Hong Kong would later claim that title for itself. This lively exchange features Mishi Saran, a novelist from India who has lived in both cities, and cultural historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom. The panel will be moderated by leading Hong Kong historian, Elizabeth Sinn. Join them and explore the similarities and differences between the two cosmopolitan port cities and how they have changed over time.

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 |

How To Get Published 8:30PM | $150 | 1 hour 30 minutes Upstairs, The Fringe Club Calling all budding writers! Whether youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been writing for a long time or have yet to put pen to paper, are interested in fiction or non-fiction, this is an event not to be missed. Join writers and industry experts PP Wong, Adrien Bosc, Rebecca Swift and Mike Meyer as they dish out useful advice, answer your burning questions and share their experiences of navigating the publishing industry. Moderated by Marshall Moore. Photo Credit to Benjamin Colombel

Photo Credit to Guo Sheng

7 / 11 SAT

Rebecca Swiftâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s TLC 11:00AM | $135 | 1 hour Upstairs, The Fringe Club When Rebecca Swift entered the world of publishing, she was shocked at the number of manuscripts on the slush pile and felt guilty that she could only get around to answering people every few months. As a result of this, in the mid-90s she set up The Literary Consultancy. Join Swift as she discusses the vast changes that the literary landscape has seen over the last ten years, particularly with the rise of the Internet and e-books.

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Reading the Stars 11:00AM | $220 | 1 hour 30 minutes Level 6, KEE Club On October 27, 1949, Air France’s new plane, the Constellation, welcomed 37 passengers aboard. On October 28 the plane disappeared. No one survived. The question French author Adrien Bosc addresses in Constellation, his dazzling and ambitious first novel, is not so much how, but why? What sequence of infinitesimal causations sent that plane into a mountain? And also, who were the passengers? We may remember Marcel Cerdan, the boxer lover of Édith Piaf; and the violinist Ginette Neveu, a fragment of whose violin was recovered years later; but Bosc weaves together other lives around them. In his own words: “Letting the dead speak, writing their minor legends and giving forty-eight men and women, like so many constellations themselves, a life and a tale to tell.” Ticket includes free-flow tea or coffee.

Photo Credit to Guo Sheng

1:00PM | $420 | 2 hours Level 7, KEE Club

Photo Credit to Adrian Kinloch

A Sense of Belonging

Foreigner or local? Male or female? Young or old? At some point in our lives we have all felt like an outsider, or felt ‘different’. Two dynamic writers come together to discuss social constructions of identity and how the theme manifests itself in their work. Join Susan Choi, author of The Foreign Student, who was born in the USA to a Korean father and a Russian Jewish mother as she talks to British-born-Chinese PP Wong, author of The Life of a Banana. Enjoy a delicious dimsum lunch and an engaging conversation between the two women. Ticket includes lunch and tea.

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 |

Mike Meyer In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland 2:00PM | $135 | 1 hour 30 minutes Upstairs, The Fringe Club The story of China’s urbanization has been unfolding over the last 15 years. But what happens when we dig beneath the gritty surface and explore this issue on a personal level? For three years, Mike Meyer rented a home in the rice-farming community of Wasteland, hometown to his wife's family whose personal saga mirrors the tremendous change most of rural China is undergoing. In Manchuria is a scintillating combination of memoir, travelogue, contemporary reporting and historical research, presenting a unique profile of China's northeast territory.

Magic for Grown-ups 3:30PM | $300 | 1 hour 30 minutes Level 6, KEE Club Widely hailed as the “Harry Potter for grown ups,” Lev Grossman’s New York Times best-selling series The Magicians Trilogy has captured the imaginations of fantasy fans worldwide. The central character, Quentin Coldwater, is a high school senior, but he’s still secretly obsessed with a series of fantasy novels he read as a boy. Compared to his favourite stories, everything in his real life seems grey and colourless. That changes when Quentin finds himself admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic where he receives a rigorous education in the practice of modern sorcery. The trilogy is a glittering fantasy series that reinterprets the grand tradition of C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling. Join Grossman for a reading, Q&A and a fascinating insight into the hugely popular series. Ticket includes a glass of wine.

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Festival Symposium: The Future of Journalism 4:00PM | FREE | 1 hour 30 minutes Upstairs, The Fringe Club In an age of podcasts, data-driven news websites and a whole host of multimedia platforms, attention spans are growing shorter every day. Journalists must compete with Facebook, Twitter and bloggers to make their point as clearly and concisely as possible. Four prominent writers come together to explore this challenge and the future of long-form journalism.

Four Poets in Hong Kong 4:30PM | FREE | 1 hour 30 minutes HKBU Since the Umbrella Movement in 2014 and subsequent protests, Hong Kong has emerged as a political and cultural flashpoint in Asia, raising new questions about the role of poetry in a city commonly defined by its commercial interests. What space does English-language poetry occupy in this changing global city? James Shea, Collier Nogues, Tammy Ho and Nicholas Wong share the stage to debate this question. Moderated by Polly Ho. Please refer to the Festival website for specific location. Photo Credit to Marie Yip Wai Shan

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 |

The Umbrella Movement: One Year On 7:00PM | $100 | 1 hour Upstairs, The Fringe Club

An Evening with Dame Margaret Drabble 7:00PM | $1200 | 2 hour Main Lounge, The Helena May Celebrated writer Dame Margaret Drabble is the author of eighteen novels including A Summer Bird-Cage, The Millstone, The Peppered Moth, The Red Queen, The Sea LadyÂ and most recently, the highly acclaimedÂ The Pure Gold Baby. Join us for this unique opportunity to hear Dame Margaret discuss a career that has spanned over fifty years, whilst enjoying a fine dinner with sparkling wine in this beautiful historic building. To reserve tickets contact vanessa.wong@festival.org.hk.

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Photo Credit to Jason Y. Ng

On Saturday 28 September 2014, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Hong Kong to protest the electoral reforms in a dramatic political awakening. The months that followed shook the whole city and captivated nations worldwide. Jeff Wasserstrom, author of Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China, reflects on the last twelve months following Occupy Central and puts the actions of the students into a historical and comparative perspective.

Photo Credit to The Necessary Stage

Haresh Sharma on Stage 8:30PM | $150 | 1 hour 30 minutes Upstairs, The Fringe Club Haresh Sharma, the Resident Playwright of the Necessary Stage in Singapore, is a well- seasoned writer, with over 100 plays that have been staged all over the world. He is no stranger when it comes to writing about difficult topics, and has penned plays that center on issues of social prejudice, migration and national identity. Join Sharma to discover what motivates him to write about often overlooked characters and learn more about his extensive career.

8 / 11 SUN

Dame Margaret Drabble: A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman 11:30AM | $250 | 1 hour 30 minutes Wang Gungwu Theatre, Graduate House, HKU

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 |

Photo Credit to Ruth Corney

Dame Margaret Drabble wrote the fourteen short stories that comprise A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman over a forty-year period. In each of them, Drabble examines the private lives and passions of everyday people. From one man's honeymooning epiphany in Hassan's Tower to the journeying fantasies of A Voyage to Cythera, and from the sharp joy of The Merry Widow to the bloody reality of the collection's title story, these are moving, witty and provocative tales, exploring cruel and loving relationships, social change and personal obsessions, and confirm Drabble's status as one of the foremost short story writers of our time.

Doug Clark: Gunboat Justice in China and Japan 2:00PM | $180 | 1 hour Gordon King Lecture Theatre, Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences The 1842 Treaty of Nanking not only ceded Hong Kong Island to Britain but allowed Britain to establish consular courts in the new treaty ports in China. In his new book, Gunboat Justice, Doug Clark tells the story of extraterritoriality, focusing in particular on the British Supreme Court for China and Japan and the United States Court for China. Join Clark as he explores a turbulent century of the courts through the personal accounts of a cast of fascinating characters both on and before the bench, and hear him talk to Graham Earnshaw about the many challenging issues the courts faced including war, insurrection, corruption, infidelity, and, in one notable instance, a failed hanging.

Cross-Cultural Love 3:30PM | $200 | 1 hour 30 minutes Gordon King Lecture Theatre, Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences Over the last decade there has been an explosion of expat memoirs set in China, however many of these fail to depict romantic relationships. But when foreigners arrive in China and Hong Kong, these romantic connections are often a central part of setting down new roots-- and they are becoming more and more common. Susan BlumbergKason, Ray Hecht, Shannon Young and Marshall Moore all write about cross-cultural relationships. Join them as they explore these issues with David Nunan.

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Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 |

Participants

Jabari Asim

David Bandurski

Adrien Bosc

Jabari Asim is acting director of the MFA program in creative writing at Emerson College in Boston, USA. His books include three works of non-fiction and two works of fiction, as well as seven books for children. His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Arts. His most recent book is Only the Strong, a novel.

David Bandurski is analyst and editor at the University of Hong Kong’s China Media Project. An awardwinning journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, he received a Human Rights Press Award in 2008 for an investigative piece on China’s use of professional associations to enforce Internet censorship guidelines. He produces Chinese independent films and documentaries through his production company, Lantern Films.

Adrien Bosc was born in Avignon in 1986, and set up Éditions du Sous-Sol, which publishes the reviews Feuilleton and Desports. Constellation is his first novel.

Jabari Asim’s visit is supported by the U.S. Consulate General Hong Kong & Macau. Photo Credit to Shef Reynolds II

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Adrien Bosc’s visit is supported by the Consulat Général de France à Hong Kong et Macao. Photo Credit to Benjamin Colombel

Monica Cantieni

Susan Choi

Doug Clark

Born in 1965 in Thalwil, Switzerland, Monica Cantieni lives in the German speaking part of Switzerland. She debuted as a writer with Hieronymus’ Kinder (‘Hieronymus’ Children’) in 1996.

Susan Choi is the author of four novels. Her first novel, The Foreign Student, won the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction. Her second novel, American Woman, was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize. Her third novel, A Person of Interest, was a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award. In 2010, she was named the inaugural recipient of the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award. Her most recent novel, My Education, received a 2014 Lammy Award. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, she lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, Pete Wells, and their sons.

Doug Clark is a lawyer who has practiced in Hong Kong and Shanghai for over twenty years. Originally from Australia, Clark studied Japanese in Kobe, Japan and Chinese and Chinese law at Fudan University in Shanghai. He commenced practice as a solicitor in Hong Kong in the mid-1990s. He was then based in Shanghai between 2000 and 2010 where he set up and was Managing Partner of international law firm Hogan Lovells’ Shanghai office. In 2011, he relocated to Hong Kong as a barrister. In addition to his newly released book, Gunboat Justice, Clark is the author of Patent Litigation in China and co-author of Civil Litigation in Hong Kong. He is also the associate producer of the art house movie, I Really Hate My Job starring Neve Campbell.

The German edition of The Encyclopaedia of Good Reasons was shortlisted for the prestigious Swiss Book Prize in 2011, and the English edition for First Book Award nominee at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. The novel has been translated into six languages. She is also head of Multimedia in the Culture Department of Swiss Radio and Television. Monica Cantieni’s visit is supported by the Consulate General of Switzerland in Hong Kong.

Susan Choi’s visit is supported by the U.S. Consulate General Hong Kong & Macau. Photo Credit to Adrian Kinloch

Photo Credit to Manuel Fischer, FRESHPIXEL

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 |

Graham Earnshaw

Dame Margaret Drabble

A. C. Grayling

Graham Earnshaw is a businessman, writer and musician with several decades of experience in the China world. He is publisher of Earnshaw Books and has written a number of books, including On Your Own in China, Tales of Old Shanghai and an account of his continuing walk across China, The Great Walk of China. His translation of the Jin Yong kungfu novel The Book and the Sword was published by Oxford University Press. He has recorded a number of albums of his own songs, including Leap of Faith (1996), The Red Album (2011), and The Tao of Music (2013). He has lived in China pretty much continuously since 1979. He speaks Cantonese and Mandarin, and his English is said to be acceptable.

Dame Margaret Drabble was born in Sheffield in 1939 and was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. She is the author of eighteen novels including A Summer BirdCage, The Millstone, The Peppered Moth, The Red Queen, The Sea Lady and most recently, the highly acclaimed The Pure Gold Baby. She has also written biographies, screenplays and was the editor of the Oxford Companion to English Literature. She was appointed CBE in 1980, and made DBE in the 2008 Honours list. She was also awarded the 2011 Golden PEN Award for a Lifetime’s Distinguished Service to Literature. She is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd and lives in London and Somerset.

A. C. Grayling MA, DPhil (Oxon) FRSL, FRSA is Master of the New College of the Humanities and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. Until 2011, he was Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy and other subjects; among his most recent are The God Argument, Friendship and The Challenge of Things. For several years, he wrote columns for The Guardian and The Times. He is a frequent contributor to The Literary Review, Observer, Independent on Sunday and New Statesman, and is a broadcaster on BBC Radio 4, Radio 3 and the World Service. He writes the Thinking Read column for the Barnes and Noble Review in New York. He is also the Editor of Online Review London and a Contributing Editor of Prospect magazine.

Dame Margaret Drabble’s visit is supported by the British Council and Standing Committee on Language Education and Research. Photo Credit to Ruth Corney

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Anthony Grayling is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He was a judge for the Man Booker Prize in 2003 and Chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize. He supports a number of charities including Plan UK, Greenpeace, Médecins Sans Frontières and Amnesty International. A.C. Grayling’s visit is supported by Standing Committee on Language Education and Research. Photo Credit to Rugby School

Elizabeth Ho

Leta Hong Fincher

Elizabeth Ho is Associate Professor of English at Lingnan University where she teaches global literatures in English. She is the author of Neo-Victorianism and the Memory of Empire and has published articles on postcolonial fiction, contemporary literature and graphic novels. She serves as Consultant Editor to the online journal, Neo-Victorian Studies.

Leta Hong Fincher is author of the critically acclaimed book, Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China. Hong Fincher's book was named one of the top five China books of 2014 by the Asia Society’s ChinaFile, one of the best foreign policy books of 2014 by FP Interrupted and one of the best Asian books of 2014 by Asia House. Hong Fincher’s research on women and China has been cited by many news organizations, including The Economist, Financial Times, TIME Magazine, The Guardian and BBC. She received her master's degree in East Asian Studies from Stanford University and her bachelor's degree magna cum laude in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University. She is the first American to receive a Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology at Tsinghua University in Beijing and is currently a Lecturer in the Centre for China Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Photo Credit to Nora Tejada

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 |

Lev Grossman

Ray Hecht

Tammy Ho

Lev Grossman is the book critic and lead technology writer for TIME Magazine and a widely published cultural critic. He is also the author of The New York Times bestselling Magicians trilogy. A graduate of Harvard and Yale, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three children.

Ray Hecht was born in the 1980s in Israel, and was quickly moved to America as a small child, raised in the Midwestern locale of Cincinnati, Ohio. His childhood education mainly consisted of comic books, science fiction paperbacks, and movies.

Tammy Ho Lai-Ming is a writer, editor, translator and academic. She is the founding co-editor of Asian Cha, the first online literary journal based in Hong Kong, and an editor of the academic journal, Victorian Network. She has also edited or co-edited several volumes of poetry and short fiction published in Hong Kong, including Desde Hong Kong: Poets in conversation with Octavio Paz. Her own poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times and the Forward Prize, while her translations can be found in World Literature Today, Chinese Literature Today, Drunken Boat, Pathlight, among other places. Her first poetry collection Hula Hooping was published earlier this year, and her first short story collection Her Name Upon The Strand is forthcoming in 2016. Ho is an assistant professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, where she teaches fiction, poetics and modern drama.

You can learn more about Lev Grossman on his website www.levgrossman.com and follow him on Twitter @leverus. Lev Grossman’s visit is supported by the U.S. Consulate General Hong Kong & Macau. Photo Credit to Mathieu Bourgois

Upon adulthood, he transferred from college to college before ending up in Long Beach, California, all the while writing in his spare time and simultaneously trying to make a living. After briefly dabbling in student films, Hecht then decided it was time to see the world. In 2008, luck had sent him to South China, and he has since lived all over the Pearl River Delta zone: Shenzhen, Guangzhou (Canton), and Hong Kong. Hecht found his passion as an observer of contemporary Chinese culture, and wrote and edited for Shenzhen Daily – the only daily English-language newspaper in Guangdong Province – along with other freelance projects. He also likes to think of himself as a prolific eBook author and blogger. South China Morning Blues is his first published novel.

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Photo Credit to Marie Yip Wai Shan

Polly Ho

Ken Hom

Sreedhevi Iyer

Polly Ho Sai Fung graduated from the University of Hong Kong majoring in Psychology. She has been devoting her time to organising poetry readings at Kubrick Poetry since 2007. She feels privileged to have encountered so many talented local and international poets. She has successfully secured the Year Grant from the Arts Development Council for Kubrick Poetry Society (2010-2011, 2013-2014) on two occasions. She teaches English at a primary school.

Ken Hom resides in France and Thailand but travels all over the world, appearing regularly as a celebrity chef, writing new books and remaining closely involved with restaurants worldwide. His latest book Truffles is the updated version of his book Truffes, first written in French in 2000 with Pierre-Jean Pébeyre. The book won the USA Gourmand Award 2014 in the Best Mushroom Book category. In 2009, he was awarded an honorary OBE for ‘services to culinary arts’, recognising his achievements and the impressive social and historical impact he has made on the UK. Hom has written 36 books, many translated into more than 16 languages, with a total of 80 books published worldwide in all translated editions. He has worked as a consultant for hotels, restaurants and airlines and has cooked personally for presidents, prime ministers, celebrities and royalty.

Sreedhevi Iyer is a double hyphen - an Indian-MalaysianAustralian. Her fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She has been published in Hotel Amerika, Drunken Boat, Free Word Centre, Two Thirds North, and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. Her fiction editor Deborah Marie Poe has singled her out as "a promising woman writer to look at in the future" in Women's Quarterly Conversations. One of her essays is being taught in the University of Adelaide. She guest edited a special issue of Drunken Boat on the Umbrella Revolution and blogs for the Asia Literary Review. She is currently doing her PhD in Hong Kong.

Photo Credit to Sharon Lai

Find out more on his website www.kenhom.com, Twitter @chefkenhom,or Facebook Chef Ken Hom. Photo Credit to Allen Markey

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 |

Susan Blumberg-Kason

Luke Kennard

Benjamin Law

Susan Blumberg-Kason spent most of the 1990s in Hong Kong, where she studied at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and got her start in publishing. She is the author of the memoir, Good Chinese Wife, and has contributed to How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit? True Stories of Expat Women in Asia and Fifty-Fifty: New Hong Kong Writing. In her spare time, she teaches her kids about Chinese culture and volunteers with senior citizens in Chicago’s Chinatown. Susan lives in suburban Chicago with her husband and three children.

Luke Kennard is a poet and writer of fiction who was born in Kingston Upon Thames in 1981. He won an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2005, and his first collection of prose poems The Solex Brothers was published later that year by Stride. His second collection The Harbour Beyond the Movie was published by Salt in 2007 and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, making him the youngest writer ever to be shortlisted. His most recent collection A Lost Expression was released in 2012 alongside an experimental short story Holophin, which won the Saboteur Novella award that year. His fiction and poetry criticism has appeared in Poetry London, The Times Literary Supplement and The National. He has a PhD in English from the University of Exeter and lectures at the University of Birmingham. In 2014, he was named one of the Next Generation Poets by the Poetry Book Society in their once per-decade list.

Benjamin Law is a Sydneybased journalist, columnist and screenwriter, and the author of two books: the black comedy memoir The Family Law and the travel book Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East. Both of his books have been nominated for Australian Book Industry Awards. He is also the coauthor of the comedy book Shit Asian Mothers Say with his sister Michelle and illustrator Oslo Davis. Law is a frequent contributor to magazines and newspapers and has written for over 50 publications worldwide. He has also completed a PhD in television writing and cultural studies, and has written a TV adaptation of The Family Law, produced by Matchbox Pictures, which goes to air on SBS early 2016.

Luke Kennard’s visit is supported by the British Council and Standing Committee on Language Education and Research. 34

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Benjamin Law’s visit is supported by the Australian Consulate General Hong Kong.

Elbert Lee

Mike Meyer

Elbert Siu Ping Lee is a freelance writer. His poems are anthologised in Hong Kong Poems, published by Stauffenburgs, and in Fifty/ Fifty: A New Anthology of Hong Kong Writing, published by Haven Books. He contributes regularly to Muse Magazine. Nowadays, Lee lives with his two dogs on an outlying island.

Mike Meyer is the author of the acclaimed nonfiction books The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed and In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and The Transformation of Rural China. He first came to China in 1995 with the Peace Corps, and has contributed to The New York Times, TIME Magazine, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, and many other outlets. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Lowell Thomas Award for travel writing, as well as residencies at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center. He recently taught Literary Journalism at Hong Kong University’s Journalism and Media Studies Center. He is a member of the National Committee on United StatesChina Relations’ Public Intellectuals Program, an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, where he teaches

Nonfiction Writing, and lives in Singapore. Mike Meyer’s visit is supported by Standing Committee on Language Education and Research.

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 |

Marshall Moore

Jason Ng

Collier Nogues

Marshall Moore is the author of seven books, including the novels Bitter Orange and The Concrete Sky, and the collection The Infernal Republic. A native of eastern North Carolina, he has been a resident of Hong Kong for seven years. He teaches at Lingnan University. For more information, please visit marshallmoore.com or follow him on Twitter at @articulateink.

Born in Hong Kong, Jason Y. Ng is a globetrotter who spent his entire adult life in Italy, Canada and the United States before settling in his birthplace to rediscover his roots. Ng is the bestselling author of HONG KONG State of Mind and No City for Slow Men. His short stories have appeared in various anthologies. Ng is a resident blogger for South China Morning Post and a contributor to Time Out and Manifesto magazines. His social commentary blog "As I See It" and lifestyle column "The Real Deal" have attracted a cult following on the blogosphere. Ng speaks frequently at universities and cultural events and appears from time to time on radio and television.

Collier Nogues is the author of the poetry collections The Ground I Stand On Is Not My Ground, selected by Forrest Gander as winner of the 2014 Drunken Boat Poetry Book Contest, and On the Other Side, Blue. Her work has been supported by fellowships and grants from the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, and Fishtrap. She is a PhD Fellow at the University of Hong Kong and curates Hong Kong’s English-language poetry craft talk series. She also co-edits poetry for Juked.

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David Nunan

Mishi Saran

Haresh Sharma

David Nunan is Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Hong Kong, and is also on the board of the Hong Kong International Literary Festival. Before coming to Hong Kong in 1994 as Chair Professor of Applied Linguistics, he worked as a teacher, researcher and consultant in the United Kingdom, Australia, Thailand, Japan, Oman, the United States and China. He has written over thirty books on language, education and qualitative research, a travel book and a memoir. He is currently working on a book on expat life in Hong Kong.

Mishi Saran's first novel, The Other Side of Light was shortlisted for the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize. She is also the author of the travel book-cummemoir Chasing the Monk’s Shadow: A Journey in the Footsteps of Xuanzang, which was shortlisted for the 2006 Hutch-Crossword Book Award for non-fiction, and longlisted for the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage. She is currently working on her third book, also a novel, set in Shanghai in the 1930s.

Haresh Sharma is the Resident Playwright of The Necessary Stage. To date, he has written more than 100 plays. His play, Off Centre, was selected by the Ministry of Education as a Literature text for 'N' and 'O' Levels, and republished by The Necessary Stage in 2006. Sharma was awarded Best Original Script for Fundamentally Happy, Good People and Gemuk Girls at the 2007, 2008 and 2009 Life! Theatre Awards respectively. In 2010, The Necessary Stage also published the abovementioned plays in the collection entitled Trilogy. In 2011 and 2012, two collections of short plays by Sharma entitled Shorts 1 and Shorts 2 as well as a collection entitled Plays for Schools were published. This was followed by the publication of a new collection of Sharma’s plays on medical-related issues entitled Don’t Forget to Remember Me in 2013, launched at the Singapore Writers Festival. Sharma’s play Best Of (staged four times to rave reviews in Singapore and Malaysia) and Eclipse (staged in both Singapore

Saran was born in India and spent a decade in New Delhi. Since then, she has lived in Switzerland, Indonesia, the United States, China, Hong Kong and Korea. She moved back to Hong Kong in the summer of 2014, after eight years in Shanghai. She has a B.A. in Chinese studies from Wellesley Collage. She spent her junior year in Beijing in 1988-89 and was an exchange student at the Johns HopkinsNanjing University Centre for Chinese and American Studies in 1991-92. She is fluent in Mandarin, French and Hindi.

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 |

and Scotland) were both published in 2014 separately, and most recently in 2015, his play Poor Thing which explores the issue of road rage was published. Sharma is the first non-American to be awarded the prestigious Goldberg Master Playwright by New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 2011. The same year saw Sharma being conferred the Southeast Asian Writers which recognises and honours literary excellence in the ASEAN region. Photo Credit to The Necessary Stage

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James Shea

Elizabeth Sinn

James Shea is the author of two poetry collections, The Lost Novel and Star in the Eye. Star in the Eye was selected for the Fence Modern Poets Series and included in the Poetry Society of America’s New American Poets series. His poems have appeared in various anthologies including The New Census: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry and Isn’t It Romantic: 100 Love Poems by Younger American Poets. A former Fulbright Scholar in Hong Kong, he has taught at Nebraska Wesleyan University, the University of Chicago’s Committee on Creative Writing, Columbia College Chicago’s MFA Program in Poetry, DePaul University, and as a poet-in-residence in the Chicago public schools, where he received The Poetry Center of Chicago’s Gwendolyn Brooks Award for Excellence in Teaching. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing at Hong Kong Baptist University.

Elizabeth Sinn is an Honourable Professor at the Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Hong Kong. Born and educated in Hong Kong, she has published on the history of charity, business, culture, the press and migration. Her books include Power and Charity: The Early History of the Tung Wah Hospital Hong Kong; Growing with Hong Kong: The History of the Bank of East Asia and Pacific Crossing: California Gold, Chinese Migration, and the Making of Hong Kong. Her articles include “Fugitive in Paradise: Wang Tao and Cultural Transformation in Late 19th Century Hong Kong”, Late Imperial China 19:1, and “Women at Work: Chinese Brothel Keepers in 19th Century Hong Kong”, The Journal of Women’s History. She led the “Hong Kong Memory Project” which created a multi-media website for materials on Hong Kong’s history, culture and heritage. Currently, she is writing a second book on the history of the Bank of East Asia.

Anna Smaill Anna Smaill was born in Auckland in 1979. She began learning the violin at the age of seven and entered the performance music programme at Canterbury University at 17, though ultimately changed her degree to pursue writing. She holds an MA in English Literature from the University of Auckland and an MA in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington. Her first book of poetry, The Violinist in Spring, was published by Victoria University Press in 2005, and was listed as one of the Best Books of 2006 by the New Zealand Listener. She and her husband, novelist Carl Shuker, moved to the United Kingdom where she completed a PhD at University College London. From 2009 to 2012, she was a lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Hertfordshire. The Chimes is her debut novel. It was recognised as a Bookseller Best Debut of 2015 and by the Huffington Post as 'One to Watch', and was longlisted for the Man Booker

Rebecca Swift Prize 2015. She currently lives in Wellington, NZ with her husband and daughter. Anna Smaill’s visit is supported by the New Zealand Consulate-General Hong Kong. Photo Credit to Natalie Graham

Rebecca Swift worked at Virago Press before cofounding The Literary Consultancy, the UK’s leading editorial assessment service, in 1996. TLC provides indepth critiques by professional editors to writers at any level in English from anywhere in the world. TLC also offers online mentoring, and literary events at the vibrant Free Word Centre in London, of which TLC is a founding member. TLC is supported by Art Council England. Swift has appeared at numerous literary festivals both in the UK and overseas, taking part in many panels talking about the work of TLC and the relationship between writers and the publishing industry. She also works as a writer and has published as editor of two books with Chatto & Windus, poems in various anthologies including Vintage New Writing 6, an opera libretto Spirit Child and Dickinson: Poetic Lives. She is a Hawthornden Fellow, and an Emeritus trustee of Writers’ Centre Norwich.

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 |

Elsie Sze

Linda Kennedy

Nick Thorpe

Elsie Sze is the author of three published novels; Hui Gui: a Chinese story, The Heart of the Buddha, and most recently, Ghost Cave: a novel of Sarawak. Following her graduation from the University of Hong Kong, she taught at King’s College in Hong Kong for a year, then left her native home to pursue graduate studies at the University of Toronto and the University of Chicago. In 2005, she published her first novel, Hui Gui: a Chinese story. The novel was shortlisted for ForeWord Magazine’s Fiction Book of the Year Award, 2005. Her second novel, The Heart of the Buddha, is set in Bhutan. It was a finalist in ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year Award, 2009. In 2013, Sze won the inaugural Saphira Prize, a literary prize offered by Women in Publishing Society, Hong Kong for her manuscript "Ghost Cave". Ghost Cave: a novel of Sarawak was published and launched in Hong Kong in March, 2014.

Linda Kennedy is a presenter/ reporter who has worked for leading broadcasters. In London, she was a presenter/ reporter on The Culture Show, BBC TV’s flagship arts programme. She was an onscreen correspondent for Britain’s top news bulletin News at Ten. In Asia, she wrote and hosted a talk show for China’s biggest independent media company Caixin, in Beijing. In Hong Kong, she interviewed business and cultural leaders during two years as a presenter/reporter at TVB. She has recently been presenting for BBC Culture on the BBC global online portal.

Nick J. Thorpe is a former business and consumer journalist whose work has appeared across Europe in a wide range of publications, including BBC, Huffington Post, Independent, Guardian, Daily Mail, Financial Times, The Economist, MSN and many more. Now a writer and author based in Hong Kong, he also provides advice and consultancy as Text100’s Content Director to major brands such as Four Seasons, Peroni, WeChat, JLL, Verizon and FedEx in Hong Kong and across Asia Pacific. He recently released his debut book - 52 New Things - about his journey to conquer the boredom of modern life. Find out more at www.nickthorpe. com.

A long-time resident of Toronto, Sze has recently relocated with her husband to the San Francisco Bay Area to be close to her family. Photo Credit to Trygve Bratteteig

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Dorothy Tse

Sebastian Veg

Jeffrey Wasserstrom

Dorothy Tse is one of Hong Kong’s most acclaimed young writers. Her short story collection So Black [《好黑》] won the Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature in 2005 and A Dictionary of Two Cities [《雙城辭典》] , which she co-authored with Hon Lai-chu, won the 2013 Hong Kong Book Prize. Her literary prizes also include Taiwan’s Unitas New Fiction Writers’ Award and the Hong Kong Award for Creative Writing in Chinese. She was a resident at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program in 2011. A co-founder of Hong Kong’s preeminent literary magazine, Fleurs des Lettres, she currently teaches creative writing at Hong Kong Baptist University.

Sebastian Veg is a Professor at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Science, Paris. He was previously posted as Director of the French Centre for Research on Contemporary China in Hong Kong and has taught in the University of Hong Kong for several years. His interests are in twentieth century Chinese literature, political debates, and intellectual history, and he has written about and translated Lu Xun, as well as contemporary writers and intellectuals.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom is the author of four books, including Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China and China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, which has been translated into Korean, Turkish and Chinese (complex characters). He is a frequent contributor to newspapers such as Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, in addition to TIME Magazine and Newsweek, and also literary reviews in The Times Literary Supplement, Asian Review of Books, and Los Angeles Review of Books. He is Chancellor's Professor of History at the University of California at Irvine, where he also serves as Historical Writing Mentor for the Literary Journalism Program and holds a courtesy appointment in the Law School. He has been visiting Hong Kong regularly since 1987 and is a past participant in both HKILF and the University of Hong Kong's Common Core Distinguished Lecture series. Jeff Wasserstrom’s visit is supported by the U.S. Consulate General Hong Kong & Macau. Photo Credit to Steven Zylius

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 |

Phil Whelan

Nicholas Wong

Sonia Wong

Phil Whelan is a Senior Producer at RTHK, where he also presents the popular daily radio talk and music show ‘Morning Brew’. 2015 marks Phil’s 20th year as a radio presenter and producer. Formerly a professional clarinet player, he graduated from Trinity College of Music (London) in 1989. He has performed with such groups as the London Swing Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet Orchestra and the orchestras of London productions of Phantom of the Opera, and The Sound of Music.

Nicholas Wong's latest poetry collection Crevasse is published by Kaya Press. He holds an MFA from City University of Hong Kong, and is an assistant poetry editor for Drunken Boat, an online literary and multimedia journal. Described as a “firestarter” by Time Out: Hong Kong, he is on the teaching faculty of the Hong Kong Institute of Education.

Sonia Wong is a full-time PhD student at the Department of Cultural Studies, Lingnan University. Her areas of interest include lesbianism, pornography, and sexual subjectivity. She found Reel Women Hong Kong in 2013, aiming at promoting femalecreated films and art works as well as promoting gender equality and awareness in society through screenings and workshops. Her creative endeavours include poetry, short fiction, and visual arts. She has recently published her first bilingual poetry collection Unseemingly Lasting.

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PP Wong

Shannon Young

Xu Xi 許素細

PP Wong earned a degree in Anthropology and Law at the London School of Economics, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism.

Shannon Young is an American author living in Hong Kong. Her memoir, Year of Fire Dragons: An American Woman's Story of Coming of Age in Hong Kong is a travel adventure, an international love story, and a newcomer's account of finding a place in Hong Kong. Young is the editor of an anthology of creative non-fiction by expat women in Asia called How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit? and she has written several e-books including A Kindle Single, Pay Off: How One Millennial Eliminated Nearly $80,000 in Student Debt in Less Than Five Years. Young writes a blog called A Kindle in Hong Kong and likes to spy on other people's books on the train.

Xu Xi is the author of nine books of fiction and essays. She is known for her Access: Thirteen Tales, the novel Habit of a Foreign Sky, a finalist for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize and an essay collection, Evanescent Isles. She is also Editor of four anthologies of Hong Kong writing in English. She co-edited The Queen of Statue Square: New Short Fiction from Hong Kong with Marshall Moore recently. As a transnational “third culture” writer, she long inhabited the flight path connecting New York, Hong Kong and the South Island of New Zealand, until her mother’s Alzheimer’s ended those peregrinations. From 2002-12, she was on the MFA in Writing Faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts, where she was elected and served as Faculty Chair from 2009-12. She is currently Writer-in-Residence at City University of Hong Kong’s Department of English, where she established and directs Asia’s first low-residency MFA in creative writing that also focuses on writing of, from and out of Asia.

Her debut novel The Life of a Banana is about race relations in London seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old girl. It was longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2015 (formerly Orange Prize for Fiction). The rights have already been sold for eight countries including Italy, Israel, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. PP Wong is now an author, freelance writer and the Editorin-Chief of website www. bananawriters.com The website has readers from over twenty countries and is a voice for East Asian and South East Asian writers. PP Wong’s visit is supported by Standing Committee on Language Education and Research. Photo Credit to Guo Sheng

Photo Credit to Paul Hilton

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 |

Xu Zechen Born in 1978 in Jiangsu Province, Xu Zechen graduated from the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Peking University and now lives in Beijing. He is the [ 耶路撒 author of Jerusalem 《 [ 午夜冷》], Midnight's Door 《 [ 夜火之門》], Night Train 《車》], Running Through Beijing [ 跑步穿過中關村》], Ju Yan 《 [ 把 [ 居延》] , Master on Lips 《《大師掛在嘴上》] and To the [ 到世界去》]. In 2009, World 《 he was Writer in Residence at Creighton University in Nebraska. A year later, he featured in the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program. His works have been translated into various languages including German, English, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Mongolian, Dutch, Russian and Spanish. His novella, Ruguo Daxue [ 如果大雪封門》], Fengmen 《 won the sixth Lu Xun Literary Prize for outstanding short novel. In 2014, Jerusalem was ranked first among ten best Chinese fictional works in Asia Weekly. It also won the first Tencent College

| PARTICIPANTS

Literary Award, the fifth Lao She Literary Award and the Bookuu Reading “Chun Feng Bang” Annual Award in the fiction category. His other honours include the fourth Spring Literature Prize, the sixth Chinese Literature Media Award for Most Potential New Author, the 12th Chuang Chung-wen Literary Award, and the 13th Chinese Literature Media Award for Best Novelist. He was also selected as one of the Young Chinese Leaders by Southern People Weekly. Xu Zechen’s visit is supported by Standing Committee on Language Education and Research.

Schools Programme The Schools Programme has been an essential part of the Hong Kong International Literary Festival from its inception. Every year we bring the Festival to schools, hosting Festival authors all over the city. The Schools Programme is aimed at secondary school students aged 14 and over.

Jabari Asim

Monica Cantieni

Susan Choi

Lev Grossman

Luke Kennard

Benjamin Law

Mike Meyer

Haresh Sharma

Anna Smaill

Rebecca Swift

Photo Credit:

Jeffrey Wasserstrom

Jabari Asim (Shef Reynolds II), Monica Cantieni (Manuel Fischer, FRESHPIXEL), Susan Choi (Adrian Kinloch), Lev Grossman (Mathieu Bourgois), Haresh Sharma (The Necessary Stage), Anna Smaill (Natalie Graham), Jeff Wasserstrom (Steven Zylius)

SAVE THE DATE

YOUNG READERS FESTIVAL 7 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 18 March 2016

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 |

Venues

Hong Kong Baptist University

The Fringe Club

Kowloon Tong,Â Kowloon

2 Lower Albert Road, Central, Hong Kong

Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences

The Helena May

2 Caine Lane, Hong Kong

35 Garden Road, Central, Hong Kong

KEE Club

The University of Hong Kong

6/F, 32 Wellington Street, Central, Hong Kong

Pok Fu Lam Road, The University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong

Easy123 Dining and Cooking Studio

Hong Kong Jockey Club Lecture Theatre

Shop 221, 2/F, K11, 18 Hanoi Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong

Olympic House, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong

Please visit our website for directions and more information.

| VENUES

Donors and Special Thanks DONORS Annual Fund Patron ($50,000 or above)

Bookworm ($1000 or above)

Ray Eugene Helfer Jr. and Sara Ann Helfer

Anonymous, Joanna Fung, Cynthia Hardoon, Marietta Robinson, Neville Sarony

Connoisseur ($10,000 or above) Anonymous, Gabriela and Peter Kennedy, Angela Mackay, Winnie Ng, Tisa Ho, David Nunan, Ivor and Jennie Orchard, Christine May Yee Van, Clare Williams

Supporter ($100 or above) Jessie Cammack, Suresh Makhijam

Collector ($5,000 or above) Natalie Da Gama-Rose, Stephen Lo and Charlotte Lo, Martin Matsui

Student Ticket Fund Anonymous, Caroline Chong

As of 11 September 2015 SPECIAL THANKS Special thanks go to the following individuals and organizations for their kind assistance to this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Festival: Laura Brody, Jessie Cammack, Georgina Challen, Cyrus Chan, Joanne Chan, Agnes Cheng, Mengfei Cheng, Amelia Chiang, Tania Chin, Vanessa Chung, Catriona Ferguson, Jacky Foo, Connie and Catherine at The Fringe Club, Adeline Fung, Althea Fung, Servane Gandais, Kristin Haworth, Meijing He, Alvin Ho, Winnie Kan, Arshiya Khuller, Dawn King, Justin Kwan, Rebecca Kwan, Louise Law, Winnie Lee, Candy Leung, Erwin LĂźthi, Rainbow Ma, Angie Man, Manishya Mandal, Gavin McDougall, Noreen Mir, Bob Ness, Sonja Or, David Parrish, Gabrielle Rush, James Shea, Tiffin Shing, Edd Smith, Matt Steele, Connie Tam, Jannie Tam, Naomi West, Chung Wong, Wenlei Zhang, our media friends and our many generous volunteers. Front cover photo credit to Alex Kwan. For donation and sponsorship matters, please contact Phillipa Milne at 2877 9797 or at phillipa.milne@festival.org.hk. Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 |

Board and Staff The Hong Kong International Literary Festival (HKILF), founded in 2001, is an annual event held over 10 days each Autumn, featuring established and emerging writers from around the world in an extensive programme that includes discussions, literary lunches and dinners, workshops, lectures, debates, book signings and readings. We are proud to host writers from all over the world, in a variety of genres, and at all stages in their careers. HKILF is organized and coordinated by Hong Kong International Literary Festival Limited, a non-profit, charitable literary arts organization that also manages the annual Hong Kong International Young Readers Festival.

Board of Directors

Advisors

Tisa Ho

Douglas Kerr

Gabriela Kennedy

Jo Lusby

Angela Mackay

Xu Xi

Winnie Ng

/ Co-chair

David Nunan Christine Van

/ Co-chair

Staff Phillipa Milne

/ Programme Manager

Vanessa Wong

/ Assistant Manager

Maureen Chu

/ Accounts and Finance

| BOARD & STAFF

Acknowledgements The Hong Kong International Literary Festival is a not-for-profit, charitable organization dedicated to bringing the best in literary arts to Hong Kong. Less than half of our operating budget is covered by ticket income, so sponsorships and donations are critical to the Festivalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s health. Without your support, the Festival cannot flourish. The Hong Kong International Literary Festival would like to take this opportunity to thank the following corporations, organizations, and donors for their continued support and generosity.

Official Bookseller

Media Partners Exclusive International Media Partner

Exclusive Chinese Media Partner

Broadcast Media Partner

Venue Partners

RAL - HONG K NE ON GE G CAU MA

Hospitality Partner

CON SU LA T

In Partnership With

Honorary Legal Advisor

Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2015 |